Tesla Optimus will not be sold, it will be rented

Elon Musk announced that Tesla Optimus robots will be rented to customers rather than sold. The cost per robot is aimed to decrease from 30 thousand dollars to 20 thousand dollars.

Tesla, known for its electric vehicles in the automotive industry, is adopting an unconventional distribution model for its humanoid robot project Optimus. Details shared by the company's top executive Elon Musk showed that the robots, which are aimed to transform production sites and work areas, will not be sold directly, but will only be offered to customers by rental method. Thus, businesses that acquire the robot will never have ownership of the device.

Production Capacity and Cost Targets at the Fremont Facility

The production areas vacated by the dismantling of the Model S and Model X lines were allocated for Optimus, whose assembly started in the Fremont factory in October. The planned design capacity of the facility reaches approximately 20 thousand robots weekly and 1 million robots annually. The manufacturer, which aims to reduce the production cost from 30 thousand dollars to 20 thousand dollars per robot, does not convert this savings into an end-user price. On the other hand, although Musk claims that the robot can exceed the performance of an average human by five times, this high efficiency claim has not yet been confirmed by unbiased and independent tests.

Robotics as a Service Model and Its Effects on the Business World

Although the reason for the approach of not transferring ownership of the devices to buyers is not clarified by the company, this step confirms that the robots will remain completely under Tesla control. Renting hardware without ownership will eliminate huge initial investment costs for businesses and ensure that maintenance and update processes proceed under the manufacturer's assurance. While industrial organizations will have the opportunity to experience this technology that can support manpower as an operational service, Tesla will retain absolute control of the robot network in the field by protecting its hardware.