According to foreign reports, CEO Elon Musk has said that Tesla will start using humanoid robots next year.

Musk wrote on X (formerly Twitter) on Monday morning that Tesla will launch a truly useful humanoid robot next year, but in low volumes for internal use at Tesla, and hopes to achieve mass production by 2026 for use by other companies.

Like many Musk comments that have made headlines, this one was in response to a post by another user, who posted a chart showing former OpenAI researcher Daniel Kokotajlo’s predictions for advances in artificial intelligence (AI).

A4H254-8F8T In April, Musk told investors that Optimus, Tesla’s humanoid robot project, would be ready for use at the factory by the end of the year. Optimus will be worth more than all of Tesla’s other products combined.

On the same earnings call, the CEO promised to develop a sentient humanoid robot that can respond to real-world situations and perform tasks on an AD hoc basis. That’s what’s about to happen, and of all the robot manufacturers, Tesla has the best ability to achieve volume reduction through effective reasoning about the robot itself.

A few weeks ago, Musk said the company would launch a self-driving taxi on Aug. 8, something the billionaire has been promising since 2019.

Tesla’s self-driving car efforts recently hit a snag when accidents continued to occur despite a recall of more than 2 million vehicles in December, The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration has asked the company to provide more information about its self-driving system.

The Justice Department is investigating whether Tesla committed securities fraud or wire fraud by misleading investors and consumers about the self-driving features of its electric cars.

PYMNTS wrote in May that while open roads present many challenges for autonomous driving solutions, the closed-loop ecosystem of warehouses and distribution centers provides a different operating arena for innovative technologies.

A4H254-8F8T As Anna Brunelle, chief financial officer of May Mobility, said in February, “I believe that in our lifetime, not just cars, but every mobile machine on the planet will be automated. And the smart infrastructure that oversees and supports it will be automated as well.”

The market is responding to the demand and opportunity presented by autonomous vehicles, and companies such as Figure are working with BMW to deploy general purpose robots in automotive manufacturing environments.

Walmart, meanwhile, has begun quietly revamping its distribution centers, rolling out 19 autonomous electric forklifts across four of its facilities, marking a major advance in the use of artificial intelligence robots in industrial Settings.