If I worked on Optimus I would be so angry about the decision to so this. Now nobody will trust the brand or the product. Stupid.
Tesla Optimus Bots Were Remotely Operated at Cybercab Event
111–120 of 246 posts
Re: Tesla Optimus Bots Were Remotely Operated at Cybercab Event
#112It’s so funny to me when people still believe Elon when it comes to this or deadlines. I used to work for him and he always overpromises
Friendly reminder that in 2017 he was saying a car would drive autonomously from LA to NY in a year. It is now 2024 and that has not happened.
Friendly reminder that Tesla Semis are still not fully delivered and running.
Friendly reminder that the Roadster 2 is not rolling off the production line (people put down deposits too)!
Re: Tesla Optimus Bots Were Remotely Operated at Cybercab Event
#113Surprising absolutely no one, I hope. Credibility seems difficult to generate for Tesla events. Maybe the secret sauce for Robotaxis is a human driver somewhere watching the cameras. Like driving Uber but from the comfort of home, and it's easy to hit the fridge or bathroom between rides.
or you even have a single driver in charge of 20 vehicles, waiting for one of them to encounter a situation the system can't handle automatically
Re: Tesla Optimus Bots Were Remotely Operated at Cybercab Event
#114If I worked on Optimus I would be so angry about the decision to so this. Now nobody will trust the brand or the product. Stupid.
Are Elon companies known for being trustworthy in marketing?
If they ever were that should have ended when FSD was first 'delivered'. With a possible carve out for SpaceX?
Re: Tesla Optimus Bots Were Remotely Operated at Cybercab Event
#115Earlier quoted context omitted.
I haven't really been tracking this, but aren't they selling at a price much greater than they originially announced? I would classify it as "mixed success"
The base model isn't entering production until next year but is quoted by Car and Driver as starting at $62,985. The original price was supposed to be $39,900. However there has been >20% inflation since then, and the base model should be eligible for the full $7,500 tax credit applied as an instant rebate at purchase time, which was not available at the time of announcement. All that to say: the price actually paid…
> The original price was supposed to be $39,900. However there has been >20% inflation since then
That price was announced with a significant lead time, so at least 5-6% inflation was built in already.
> and the base model should be eligible for the full $7,500 tax credit applied as an instant rebate at purchase time, which was not available at the time of announcement.
It wasn't available that exact moment, but it existed.
> All that to say: the price actually paid will be $55,485, vs the inflation adjusted original base model price of $48,912 (possibly higher if there is more inflation before the release next year). So yes, the price you'd actually pay has gone up 13% in real terms over the announcement price.
I'd put the inflation-adjusted price at $46k, and not use the $7500 to reduce the difference, making $63k a 36% increase. Or I'd apply the $7500 to both and get 44%.
Re: Tesla Optimus Bots Were Remotely Operated at Cybercab Event
#116Earlier quoted context omitted.
I've worked in robotics for over 10 years, at state of the art labs and high quality startups. There are really only two hard problems in robotics: Perception and Funding. Perception, especially around a bunch of people, with depth, mapping, understanding traffic and gestures, all in real time etc etc will be a huge problem for these machines for a while. Funding though? I doubt that's an issue right now.
I'm also a roboticist. Perception and funding are hard. But don't forget battery energy density, and the power-to-weight ratio and energy efficiency of actuators. Also very very hard, and Moore's law helps not at all. Autonomous cars are in a nice niche since they store vast energy for actuation anyway, it's OK to be heavy, and the controls are relatively simple. They are limited by perception and decision making. Hu…
Battery density is only an issue if these things are spending most of their time moving long distances. If you are targeting a drop in replacement for a human worker who is spending most of their time at a workstation, it can be plugged in while working. Even in a scenario where the robot can not be connected to power while working, that's easily solved with redundancy - get two robots, one works while the other charges. Obviously better battery life is a nice to have, but it's not an impediment to large scale adoption the way other big robotics problems are.
Re: Tesla Optimus Bots Were Remotely Operated at Cybercab Event
#117Earlier quoted context omitted.
The base model isn't entering production until next year but is quoted by Car and Driver as starting at $62,985. The original price was supposed to be $39,900. However there has been >20% inflation since then, and the base model should be eligible for the full $7,500 tax credit applied as an instant rebate at purchase time, which was not available at the time of announcement. All that to say: the price actually paid…
> The original price was supposed to be $39,900. However there has been >20% inflation since then That price was announced with a significant lead time, so at least 5-6% inflation was built in already. > and the base model should be eligible for the full $7,500 tax credit applied as an instant rebate at purchase time, which was not available at the time of announcement. It wasn't available that exact moment, but it e…
The $7500 existed only for other manufacturers. It had expired entirely for Tesla. No Tesla model was eligible for any more credits at that time and there was no particular reason to believe that Tesla would ever become eligible again in the future. Also, the credit back then did not directly reduce the price paid at purchase time the way it does today. I think it is fair to apply the credit when comparing to the announced price. Tesla certainly takes the credit into account when they set pricing and buyers account for it when purchasing.
Also it was announced at the end of 2019 for 2021 and the inflation rate in 2019 was 1.8% so there's no way they accounted for 6% inflation. 4% at most.
Re: Tesla Optimus Bots Were Remotely Operated at Cybercab Event
#118This results in me trusting Tesla less. If this was fake, how do we know the robovans were not remotely operated? They might as well be too to get the stock price up? There is no way to know. I am really doubting Tesla now. It wouldn’t surprise me that, in order to prevent mishaps during the event, everything is remotely operated… People will say: that’s not true. But where did Tesla clearly specify this upfront? I s…
After reading the Isaacson biography, it’s clear to me Elon is not a stable or trustworthy person. The evidence continues to mount.
Re: Tesla Optimus Bots Were Remotely Operated at Cybercab Event
#119Earlier quoted context omitted.
A few generations of what, pretending their robots work?
Honestly, I don't know why I bother continuing to engage here. HN community, is this the quality of discourse you want to encourage?
The discussion you’re looking for is happening over on X. It’s long been dead here.
Re: Tesla Optimus Bots Were Remotely Operated at Cybercab Event
#120How is stuff like this not considered fraud? This seems much worse to me than Musk's usual Tesla lies in which he is predicting some future capability. At least there is an argument that Musk believed it those at the time he said them or that they were optimistically possible despite being impractical. This seems to be material misrepresentation of the viability of one of the company's core R&D projects that Musk cla…
Fraud is a material misstatement of fact to induce someone to do something. It's really not clear that there's any actual inducement here; this isn't exactly the centerpoint of a pitch video to investors. (As it turns out, Tesla's stock went down like 9% the next day after the event, with most of the analysts' reactions to the announcement essentially being "okay, so he doesn't really have anything that he wasn't already pitching").