Elon Musk: We’ll Be Selling Humanoid Robots By End Of Next Year, Self-Driving Cars “A Solved Problem”
Elon Musk spoke about advancements in AI, robotics, and space travel during an appearance at the World Economic Forum on Thursday. Musk said that by the end of next year, he expects to be selling humanoid robots to the public, and fully self-driving cars to be fully legal in the U.S., China, and European Union. “Some of the insurance companies have said that full self-driving is so safe that they’re offering customers half-price insurance if they use Tesla’s full self-driving in their car,” Musk said. “Humanoid robotics will advance very quickly,” he also said. “We do have some of the Tesla Optimus robots doing simple tasks in the factory. Probably by the end of this year, I think they’ll be doing more complex tasks, but still deployed in an industrial environment,” he said. “And probably by the end of next year, I think we’ll be selling humanoid robots to the public.”
INTERVIEWER: How quickly-you talked about the billions of robots-but how quickly can they be deployed in a manufacturing setting? How quickly can they be utilized and be functional and create that abundance that you talked about? MUSK: Well, humanoid robotics will advance very quickly. I think-we do have some of the Tesla Optimus robots doing simple tasks in the factory. Except probably later this year, by the end of this year, I think they’ll be doing more complex tasks, but still deployed in an industrial environment. And probably sometime next year, I’d say that by the end of next year, I think we’d be selling humanoid robots to the public. That’s when we are confident that it’s very high reliability, very high safety, and the range of functionality is also very high. You can basically ask it to do anything you’d like. INTERVIEWER: You’re already seeing that in Tesla cars. The software changes that you’re doing-what is it, every quarter now? A software change that upgrades the ability of the robot within the car. MUSK: Yes. The Tesla full self-driving software, we update it sometimes once a week. And recently some of the insurance companies have said that it is actually so safe-Tesla full self-driving is so safe-that they’re offering customers half-price insurance if they use Tesla full self-driving in their car. INTERVIEWER: And that could be monitored by the insurance company-is that part of the agreement then? MUSK: Yeah. But I think self-driving cars is essentially a solved problem at this point, right? And Tesla’s rolled out a sort of robo-taxi service in a few cities, and will be very, very widespread by the end of this year within the U.S. And then we hope to get supervised full self-driving approval in Europe, hopefully next month. INTERVIEWER: Really? That quickly? MUSK: Yeah. And then maybe a similar timing for China, hopefully.
