Repeating Elon's claims in a headline is journalistic malpractice at this point. It won't be $20K.

Especially now that he has publicly admitted that he deliberately makes up shit to prevent investment and interest going to potential competitors by lying.

The whole hyperloop nonsense was nothing other than an effort to kill the CA HSR because it would potentially impact Tesla negatively.

The good thing is that unlike the Hyperloop this was actually demoed, so other than the ElonCult most people are not gonna be impressed by a Honda Asimo circa 2011 knockoff. Especially not Boston Dynamics.

When did he say that?

It's in quotes?

Not repeating Tesla's claims is editorialising, which is fine if you're reading an opinion piece, but true journalism is about objectively reporting on things. Tesla says "less than $20k" so journalists should report "less than $20k"

It isn't an opinion that everything from Tesla has been late and priced higher than promised.

> Tesla CEO Elon Musk said that the new robot should be able to walk within the next few weeks

Further down...

> Tesla revealed that it had the first prototype in February of 2022, which led to this new version that is now supposedly about to walk in the next few days.

I can see this yet another cybertruck/hyperloop/solarcity Muskery... guy is the saint patron of smokeware at this point.

Yup. To cherry-pick one example from the press coverage of this event.

  'Musk has said he expects Tesla will achieve full self-driving this year and mass-produce a robotaxi with no steering wheel or pedal by 2024.

  At an “Autonomy” event in 2019, Musk promised 1m robotaxis by 2020 but has yet to deliver such a car.'

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2022/sep/30/tesla-opt...

(2015) Elon Musk Says Tesla Vehicles Will Drive Themselves in Two Years

https://fortune.com/2015/12/21/elon-musk-interview/

For Cybertruck they literally built a giant new factory first because they didn't have the existing capacity to build it, and existing factories were better tooled for the successors to their existing car designs (e.g. Model Y). That new factory (in Texas) is now finished, so... yeah, Cybertruck probably not "smokeware". Just delayed for various reasons, some of which all car manufacturers are experiencing right now.

Elon Musk never said he was going to build a Hyperloop. He said "I had this idea, here is a blue paper". Some people (not him) ran with the idea.

Solarcity was acquired by Tesla and Tesla (to this day) continues to operate in the Solar and energy storage space as Tesla Energy. You can order your own Tesla Solar Roof with a Tesla Powerwall today if you want.

Isn't this less than Boston dynamics had in 2008?

Yes, but they did it in 8 months with a completely different approach. BD spun off of MIT leg laboratory as an academic research project with different goals, methods and formalisms.

Here is Dave Jones talking about how cool it was: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YIbQ3nudCA0

If you want actual engineering inspiration and positivity, HN isn't the place anymore. You'll mostly find cynicism.

> You'll mostly find cynicism.

There is a lot of optimism here that is misplaced actually. Many people here believe we will do things soon with ai and medicine etc that won’t be possible for a very long time, but there we go. I find it refreshing to have the cynical views instead of the dreamy eyed ‘oh Elon’ stare. The guy has a reality distortion lens, but not like steve jobs; Elon seems to actually believe that the endgoal already exists in the products he is selling or building now.

It’s a take I know well from software development; we started something basic, ‘a few steps’ are needed and then we have a revolutionary product so we talk about the last part only (aka Vaporware) as if it’s real. The team actually believes it like it already happened or will happen any second, even though the development will take years still. It is very dangerous in a lot of situation, especially when it is not actually known if it’s possible at all in the current setting (like fully autonomous cars).

It’s easy to predict things with the benefit of hindsight. Not very useful though. I’m willing to make the prediction that Elon will succeed in the consumer robotics space where others have failed. The exact time it will take is largely irrelevant. Tesla has the vertical integration to eventually make a consumer robot.

> Tesla has the vertical integration to eventually make a consumer robot.

As in "management unscrupulous enough to release an overpriced, unsafe, half baked product and adoring followers gullible enough to pay for it".

In that sense, they truly ARE "leveraging their FSD expertise in a new product space".

Also, for the record, my bet is that Tesla will succeed with the first mass produced useful humanoid robot.

> HN isn't the place anymore. You'll mostly find cynicism

That is such a cynical take I am not sure where to start.

Yeah you’re right, there is some of it but when it comes to anything that slightly disturbs the political bias; cynicism prevails.

"Yes, but they did it in 8 months with a completely different approach."

These engineers do not work in a vacuum and you can not state that all that BD and others have done since 2008 hasn't moved the overall field forward.

Wait… I didn’t say or imply that at all. I think BD is amazing.

> If you want actual engineering inspiration and positivity, HN isn't the place anymore. You'll mostly find cynicism.

You are confusing a lack of gullibility with cynicism. At this point Mush has spouted off so much bullshit that one would have to be a complete moron to take anything he says at face value. Given prior Musk claims it is more likely that what was on display was more remote-controlled animatronic than actual independent robot.

Where do you look for engineering inspiration and positivity on the internet?

Mostly on YouTube. Reading old magazines (byte, popular electronics). Startup podcasts. Talking to my friends, throwing ideas around. Visiting museums.

I think Elon deserves some cynicism but it seems they really are designing this thing for cost and given the timeline and resources it is reasonably impressive to be this far, and it really doesn't need to do too much to be useful. With aging demographics I think there is absolutely will be demand provided they can land in that pricing ballpark so I'm glad someone is working on it. I think year 2 or 3 will really tell us if this is real.

With FSB they're in a tight spot, it can be pretty good is some scenarios but it's not clear it'll get to where it needs to be for L5 anytime soon. I think if they cut the price by maybe 1/3 to half and managed to smooth out the ride it'd be an excellent option for an already pretty good car and maybe in ten years we'd be closer to real car-without-steering-wheel FSD. But yeah it's hard to walk back all the hype on that.

I'm glad they're working on robotics but as someone that worked on a starup that set a price tag really early with mass production and RaaS (Robot as a Service concept), in mind, I'm really, really worried.

Because the price tag we worked on was also around 20k$, and that price tag essentially killed the project from the design level. (durability and sensor quality / automation capacity tradeoff just was fiction)

I hope Musk are more understanding when the engineers finally come and tell them those projections are over optimistic, and can bite the bitter pill, for the project. Ours wasn't, and the entire mechanical team quit, and so did the automation team.

Good grief, Elon can be incredibly dishonest. Although building an agile robot is impressive, training is the hard problem at this point, and I have little faith in his ability to execute safely based on Tesla’s “FSD” tech.

Not a fan of Tesla, but it must have taken a lot of brilliant engineers to go from a dancing man in spandex to a walking robot in a year!

What is the argument for making (or buying) a humanoid robot, as opposed to another design?

Can't have sex with it.

Depends on your definition of sex