CROSSPOST: WILL LOCKETT: Musk’s Pathetic Robot Is Looking More And More Like Bad Vapourware
Is this wrong? It really looks right to me.
Now there is a bull case for Tesla. But it depends not on FSD service subscriptions, robotaxi dominance, and humanoid robot butlers and… ahem… but rather on industrial scale economies in EV powertrain and battery manufacturing, software integration, and charging infrastructure. Which requires that Tesla have found its Gwynne Shotwell two years ago, and a flood of new, attractive models to boost scale arriving any time now. Or that Trump standardize the entire U.S. government on Teslas. Or at least restore the EV subsidies, and give Tesla carveouts and exemptions from tariffs. And restore green-consumer vibes to Tesla, for the market for Dukes-of-Hazzard Confederate-flag CyberTrucks is very limited…
If one thing has characterised Elon Musk’s career, it has been illusion. From faking a supercomputer to hooking in his first investors to simulating self-driving car demos, the hype that drives Musk’s wealth and power does not come from material results but from the illusion of progress. However, Musk is not a very skilled magician, and the illusion breaks every now and then. Occasionally, we get a glimpse into how phony this empire of speculation is — just look at the non-existent new Roadster, the easily shatterable windows of the Cybertruck, and even the hilarious failure of the Hyperloop. Last weekend, the illusion was broken yet again when, at Tesla’s Miami ‘Autonomy Visualised’ event, one of Tesla’s robots took a very suspicious fall, which made it look less like a cutting-edge robot and more like a decade-old Disney animatronic. The implications of this are nothing short of devastating for Tesla.
Before we get into this hilarious incident, we first need to understand what Musk claims this robot will do.
In short, Musk wants this robot to completely transform the economy. He, in all seriousness, expects to sell a million of them a year by 2030, with a billion sold per year following shortly thereafter. Musk has claimed these robots can replace most forms of labour and will have 5x the productivity of a human per year, and that this will create a “sustainable abundance”. He estimates that soon these robots will account for 80% of Tesla’s overall value and that they could generate $10 trillion in long-term revenue. He has also called Optimus Tesla’s “most important product ever”, but he said the same thing about the CyberTruck <https://x.com/cixliv/status/1997878834956525898?s=20>, so go figure….
Take a look at the video below, taken at the recent Miami event: <https://x.com/cixliv/status/1997878834956525898?s=20>. Notice how it looks like the robot knocks everything over, takes off a nonexistent VR headset, and then goes so rigid it falls backwards?
Yeah, this looks exactly like the bot was being remotely puppeteered, the operator forgot the shutdown sequence, and began to remove the VR headset before control had been totally severed, causing it to grab at a nonexistent headset and lose its balance.
Indeed, I can’t think of a single other reason this robot could have acted like this…
The rest of it is below Will Lockett’s paywall. But let me give you some takeaways:
Musk’s “projections” are not projections: “A million of them a year by 2030… 5x the productivity of a human… 80% of Tesla’s overall value… $10 trillion in long-term revenue…”
Repeated previous admissions of remote operation: “The ‘bot folding clothes… the VR puppeteer in the frame. Second… ‘bots at the We Are Robot event that talked… acknowledge[d as]… operated remotely…”
Development stagnant: “After four years of development, we have yet to see this robot do anything more than shuffle around under its own control…”
Humanoid form inefficiency: “The guy who Musk hired to lead… development… said this form factor limitation means i[t’s merely a]… novelty…”
Tesla’s core EV outlook is not good: “They have pretty much entirely abandoned developing any new EVs… [while] even legacy competitors are thoroughly outpacing them...”
Valuation at risk: “Tesla… worth ten times more than it should be because investors believed it would deliver considerable, disruptive growth…. This stupid robot is the only [project] left open, but only because it hasn’t hit the market yet…”
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