Tesla’s Optimus Strikes Back: New Robot Updates & Controversies!
Starting with Tesla’s latest robot update, just one week after the Wii Robot event, Tesla is showing off even more of their progress with the Optimus humanoid. While the Tesla bot may have largely stolen the show from the Cyber Cab reveal event, it also stirred up a decent amount of controversy, namely around the teleoperation of the robots. Tesla made a questionable decision to have their robots out in the crowd throughout the party, interacting with guests. This apparent robot-human interaction was pretty obviously controlled by Tesla staff behind the scenes, who were just talking through the robots. This inevitably leads us to question everything: just how much of what we saw that night was a real autonomous robot, and how much was controlled by someone wearing a VR headset?
I think that’s what Tesla is trying to address with this new video released by the official Optimus X account, which they simply titled “Navigating by Myself.” In this promo video, they specify that Optimus can navigate through unseen space autonomously, meaning that it doesn’t need a pre-existing map to walk through a space. It avoids obstacles using neural nets that are running on the bot’s own internal computer, which is also known as inference compute. Then we get this sort of bot-eye view, which shows us that currently, Optimus seems to be navigating from just one camera, using AI to map a 3D space onto the two-dimensional image.
Then they show us something that is pretty mind-blowing: the idea that multiple bots in one location can all talk to each other to create a real-time 3D map of an environment, creating what Tesla calls a shared understanding of their surroundings. So, in addition to each bot having its own ability to see and perceive a location, they can simultaneously know everything that any other local bot is perceiving. This gets me wondering if Tesla autonomous vehicles can do the same thing. Could every Tesla in your city be constantly sharing real-time traffic and road updates with every other Tesla, essentially giving your self-driving AI the ability to see what’s coming next?
In addition to the front navigation camera, Optimus also has a rear-facing camera that it can use to maneuver itself backwards into place on a charging dock. Here is one very key point that Tesla is trying to make: they essentially recreate the scenario from the Wii event where the Tesla bot is handing people snacks and drinks. It’s entirely possible that this action was teleoperated during the event, but here in the video, Tesla claims that the bot is doing all of these actions based on machine learning from a single neural net, and this again is running in real time on the bot’s inference computer. Even though the video itself isn’t playing back in real time, it’s obviously sped up, and that’s identified in the top right corner.
For some additional context, Tesla’s Vice President of Optimus, Milan Kovak, went on X and explained the video in more detail. He basically said that because GPS doesn’t work inside, the only way for a humanoid to navigate effectively is through AI computer vision, which is still the same technology that Tesla self-driving is based on. One of the biggest new differences is non-flat terrain and stairs. Hopefully, your car never encounters stairs, but a humanoid robot definitely will. Then there’s the human interaction. Kovak says that Optimus was trained to hand over snacks and drinks based on both gestures and voice requests. So maybe the robotic servers at the Tesla Cyber Cab event were actually running AI for their movement, just not their voice. Still questionable.
As we recently learned from the Robotaxi event, Tesla claims that the Cyber Cab will not have a charging port on the vehicle at all and instead will only charge wirelessly. The live stream didn’t show us the full video of the prototype charging, but Tesla has since released it on X. You can see a Cyber Cab backing up to the charging mat, reaching 25 kW charging power at 35% charge to full, and then taking off again. We then saw Marques Brownlee, or MKBHD, comment, “Nope, wireless charging has a massive heat waste. A really noble goal for something like this would be maybe 75% efficiency.” But Tesla was quick to come back and reply, “Efficiency is well above 90%.”
Now, we have to assume that Tesla didn’t just use this as an opportunity to burn one of the most popular YouTubers in the world just for clout because Tesla has the receipts to back up their claim. But as is common for Tesla, they didn’t actually produce those receipts themselves, so of course, we had to find these all by ourselves. Luckily, that’s what we do around here. So here it goes: in the summer of 2023, Tesla made one of its rare acquisitions as it bought out the German wireless charging startup Wuon. Wuon had signed a global license agreement with wireless EV charging player WiTricity, and they even launched a pilot program in the US in late 2021. Tused then sold the W Furion company off again in October of the same year, but Tesla kept the Wuon engineers, and we can imagine these guys were aqua-hired to work on this wireless charging project for Tesla. By the looks of it, they delivered. On its website, Wuon still says it has reached 93% efficiency on its wireless charging technology, and we believe thanks to the team and intellectual property Tesla acquired, they replicated this for the Cyber Cab.
By the way, while reaching 25 kW with wireless charging would have been amazing some years ago, it is not at all the most you can do these days. Our European correspondent, Yan, has been in a Jaguar I-Pace wirelessly charging at 50 kW, and that was four years ago in Norway. As recently as this summer, the Oak Ridge National Laboratory researchers set a new world record by wirelessly charging a Porsche Taycan at 270 kW, giving the car a 50% charge in just minutes at over 95% efficiency. What’s even more interesting is that the wireless industry players say it can be the same or even more efficient than your regular DC charging. It’s kind of magnificent witnessing all those breadcrumbs we’ve reported on coming together here.
Now, since we’ve also covered the breadcrumbs that Tesla has left through its patents, which apply across its vehicle models, not just the Cyber Cab, and we know that Cybertruck has those inductive charger connectors on the battery pack already per its service manual, we can expect Tesla to make this solution more widely accessible, not only in the Cyber Cab. Tesla has come quite far from that snake charger prototype it showed nine years ago.
Tesla’s Latest Innovations: Model Y Juniper
We have reports out of China that the Model Y Juniper production has begun. That’s nothing official yet, so these are somewhat rumors here, but they claim the Tesla Model Y refresh started pilot production on October 22nd at Gigafactory Shanghai with a reduced 12 units per day rate, and full-scale production is said to start in late November. For those reports, all electronic devices have been banned from the plant to avoid leaks. This would match our expectations of the Model Y basically becoming available in some non-US regions perhaps before the end of the year or on the first of January. With the refresh Model 3 called the Version Highland, Tesla started sales in China in September 2023, and it became available in the US on January 10, 2024. So this timing would also still make Elon’s “no Model Y refreshes coming out this year” stand true, or if they start before 2025 in China, well, partly true.
Until then, Tesla does not want to show much of the new vehicle. We know this from a private message that was sent between Elon and one unnamed Tesla content creator: “There is no new Model Y this year. Please stop hinting that there is, as it damages our sales of the current version.” While a lot of folks are anticipating the refresh Model Y, we do have to consider that it’s likely to also come at somewhat of a premium price in the beginning, much like with the Model 3 Highland, due to the improved, and Tesla needing to sell the backlog of old Model Ys. Since the Model 3 refresh was easier to manage for Europe as it also came from China, we are now watching for some line retooling in the Giga Berlin plant where all the Model Ys for Europe are manufactured.
Tesla has again kept the Model Y upgrade details surprisingly under wraps, excluding this incident of someone lifting one of these wraps back in August, exposing a light bar in the back. Here’s what that might look like. Previously, we expected similar headlights to the refresh Model 3, but what if—just an if—it’ll have a Cyber Cab style light bar also in the front? The best render on that again comes from Dominic, and it actually looks rather possible. Let us know if you prefer the new Model 3 or the Cyber lights in the comments below.
Tesla installed a milestone 6,000th supercharger globally. Next to it is the 600th supercharger in Japan and also the first V4 deployment in the country. Max Zigger, Director of Charging globally at Tesla, commented, “Although not as mind-blowing as catching a rocket with chopsticks, for the teams behind it, every supercharger opening feels like a little miracle of collaboration with permitting jurisdictions, site hosts, and utilities. The new routes that they open up bring happiness to traveling families, making it all so worth it.”
For context, Tesla’s supercharging network was announced by Elon Musk back on September 24, 2012. They celebrated reaching 30,000 superchargers less than just three years ago. For anyone doubting the progress after the supercharging team in North America was fully dismissed and then some of it rehired, here’s what they achieved just in the third quarter alone: Tesla opened 2,800 supercharger stalls in the third quarter, with a 23% year-over-year increase in network growth, and delivered a total of 1.4 TWh, which is 27% year-over-year growth. Another notable milestone comes as Tesla installed its first supercharger in South America, in Chile. Down Under, the Tesla team has launched its first pre-fabricated charging site in the APAC region in Bordertown, Southern Australia.
Verdict
The sources provide updates on Tesla’s recent developments, including advancements in its Optimus humanoid robot, wireless charging technology for its Cyber Cab, and the production ramp-up of the refreshed Model Y. The sources discuss Optimus’s navigation capabilities, its ability to interact with humans, and the potential for inter-robot communication. In regard to wireless charging, the sources highlight Tesla’s acquisition of Wuon, a company with expertise in this area, and discuss the efficiency and capabilities of Tesla’s wireless charging system. The sources also provide information about the production timeline for the refreshed Model Y in China, the anticipated price premium, and the design changes expected. Finally, the sources celebrate Tesla’s achievement of installing 6,000 superchargers globally and highlight the ongoing expansion of its supercharging network.