Tesla just lost the head of its robotics division

The humanoid Optimus robots are expected to beryllium acceptable for wide accumulation this year.

The caput of engineering for Optimus, Tesla’s humanoid robot division, near the institution connected Friday. Milan Kovac announced his departure on X, insisting that it “will not alteration a thing” astir the company’s plans, which, arsenic of March, meant gathering thousands of robots this twelvemonth alone.

Kovac insisted that helium was leaving Tesla lone to “spend much clip with household abroad,” adding that his “support for @elonmusk and the squad is ironclad,” heading disconnected speculation that his exit mightiness person been prompted by Musk’s governmental enactment oregon caller nationalist squabble with Donald Trump. In his ain tweet, Musk thanked Kovac for his “outstanding publication to Tesla implicit the past decade.”

Musk has called the humanoid Optimus robots Tesla’s “most important merchandise development,” and has repeatedly leaned connected the part to make hype arsenic EV income dilatory and the company’s banal terms tumbles. “The lone things that substance successful the agelong word are autonomy and Optimus,” Musk told CNBC successful May, referring to the company’s abstracted plans for self-driving cars, acceptable to beryllium deployed successful a “robotaxi” work successful Austin this month.

Bloomberg reports that Autopilot main Ashok Elluswamy volition instrumentality implicit work for Optimus, which is astatine a captious stage. In March Musk claimed the institution could marque “at slightest 1 legion of robots this twelvemonth and past astir apt 10 legions adjacent year,” which would mean astir 5,000 robots by the extremity of this year, and 50,000 successful 2026. To bash so, it volition person to flooded China’s caller restrictions connected exports of uncommon world minerals and magnets, which are indispensable for the robots’ construction.