Musk Sees Human Robot Becoming Bigger Than Tesla’s Car Business

Gabrielle Coppola, Bloomberg News

Elon Musk, chief executive officer of Tesla Inc., waves while departing court during the SolarCity trial in Wilmington, Delaware, U.S., on Tuesday, July 13, 2021. Musk was cool but combative as he testified in a Delaware courtroom that Tesla's more than $2 billion acquisition of SolarCity in 2016 wasn't a bailout of the struggling solar provider. , Bloomberg

(Bloomberg) -- The Optimus Human Robot is the most important thing Tesla Inc. will be working on this year, Chief Executive Officer Elon Musk told investors Wednesday, doubling down on a product he memorably previewed last year with a human dancing on stage.

The humanoid robots will be important to address the labor shortage in the U.S., and their first use will be in Tesla’s own factories, Musk said Wednesday on an earnings webcast. Optimus has “the potential to be more significant than the vehicle business over time,” he said.

Read here about Musk’s original introduction of the Optimus concept in August 2021

Tesla is working through supply chain issues that will affect production this year, and it won’t offer any new vehicle models as it focuses on ramping up output at new factories, Musk said. But the company does plan to achieve what it calls Full Self Driving technology this year, Musk said.

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