Tesla’s first Optimus robot displays have arrived in stores in North America. You can check the Tesla Bot in New York City right now.
Earlier this week, we revealed that Tesla was planning to use Optimus robot displays in stores in North America in an attempt to help retail performance.
The idea is that Tesla has found its humanoid robot has been attracting a lot of attention at expos and conferences.
For example, look at this scene at Tesla’s booth at the recent AI expo in China:
Tesla wants to try to use the people’s curiosity about the robot and divert some of it to its vehicles in stores.
According to sources familiar with the matter, the automaker’s retail stores in China are performing better than in North America. Tom Zhu, Tesla’s head of automotive, is on a mission to bring the market on par with China, which he used to lead, and Tesla Bot is one of the initiatives put in place to help customer engagement in stores.
We previously reported that the unveiling of the Cybertruck had a similar positive effect on the demand for its other products.
Now we have learned that Tesla Bot has already started to arrive at Tesla stores in North America. For example, the Tesla store in Manhattan, New York has just received an Optimus display unit:
To be clear, it is not a working prototype of the Tesla Bot. It’s just a display unit that represents what Tesla is aiming for the product to look like in the future.
Tesla has recently released images of a bunch of working prototypes in its labs, but it’s not clear when the company will offer the product commercially.
The automaker is expected to first use the robot as part of its own manufacturing operations. The company previously said that it plans to have “thousands of Humanoid Robots within its factories.”
In the meantime, Tesla plans to use robot display units to help with retail customer engagement. Do you think it is going to work? Let us know in the comment section below.
FTC: We use income earning auto affiliate links. More.