Tesla Bot is Tesla’s late April Fool’s joke

As originally published on stuff.co.nz on 26 Aug 2021

Tesla’s inaugural “AI Day” conference took a bizarre turn on Thursday (US time) during Elon Musk’s keynote speech.

The world’s second richest man introduced the Tesla Bot – a humanoid robot that will stand 1.7 metres, weigh 56kg, have “human-level hands”, and, in Musk’s words, eliminate “dangerous, repetitive, boring tasks”.

To further add to the feeling it was all a bit like a late April Fools’ joke, the announcement was accompanied by the briefest of slides and a human in a spandex suit who at first pretended to be a robot, but then who hammed it up with a comedic dance.

Without a doubt the prospect of an affordable, walking, talking, semi-intelligent robot that can perform basic tasks in offices and factories is tantalising.

Although the announcement is serious, however, Musk’s prediction that they could have a demonstration model operating by 2022 is pure fantasy.

Boston Dynamics, arguably the world leader in autonomous robotics, has been working on bipedal robotic technology like this for decades and it is not even close to producing an android that will be able to walk to work, let alone one that could stack shelves or replace an engine part.

The company still refers to its “Atlas” bipedal robot as R&D (research and development) – it’s viewed as more a way of pushing the cutting edge of robotics than a commercial product that one day soon will be able to do our bidding.

This is vintage Musk: Announce a breakthrough, barely believable product or technology and promise that it’s just around the corner, despite it being several (or more) years away. Autopilot, Tesla Semi or Tesla Roadster, anyone? SpaceX is no different – I paid my deposit for the Starlink (satellite internet service) pilot in February, yet I still have no idea when I’ll receive my dish.

For Tesla it’s amazing PR, particularly for a company that doesn’t have a PR department. It’s the kind of showmanship that’s helped make Tesla into the most valuable car manufacturer in the world, despite the company only achieving four consecutive profitable quarters for the first time last year.

But this announcement was bizarre even for Musk and it smacks of desperation. Tesla’s most recent product, the Model Y, was, like most Tesla products, late to market and there are reports that overseas customers are still suffering delivery delays of up to four months (the Model Y is due for release in NZ sometime between now and mid-2022).

The Semi (initially due 2019, now expected late 2022), Cybertruck (initially due late this year, now at least a year over schedule) and Roadster (initially due 2019, now unlikely to be seen until 2023) are all potentially groundbreaking products, but they’re all late and, as a result, Tesla’s been caught without anything new or exciting in the pipeline.

In the meantime the rest of the industry is finally catching up. Tesla isn’t the only one to manufacture a sexy, sporty and affordable EV any more (MG ZS EV, anyone?). It’s certainly not the only player in the luxury EV market either, where offerings from the likes of Jaguar, Mercedes and Audi are giving the Model S and Model X serious competition. And there’s more than 100 new EV models due for release over the next 18 months alone.

Musk knows that, in such a crowded market, Tesla just isn’t getting the attention that it used to and its AI Day would have gone largely unnoticed by the press if he didn’t pull a rabbit out of the hat. So he did one better and made some poor sod dance in a spandex suit.

But here’s the interesting thing about this announcement – although Musk has a history of overpromising and under-delivering, it’s undeniable that his companies, including Tesla and SpaceX, always seem to find a way to get there in the end.

Models S, X and 3 were all overdue upon release and they all cost more on launch than initially promised, but they also changed the face of motoring forever. They are, in effect, the reason there’s more than 100 EV models coming out over the next year.

The Model Y, Semi and Roadster, not to mention autopilot (once it finally works as promised), are all overdue but it seems clear that they’ll all arrive on the market sooner or later and that all will leave an equally indelible mark on the industry as their predecessors.

If Musk has shown us anything it’s that you’d be a fool to bet on any of his products arriving on time, but you’d also be a fool for betting against him delivering sooner or later.

Could it be that Tesla is about to change the face of the industry the same way that it changed the face of motoring? Could it be that over the next five to 10 years (or more, I’m not making predictions here) we’ll enter an iRobot universe where businesses can afford general purpose robots that they can use to fully automate mundane tasks? It’s an exciting prospect.

So although I eye-rolled my way through his announcement of Tesla Bot (and seriously thought it was a joke until Tesla started releasing official images and press notes from Musk’s keynote), I must admit that, like a self-driving Tesla, I can’t wait to have one.