Meet Your New Colleague: The Tesla Bot

If cheap labour is available anywhere, what advantages are left for countries that once sold it as their main export? That’s the uneasy question now floating in the minds of leaders across labour-rich economies, as bipedal robots prepare to clock in. Not just in factory shifts, but potentially your kitchen too.

Enter the Tesla Bot.

Announced in 2021 with typical Elon Musk flair, the Tesla Bot or “TB” if we’re on nickname terms is a 5'8", 125-pound humanoid robot with fine-motor hands and a top speed that won’t outrun your nan (5mph, for the record). Musk, of course, pitched it with his usual confidence another product we didn’t ask for, but might soon wonder how we lived without.

You might scoff: “It’s a billionaire’s toy.” But Tesla has a knack for turning moonshots into mainstays. Just as your parked Model 3 might moonlight as a robotaxi someday, the TB might head off to earn its keep while you binge a documentary about the collapse of civilisation it helped hasten.

Right now, Tesla sees use cases in high-risk, high-fatigue manufacturing roles, those jobs humans endure for danger pay and bad backs. But what if danger pay and breaks became relics of a biological past? The economics aren’t hard to work out. Nor are the moral questions, but those tend to arrive late, sipping cold coffee and asking what all the fuss is about.

And yes, Musk says you'll be able to buy one for personal use too. Fancy a lifeless roommate who never eats your crisps or forgets rent day? Joke’s on you, it may soon be checking in on your grandparents while you’re away, or dog-sitting with eerie precision. Today’s gimmick is tomorrow’s “can’t live without.”

The first working prototype was shown in 2022. It shuffled, gestured, proved it existed. As with all things Musk, version one was proof of concept, not product. The timeline for widespread rollout is vague but plausible. And while integrating AI into a walking robot safely is no small feat, would you bet against them pulling it off?

But here’s the real game-changer: labour geography. If robots can do the job for the price of electricity and a one-time purchase, why would a company keep chasing human capital across continents? For countries like India, Vietnam, and China, this isn’t just a disruption, it’s a tectonic shift. Their economic model, built on vast workforces and razor-thin margins, suddenly faces redundancy.

In the age of reshoring and near-shoring, the Tesla Bot may become the silent foot soldier of a new industrial revolution, one without smoke, unions, or lunch breaks. A factory that never sleeps and never complains is a capitalist’s fever dream.

Of course, that sounds dystopian. But maybe, just maybe, freeing humanity from menial toil will open the door to something better, more time, more thought, less grind. Or maybe not. Maybe we’ll talk about that in the next article.

Either way, the Tesla Bot is coming. Whether as a friend, a threat, or just a very patient housemate remains to be seen.