TMTPOST -- Tesla Inc. CEO Elon Musk failed to impress investors on an earnings call  Wednesday as the billionaire scaled down targets of two highly-anticipated businesses.

Credit：Tesla

Musk on the call spent most of the time talking about promise of artificial intelligence (AI), the Grok AI model-powered Optimus humanoid robot and fully self-driving Robotaxi service. “We're at a critical inflection point for Tesla and our strategy going forward as we bring AI into the real-world,” Musk said in the opening marks. He touted  the third-version (V3) Optimus, which could be unveiled in the first quarter next year.

“It won’t even seem like a robot,” Musk said of the upcoming Optimus V3. “It will seem so real that you will need to poke it to believe that it’s actually a robot.” He even called the robot “an incredible surgeon.” With Optimus and self driving, “you can actually create a world where there is no poverty, where everyone has access to the finest medical care,” he said.

Musk said Tesla hopes the mass production of Optimus start by the end of 2026 as the company building a million-unit production line after it shows off a production intent prototype of the third-generation robot in the first quarter. That represented a more cautious production outlook. Tesla had been aimed at making 5,000 Optimus robots this year and 50,000 next year.  

Musk disclosed the new production roadmap as he highlighted difficulties in building the robot. He told analysts it's especially difficult to create a hand that is “as dexterous and capable as the human hand”, noting “the human hand is an incredible thing that the more you study the human hand, the more incredible you realize the human hand is and why you need five -- four fingers and the thumb, why the fingers have certain degrees of freedom.”

A report two weeks ago said Tesla had to dial back its production plans for Optimus this year due to challenges with its hand design. Targets Musk set for Tesla to make thousands of the Optimus robots this year were abandoned by the summer, The Information cited people with knowledge of the project on October 7.

It was reported Tesla workers repeated told Musk his timeline and goal of making at least 5,000 robots this year, which was first made public in March, were overambitious, and a few months later the company slashed its production goal to 2,000 units. During the summer, staffers told Musk Tesla could meet the 2,000 target, but the robots wouldn’t be very useful due to technical issues with their hands, and Tesla therefore dropped plans to build thousands of bots this year, instead, decided to further improve bands of the robot and other design changes, per the report.

Tesla in June kicked off its Robotaxi service in Austin, Texas. In its shareholder deck released on Wednesday, Tesla disclosed in the third quarter it expanded both service area and fleet count for Robotaxi service in Austin, and launched Bay Area ride-hailing service. That means the Robotaxi vehicles so far are only available in Austin and San Francisco.

Musk on the earnings call said Tesla would have its Robotaxi service operating without human drivers in Austin by the end of this year. He also said Tesla expected to  be operating Robotaxi in about eight to ten metro areas by the end of the year, depending on various regulatory approvals. 

The remarks appeared Musk scaled back his ambition revealed on last earnings call. During that conference in July, he said Tesla was aiming to make half the U.S. population have access to Robotaxi by the end of 2025.