[gradus_ad]

The whole pivot to Optimus is insane. I can understand the market following Elon down all the other paths he randomly skips down but Optimus... Really?? The only way to explain it is it's not being taken seriously but Elon seems to be taking it very seriously...

[linkjuice4all]

It's especially strange considering the amount of work that Tesla (the company) put into becoming a car manufacturer which is certainly no easy feat. I'm sure some of the know-how, process, and tooling/supply lines could be transitioned to general purpose robot manufacturing - but why would you build these supply lines and factories just to screw it all up like this?

[CTDOCodebases]

Judging by the news isn’t the pivot to creating autonomous driving systems for other manufacturers cars?

If I’m understanding correctly the pivot is to sell just the autonomous driving systems. This way it can be trained on more data. It’s a hard sell to do this while competing against the car makers whose business they are trying to court.

Selling actual cars was like Uber when they started with a black car service. Get into the luxury market then leverage that so get into the mass market.

Perhaps this is why Elon has been so adamant about not using LiDAR

[amluto]

What does any of this have to do with Optimus? Driving a car by sticking a humanoid robot in the driver seat would be amusing but is a terrible idea.

[CTDOCodebases]

I got confused between Optimus and Dojo and assumed that Tesla had a seperate internal AI division called Optimus.

In light of this I think it makes sense though. Tesla lost the government subsidies so it can't compete. Possibly the only way it can would be to have an autonomous workforce then to leverage that into selling picks and shovels (Optimus humanoid robots) to other automotive manufacturers.

[forgetfreeman]

Actually if you run the tape back Tesla spent over a decade on trivially preventable manufacturing fuckups by attempting to ignore a century of industry knowledge on the subject and just wing it silicon valley style. That they have infrastructure that is capable of performing manufacturing at some scale is not in question. That any of it is sufficiently optimized for sanity to be repurposed remains to be seen.

[linkjuice4all]

The Giga Press and battery factories (to some extent) seem pretty heavily tied to automobile manufacture. Regardless - there are many automobile production lines that found a second or third life producing down-market brands or moved to other countries because they still have some value.

I guess I'm just continuously baffled by the complete fuck-up that is/has-been Tesla motors.

[forgetfreeman]

There is a particular breed of bullshit artistry that appeals to popular imagination and investors. Buckminster Fuller comes to mind here.

[Miserlou57]

Even a few short years ago the Model S Plaids were still getting derided for their horrible fit and finish. That's like, a decade into production.

These cars are very long in the tooth so I suspect that the Fremont line has been a shitshow the entire time.

[maxdo]

Ai solved(ing) coding in 2026

Robots doing drunken panda moves FSD are insanely good using MacBook grade + and not even grass iPhone hardware

few other companies are doing large scale self driving large scale pilots

Cars are already heavily built using specialized robots today

Id say it’s equally stupid for any other car brand to invest money into something not autonomous or robotics.

[ihagen]

The world has changed. Cars belong to a consumerism-driven, globalized economy. Humanoid robots and AI belong to a technofeudal, fascist-like state with a government-driven economy. The ruler relies on his elite. The elite relies on AI, humanoid robots, and drones to project the ruler’s power and maintain the status quo. The peasants are no longer needed. They are now seen only as a burden.

[tedd4u]

I think the only thing he can do now is have Tesla "acquire" SpaceX. He already had SpaceX "acquire" the AI thing, so that would roll all three up into a pubco where he can hide things about the business as needed (no fear of SEC problems).

[myvoiceismypass]

I suspect it would be the other way around - SpaceX is gonna IPO in a few months at a similar valuation to Tesla right now, and once the Elon pump can go wild on the public, who knows how quickly SpaceX will go to the moon.

[apparent]

Is this because of his comp package, and the moonshot incentives it creates?