Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Tesla Announces a Humanoid Robot “Tesla Bot”

electrek.co

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

321–330 of 416 posts

Re: Tesla Announces a Humanoid Robot “Tesla Bot”

#321

Post by machiaweliczny »

andyxor wrote: post #195
klintcho wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's quite interesting how people keep betting against Elon. The HN crowd should consist of mostly risk-tolerant personalities, but the majority of comments are negative. Regardless of what one might think of the feasibility, no other company in the world today are as ambitions as SpaceX and Tesla (+ Neuralink). Feels like what Apple used to be during the "one more thing"-era. Both Tesla and SpaceX has been discounte…

Not to take away from their brilliant engineering accomplishments, but SpaceX and Tesla were dealing with technically solved problems. We (as a species) have been to space, and we know how to build electric batteries and cars. These were at the advanced engineering stage after enormous scientific progress of the last few hundred years and going all the way back to beginning of physics and math. With AI we are at pre-…

Or we had most figured out in the 50s but just not enough compute. Time will show.

Re: Tesla Announces a Humanoid Robot “Tesla Bot”

#322

Post by nixarn »

itsoktocry wrote: post #282
nixarn wrote: post #255

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Furthermore, if you have been following closely, you would have seen the huge and humiliating mess ups he had with Tesla where he literally flushed billions and billions of dollars down the toilet. I have been following it closely since 2012. Not sure where he flushed the money down the toilet? And with that he still grew the company well. Without Elon Tesla would never have become the 666B company that is today. >…

> I have been following it closely since 2012. Not sure where he flushed the money down the toilet? You have been following for that long and don't know the company continues to burn cash? That they said they'd never raise money again, and then raised money about 6 times? That if it wasn't for subsidies and funky accounting there is no profit?

Tesla has had their fair share of hard times. And some mornings have been horrible after having read some Elon tweets xD

When it comes to raising cash, things change, I remember once cash raise happened immediately after their value had increased much in a short interval, so it made sense to raise. And looking back, with the company being worth 666B now, they've done a lot of right calls, but of course some wrong ones as well.

And it's a myth that Tesla doesn't do any profit. For example last quarter Tesla got around 354M in regulatory credits (this is what the anti-tesla crowd likes to point out) but the net income was 1.14B. And besides the regulatory credit should be counted, not like the oil industry hasn't had it's insane amount of subsides over the years.

Re: Tesla Announces a Humanoid Robot “Tesla Bot”

#323

Post by nixarn »

joakleaf wrote: post #263
nixarn wrote: post #232

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't see many wanting a tentacle arm, that's a waste of resources. I'm also heavily invested in Tesla, have been for years I like this alot, it's an exciting future to work towards. Will it take longer than elon says? Probably. But as long as you're moving towards the goal, it's great, one day you'll be there. I also think building a humanoid robot can interest a lot of talent, and while building this robot they'l…

We are negative, because it seems either Musk doesn't seem to fully respect and appreciate the difficulty and the steps required to build a humanoid robot, or he is lying about what he thinks is possible at the expense of customers, shareholders, and employees. I honestly don't understand why they don't use their FSD+electic motors+battery tech and create a bunch of products on wheels; farming equipment, robotic lawn…

Good idea with autonomous farming equipment. Although doesn't really sound like it's aligned with Tesla's mission, so maybe some other company could license Tesla's tech and do it. Because it sounds like it should be done!

Re: Tesla Announces a Humanoid Robot “Tesla Bot”

#324

Post by iyn »

csmeder wrote: post #167
CommieBobDole wrote: post #53

Musk seems to have fallen for the idea that since he's had great success in one or two areas, he can easily repeat that success in other areas, even if the difficulty is much higher and entirely different skills are required. SpaceX and Tesla are great achievements, but they are primarily stories of successfully implementing and improving existing technologies with innovative engineering and business practices (like…

Haha, and then in 10 years when He announces X you will say: “since he’s had great success in pioneering self landing reusable rockets, starting a colony on Mars, pioneering the EV market, pioneering Robo taxis, making the first commercial humanoid robots, moving traffic underground, adding computers to people’s brains, he has now fallen for the idea that he can easily repeat that success in other areas like X” This…

Love this framing, agreed 100%. I find it extremely frustrating when people try to murder ideas and shot down any attempt at building something new. I know that being a cynic is easier but come on, isn't it great that Musk is pushing us closer to the future? I have a lot of problems with many of his actions but it doesn't mean I can't recognize positive ones. /rant

Re: Tesla Announces a Humanoid Robot “Tesla Bot”

#325

Post by iyn »

CommieBobDole wrote: post #106
csmeder wrote: post #66

It is interesting that many of the top comments are as dismissive as: “No wireless. Less space than a Nomad. Lame,” When you look at Tesla’s talent in: AI + motors + batteries + manufacturing I can’t believe how negative and dismissive the comments are. Can we not have some appreciation for what Tesla HAS achieved vs only focusing on missed ship dates? The part that I think is going over peoples head is that for so m…

I don't dismiss Tesla's successes at all, but they are primarily repackaging and improving technologies that already exist. They didn't need to invent the lithium-ion battery, or the electric motor, or the automobile; all of those things already existed and were available to be adapted to Tesla's desired use. Humanoid robots, however, are a much harder problem than building a mass-market-ready electric car. In order…

> "but they are primarily repackaging and improving technologies that already exist."

Did you mean: they are innovating? IMO there's not enough appreciation for getting to commodification and scaling the existing tech. It's a very difficult problem, from what I understand.

> I'm dismissive because building a useful, mass-market humanoid robot would be an achievement of incredible magnitude

Agreed. But they don't have to start with "mass-market humanoid robot", there are 1000s of niches where then can execute "land and expand" strategy. Same playbook as with Tesla or SpaceX: start with something niche (sport car for rich people/gov contracts), iterate to expand ($30k EV/satellite internet everywhere).

Re: Tesla Announces a Humanoid Robot “Tesla Bot”

#326

Post by [deleted] »

nickik wrote: post #301
itsoktocry wrote: post #299

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Building a car factory + supply chain is quite the challenge And yet Elon announced to the world he was going to have the most automated factory in the world, the machine that builds machines, and that the factory was the actual product. People lapped this up. 2 years later they were hand-assembling cars in a tent. Now do you see the problem? > Manufacturing is considered to be one of the hardest things about build…

They tried to do something quite crazy with manufacturing and it didn't work. Musk has often ignored industry standard and often it works. In this case it didn't and people will now use this forever to show how stupid he is. However what happened then is that they effectively corrected their mistake, fixed their production, reached their production targets with excellent unit margins. They learned from the episode an…

[deleted]

Re: Tesla Announces a Humanoid Robot “Tesla Bot”

#327

Post by FartyMcFarter »

jollybean wrote: post #276

I will take on any wagers that this this thing will not be walking around making gin and tonics in 16 months or 5 years. And neither will he have L5 self driving cars. Surely, he knows it. So then you have to ask why is he knowingly duping? I bet he feels he can get away wit some BS as long as there's some actual product traction. Like the successful launch of a super-heavy or whatever gives him leeway to make a litt…

> So then you have to ask why is he knowingly duping?

Because it makes him richer.

Re: Tesla Announces a Humanoid Robot “Tesla Bot”

#328

Post by doctorwho42 »

staunch wrote: post #50
paxys wrote: post #19

Add it to the long list of Elon projects permanently in a state of releasing "next year".

It's a fair criticism that Elon Musk would probably agree with. He attempts extraordinarily ambitious things that very few other people would even dream of attempting. Sometimes things take longer and/or perform worse than he hoped they would. Sometimes he succeeds beyond anyone's expectations. In any case, he keeps trying to push the world forward, and that's the highest calling of any engineer in my book. I still c…

>he attempts extraordinary ambitious things that very few other people would even dream of attempting.

What are you even talking about? Thousands of people have thought of tackling (1) self driving cars and have made steps towards accomplishing it before musk, (2) reusable rockets, man that has been on the dreams of rocket engineers for decades but we didn't have the computing power to do it, (3) a boring machine... Well we have been doing that for over a century, (4) electric cars, well hate to break it to you but we have been doing that for a century, (5) mars colonization, I feel like everyone born after 69 have been dreaming of how to make that possible; see (case for Mars).

Elon musk isn't some gift from god who comes up with extraordinary projects that no-one else is even dreaming of. He is a wealthy business man, son of wealth, who invests his time and energy into driving top talent in the fields he chooses to attempt to accomplish what he promises vaguely on Twitter. And just like Jobs, he takes all the credit for engineering achievements that could never be accomplished by one man in any reasonable time frame.

Re: Tesla Announces a Humanoid Robot “Tesla Bot”

#329

Post by rory_isAdonk »

nixarn wrote: post #232
joakleaf wrote: post #208

If Musk was really serious about this, he would start with smaller steps: 0) Finish the tentacle charging robot they demoed in 2015 (roll out to superchargers) 1) Build delivery robot on wheels using FSD (like the Starship Technology's robots). These could be used on hospitals, possibly warehouses, pizza delivery, cleaning streets, painting lanes on roads, ... 2) Build dog-like robot, like Boston Dynamics's spot with…

I don't see many wanting a tentacle arm, that's a waste of resources. I'm also heavily invested in Tesla, have been for years I like this alot, it's an exciting future to work towards. Will it take longer than elon says? Probably. But as long as you're moving towards the goal, it's great, one day you'll be there. I also think building a humanoid robot can interest a lot of talent, and while building this robot they'l…

If anything it gives scope for smart and talented people to work on something that if fails they can easily spin multiple startups from in various attempts to find a route to success.

This happens all over the place and we should be thankful people are either dumb/smart enough to take these risks on big ideas.

Re: Tesla Announces a Humanoid Robot “Tesla Bot”

#330

Post by pushingice »

jfoster wrote: post #237
csmeder wrote: post #66

It is interesting that many of the top comments are as dismissive as: “No wireless. Less space than a Nomad. Lame,” When you look at Tesla’s talent in: AI + motors + batteries + manufacturing I can’t believe how negative and dismissive the comments are. Can we not have some appreciation for what Tesla HAS achieved vs only focusing on missed ship dates? The part that I think is going over peoples head is that for so m…

I am blown away by how many people repeatedly under-estimate Musk's companies despite him eventually proving them wrong basically every time.

True. That's why the cross-country autonomous drive that didn't happen in 2017 is imminent.
Post reply on HN