[Photo Credit to Pixabay]

During Tesla’s conference call on April 23rd, the company’s chief executive, Elon Musk, announced that they are actively working on developing a humanoid called Optimus - Gen 2, that will be ready for sales by the end of 2025.

Though Optimus is still in the development phase, Elon Musk anticipates it being capable of performing useful tasks in the factory as they request, such as repetitive labor, by the end of the year.

The sneak peak of Optimus - Gen 2 has been initially unveiled via Tesla’s official Youtube channel.

The starting points of such videos of introducing their bot models on their official youtube channel dates back to September 2022, where they first showcased their original humanoid, Bumblebee.

Since then, Tesla has diligently provided video updates on their progress in manufacturing and developing humanoids, as Tesla introduced the Bumblebee in 2022, Optimus - Gen 1 in March 2023, and the most recent Optimus - Gen 2 in December of 2023.

The video of Optimus II featured highlighted enhancements in performances regarding their update, such as handling an egg with great delicacy or maintaining perfect balance as Optimus squats.

However, there are numerous concerns regarding the practicality of Optimus, especially in the context of Musk’s claim about the humanoids being out in the free market for sales.

Integrating humanoids into various work environments may prove to be challenging to accomplish typical workloads, considering how the technology of humanoids are imperfect, and Optimus - Gen 2 is not an exception.

Nevertheless, Tesla aims to develop a humanoid that is capable of substituting most of the physical workloads that humans are responsible for, as Optimus - Gen 2 is created in the form of a human.

Many critics doubt the feasibility of Musk’s claim about the sales of Optimus, especially concerning the speed of the development, as they are concerned about whether Tesla could come up with a fully developed humanoid by the end of 2025.

The reason behind several concerns cites back to Elon Musk’s several past records of ambitious claims for new products and developments, just like Optimus II.

The concerns towards humanoids, however, is not limited to Tesla.

Several competitors, such as Boston Dynamics and Human AI, share similar concerns: the control over the humanoids are still in the laboratory phase, and the hardware of the bots are still fragile for them to be used as workforces over a long period of time.

Despite these challenges, many experts in the field consider the current claim of humanoid sales to be ambitious, yet possible to achieve at a certain level.

Msuk remains confident mainly because he thinks Tesla is currently in the best position to produce humanoid robots, which will later become better assets than electric automobiles, currently being their main source of revenue.

Musk envisions great potential for the capabilities of the humanoid, as he believes there would be no meaningful limit to the size of the economy, once humanoid bots are able to navigate reality and accomplish their requested tasks successfully.