If you’re still gullible enough to take Elon Musk at his word, pivoting to AI and robotics will turn Tesla into a $5 trillion company, and he’ll also eventually sell 20 billion humanoid robots. Before you know it, the world will be overrun with hardworking Tesla robots. At least in theory. The latest photos show Tesla’s robot once again canoodling with billionaire Kim Kardashian like a spoiled dilettante. Meanwhile, Mercedes-Benz already has honest, hard-working, salt-of-the-earth humanoid robots working in its Berlin-Marienfelde Digital Factory Campus. Your move, Tesla.
Instead of designing and building its own robots, Mercedes turned to Apptronik, a U.S. company that is, as you’ve probably figured out based on context clues, already building and selling humanoid robots for use in commercial applications — sorry, horny incels. In a release, Mercedes calls Apptronik’s first model, the Apollo, “one of world’s most advanced commercial humanoid robots” and was apparently impressed enough to give the company “a low double-digit-million-euro investment” on top of buying its robots. That’s somehow both a huge amount of money and also probably very little compared to what it actually cost to bring the Apollo to market.
Work 7 to 3, 3 to 11, 11 to 7
Like essentially every other automaker that’s currently in business, robots aren’t a new thing for Mercedes. It’s been using robotics since the 1970s to do repetitive tasks that would otherwise take a significant toll on the human body. But the Apollo robots won’t be replacing factory workers, at least not yet. Instead, their main job is currently to “transport components or modules to the production line for Mercedes-Benz’s highly skilled production staff to assemble and conduct initial quality checks on components.” Still, it’s a job, unlike canoodling with billionaire influencers in pro-fascist photoshoots.
Expect the robots to also pick up more advanced skills and take on even more complicated jobs in the future, since Mercedes says it’s also “using teleoperation processes and augmented reality” to have human workers train the software to perform some of the same tasks currently being performed by people. There’s certainly an element of being forced to dig your own grave when you’re having humans train their unpaid, robotic replacements, but again, at least the Apollo robots are actually doing something potentially useful, without needing to be actively remote-controlled by a human and still struggling at basic tasks.
In that regard, Mercedes and Apptronik are absolutely winning right now. If Tesla ever wants its humanoid competitors to take over global manufacturing, it’s going to have to teach its Optimus robot some work ethic, because right now, it sure looks a lot more like a nepo-baby failson that can’t be bothered to do the work the Apollo robots are already doing.
