Tesla prioritises humanoid robot over autopilot project

Elon Musk said that Tesla is borrowing the Autopilot team for its Optimus humanoid robot project, which has a deadline at the end of the month.

The CEO has said that the Tesla Bot project has become a priority.

Tesla’s approach to selling Autopilot, and now its Full Self-Driving package features before they are ready, is creating some pressure to deliver, and Tesla has missed several timelines already.

Elon Musk has talked about Tesla turning its fleet into 1 million “robotaxi” vehicles by the end of the year, but the goal has now changed to expanding its FSD Beta program, which is still far from being able to perform a robotaxi service.

Many customers are getting impatient to the point that some have filed a class action lawsuit against Tesla over its claims about Autopilot and the FSD package.

Tesla planned to leverage its work on computer vision for self-driving to use in the robot, which raised concerns considering the automaker has yet to deliver on its self-driving promises despite selling the feature to customers.

The deadline for Optimus is the Tesla AI Day 2 at the end of September, during which the company is expected to unveil its first working prototype of the robot.

Tesla apparently also plans to unveil an updated version of its “Smart Summon” and Autopark features at the event.

- CyberBeat