Tesla CEO Elon Musk. Antonio Masiello via Getty Images
Elon Musk is unhappy with the way the media reported an accident involving robots at his factory.
“It is truly shameful that the media is dredging up an accident from two years ago,” Musk wrote on X.
Musk said the reports incorrectly implied that the accident was due to his humanoid Optimus robots.
This is a machine translation of an article from our US colleagues at Business Insider. It was automatically translated and checked by an editor.
Elon Musk has sharply criticized recent media reports of a robot “attack” at a Tesla factory in Austin.
“It is truly shameful that the media is digging up an injury from two years ago by a simple Kuka industrial robot arm (found in all factories) and insinuating that it is now due to Optimus,” Musk wrote in a Wednesday X-Post.
The Tesla boss responded to one X-Nutzerwhich is a report of the „Daily Mail“ on Tuesday about an incident involving a factory robot in 2021. „The Information“ had also reported on the incident in a story published last month. According to the newspaper, two witnesses reported that an engineer was performing software updates on the factory’s robots when he was grabbed by one of the machines and pushed against the surface.
The witnesses also reported that the engineer was bleeding after the robot dug its claws into his body. The engineer was finally able to free himself from the robot’s clutches when another worker pressed the emergency stop button, The Information reports.
However, Musk’s anger over the Daily Mail article appears to relate to the portrayal of the accident. The Daily Mail used a thumbnail of Tesla’s humanoid Optimus robot – not the Kuka robotic arm that was involved in the 2021 incident.
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It’s no surprise that Musk defends the Optimus robots because he has high hopes for them. When he introduced them last year, he said the economy could become “virtually infinite” if the Optimus robots were able to do manual labor.
“This means a future of abundance. A future where there is no poverty, where you can have whatever products and services you want,” Musk said at the time.
However, Musk’s Tesla factories have long been plagued by safety problems. In 2020, California regulators said Tesla had provided them with incomplete reports about injuries at factories.
And that doesn’t just apply to the USA. Recently, in April, Chinese inspectors said they wanted to penalize the company for safety deficiencies „Caixin Global“. According to the report, a Tesla factory worker in Shanghai died after being crushed by factory equipment.
In October, Tesla rejected claims from a German union and media reports that the Berlin-Brandenburg Gigafactory had not taken adequate safety precautions.
Representatives for Tesla and Kuka did not immediately respond to Business Insider’s requests for comment outside of regular business hours.
Read the original article Business Insider.
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