On Wednesday, Tesla Inc. (NASDAQ:TSLA) CEO Elon Musk spoke about his primary concern with the company's ambitious Optimus humanoid robot program is ensuring he retains strong influence over the future "robot army," not just the technical challenges of building it.
Tesla's Humanoid Robot Faces ‘Incredibly Difficult' Challenges
During Tesla's third-quarter earnings call, Musk explained that while Optimus robots can already walk around the company's Palo Alto offices, the real challenge lies in creating a robot that is truly functional in the real world.
"Bringing Optimus to market is an incredibly difficult task … It's not like some walk in the park," he said.
Musk highlighted the complexity of building a human-like hand and forearm, which he described as harder to engineer than the rest of the robot.
"The human hand is an incredible thing," Musk said, noting that fingers have different lengths, strengths and degrees of freedom for a reason. Making the hand and forearm is an incredibly difficult engineering challenge. It's more difficult than the entire rest of the robot, he stated.
Scaling Production Without A Supply Chain
Musk also addressed the massive manufacturing challenge of producing millions of Optimus robots.
Unlike cars or computers, there is no existing supply chain for humanoid robots, requiring Tesla to produce many components in-house.
"Tesla actually has to be very vertically integrated and manufacture very deep into the supply chain, manufacture the parts internally because there just is no supply chain," he stated.
Musk's Concern Is Because Of Influence, Not Compensation
The CEO stressed that his main concern isn't personal profit but control over the future robot army. Musk said he wants to ensure strong influence over how the robots are used, even if he doesn't hold current control.
Musk said, "My fundamental concern with regard to how much voting control I have at Tesla is if I go ahead and build this enormous robot army, can I just be ousted at some point in the future?"
"That’s what it comes down to in a nutshell. I don’t feel comfortable wielding that robot army if I don’t have at least a strong influence," he concluded.
In September, members of Tesla’s board of directors introduced a new compensation proposal for Musk that could reach up to $1 trillion. The proposal has received opposition from proxy advisory firms like International Shareholder Services and Glass Lewis.
Tesla Breaks Four-Quarter Streak Of Misses With Q3 Revenue Beat
Tesla reported third-quarter revenue of $28.10 billion, reflecting a 12% year-over-year increase and surpassing the Street consensus estimate of $26.24 billion.
The company's performance marked its first revenue beat after four consecutive quarters of missing analyst expectations.
Tesla said it plans to keep rolling out products that resonate with customers, including the Model YL, Model Y Performance and the new budget-friendly Model 3 and Model Y Standard editions.
Price Action: Tesla shares slipped 0.82% during Wednesday's regular trading session and declined an additional 3.80% in after-hours trading, according to Benzinga Pro.
Benzinga's Edge Stock Rankings indicate that TSLA exhibits robust price trend across short, medium and long-term periods. More detailed performance insights are available here.
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Disclaimer: This content was partially produced with the help of AI tools and was reviewed and published by Benzinga editors.
