The Ultimate Robot Party, Hold the Info

Tesla’s event last night certainly did not disappoint!

Well, unless you are an investor. Investors are not thrilled:

The products on display at the event were amazing. But the presentation was extremely light on details.

If you think back to the Cybertruck presentation, it was highly technical, going into the specs of how durable, fast, etc. Plus, they started taking $1k deposits even without an official release date.

This presentation was entirely show, don’t tell. No details. No price. No firm release date. But the visuals are incredible:

Everyone knows I love a good robot party (see the article below if you missed it), but those watching at home were hoping for more information and less party.

A Car without a Steering Wheel + Robovan

Full self-driving has progressed to the point where we don’t even need to pretend a driver is necessary. Elon said this is coming in 2025 in Texas and California first.

However, this raises so many questions. Waymo has teleoperators if the car gets stuck. That doesn’t sound very Tesla-like, but Elon didn’t mention it either way.

The big questions remain on how the Robotaxi ride sharing network will work. Or even the name: Elon also referred to it as Cybercab! Come on, just give us some facts man!

Elon still isn’t planning a central Tesla owned fleet of cars. “If they can actually sort of manage a fleet of 10, 20, cars, and just take care of them like a shepherd tends their flock,” Musk said. “I think that would be pretty cool. It’s gonna be a glorious future.”

Some robotics are necessary to support this, which we’ll dig into in a second. First, a Robovan.

Can you imagine the experiences people will build on top of this? I enjoyed a few Vegas party bus rides back in my day, scooting around the strip in this thing would be amazing!

Enough about cars, show me the humanoids!

But wait, there was a cool robot shown that isn’t humanoid:

Elon didn’t even talk about the cleaning robotic arm, although it was in the video! Come on man — are you selling it? What is the price?

Of course, lawsuits are why all of this is so light on details. Elon has been way too optimistic in the past, and it has come back to bite him. This is why we can’t have nice information (we still get the nice things).

Optimus Dance Party

Here’s the full clip of Elon talking about Optimus, them marching in, dancing on a platform:

No real details:

• “We made lots of progress.”

• “If you extrapolate this, you’re really going to have something spectacular.”

• “I think this will be the biggest product ever, of any kind.”

• “The cost of products and services will decline dramatically, and basically anyone will be able to have any products or services they want. It will be an age of abundance.”

The goal of the event was to allow people to ride in the new car and interact with the Optimus robots. There are a ton of videos posted by people at the event:

The multitasking is incredible. It is pouring drinks, noticing when people are taking photos, and keeping a conversation going!

In fact, everyone is wondering if the talking was done remotely by humans? Elon should clear this up, let us know if any of it was operated remotely, but still has not.

Humanoids capable of casual chatting

At 43 seconds on the clip above, someone orders a drink. And Optimus replies “A watermelon? Of course you can.”

It seems minor, but that is way closer to how a human would interact than you would expect interacting with a robot.

Here’s another couple impressive conversations:

Who is going to want a grumpy teenager working retail when you can have a witty Optimus?

Show me your hand, humanoid

As I have covered on Humanoid Vibe before, the hands are the differentiator.

This is where the majority of the mechanical engineering complexity lies, and determines the fine motor control of the humanoid.

There were some impressive hands on display around the event:

More info to come

This Tesla event raised more questions than it answered. I suppose a robot party isn’t the time to go into it, but hopefully they’ll keep releasing more information.

But this I do know: the future looks fun!