There are two serious EV manufacturers who make a profit on their vehicles: BYD and Tesla. Today, BYD can manufacture cars for less cost than Tesla can. While EV prices have been dropping, BYD is still the one that can make a profit on lower-priced EVs. The Electric Viking suggests this is about to change.
What he is suggesting is that intelligent robots will become part of the workforce for Tesla. Yes, the Tesla factories are filled with robots already but these are “one task” robots. They are programmed to do a specific task, over and over again. If Optimus, Tesla’s intelligent robot joins the workforce things change. For comparison, think about Tesla’s approach to self-driving vs. the competition.
Tesla collects data from its vehicles and uses it to program its cars. It doesn’t teach “at 5th and Main, there is a pothole on the right side of the northbound left lane”. It teaches them how to recognize anomalies and take the appropriate action. And they don’t have to teach each individual car — this new information is shared with all cars. The same thing is going to happen with intelligent factory robots. If you are a Star Trek fan, think about how The Borg operates.
Some people will find this scary. Maybe they are right but, in the mean time, the cost of labor to produce vehicles is going to go from US labor costs to China labor costs to close to zero.
