I sat up and watched the Elon Musk Tesla Robotaxi, Tesla Bot “Optimus,” and Robovan rollout, and I have to admit, I was a little let down. I’m a huge Elon Musk fan and I’m cheering them on, but the whole thing was just too weird and badly rehearsed, as are most of his presentations. The whole thing felt like more cowbell.

For one, it looked like they were running very late, and I’m guessing something wasn’t working as it should. It then felt rushed. Next, the Robotaxi didn’t impress me at all. I liked how it looked, but FSD (Full Self Driving) isn’t yet in wide deployment without supervision, so it just felt like someone moving from the driver’s seat to the passenger seat. That didn’t wow me. Then, the robots walking out under remote control with a voice that wasn’t AI was super-cheesy. We’ve seen this stunt at CES before, and it was lame there too.

In usual fashion, Elon stuttered and stammered his way through the presentation as if he was distracted, and that broke up the flow. That, combined with the lackluster nature of his own introduction and the car driving around to drop him off, just felt off. Of course, the stock nosedived today. It was down about 8.8%. That wasn’t a surprise either.

Especially since he shared the timelines, and people don’t trust what he says about them, so they were all adding a year or two in their heads. It’s not that they aren’t doing incredibly impressive things at Tesla—they are—but this whole thing came off as more sizzle than steak and felt badly timed.

The robots are interesting, but the movements are way too slow to be of much use for anything. So what if they can do the task in the most remedial form? If they aren’t efficient enough to do the job with their available power, they won’t get any use at all. I’m an early adopter of new technologies, and I was thinking about the use case, but the vision and reality are just too far apart at the moment.

Keep in mind, I saw Honda’s Asimo do all of this and more in 2005! My girlfriend at the time was invited on stage to interact with Asimo and made he cover of magazines around the world. That was nineteen years ago. Tesla’s version was just skinnier and a little faster.

I think we were supposed to be impressed by robots walking around people, but they looked like remote control toys that could walk. All the weird robot dancing added nothing to the event.

The whole thing then abruptly ended, and I logged out of my computer and didn’t give it another thought. I never felt a sense of “wow” at any time during the presentation. The whole thing didn’t seem relatable, or near term, as all the tech workers piled out of the robobus “Robovan,” and they were all the same age—sort of that middle-layer engineer group. Again, nobody over 50 seemed to be allowed anywhere. I’m starting to take it personally.

Oh well, someday.