Milan Kovac, Head Of Tesla Optimus Program, Departs

On Friday, June 6, 2025, Milan Kovac, the head of engineering for the Optimus humanoid team at Tesla, announced he was leaving to spend more time with his family. That’s the news. Let the speculation begin!

Many observers initially suspected a rupture between Kovac and Musk caused by Elon’s increasingly intense political machinations. But he announced his departure on Musk’s personal anti-social media channel in a post that said the decision to leave Tesla was “the most difficult decision” of his life. He went on to say, “My support for @elonmusk and the team is ironclad. I’ve got entire faith in them pushing Optimus to the next level, together with the broader Tesla AI / engineering & production teams. My departure now will not change a thing.”

Musk responded in kind with a post of his own in which he said, “Milan, thank you for your outstanding contribution to Tesla over the past decade. It was an honor working with you. Enjoy the time with family.” There is no indication that Kovac’s departure was a hasty one, and indeed the company said Ashok Elluswamy, the head of the Tesla Autopilot team, will take over responsibility for Optimus, an unnamed person told Bloomberg.

Tesla Bets On Optimus

Musk, who has never been accused of hiding his light under a bushel, proclaims that Optimus could be “the biggest product ever of any kind.” That’s right, folks. For the low, low price of only $30,000 or so, you could have a personal assistant that can fold your shirts, walk your dog, and clean up the breakfast dishes. Some readers may remember when self-driving cars were the biggest thing since sliced bread, or when the second generation Tesla Roadster was going to bend the laws of physics by cornering at 2Ge using onboard booster rockets.

Then there was the solar roof that was going to change the course of history, the electric Semi that would out-pull any truck ever made, and the self-driving Model S that would leave Los Angeles and travel to NYC without assistance from any human hand. Musk now says Optimus — named after a character in a cartoon movie — is the “most important product development” Tesla has. “The only things that matter in the long term are autonomy and Optimus,” Musk told CNBC last month.

In fact, he is betting the entire company on Optimus and autonomy and investors are lapping it up. Musk may be the greatest pitchman since Ron Popeil and PT Barnum, who famously observed “There’s a sucker born every minute.”

A year ago, Musk posted a video of an Optimus robot folding a shirt. The internet went crazy. Even our own Zachary Shahan was impressed, until Musk clarified after the fact, “Important note: Optimus cannot yet do this autonomously, but certainly will be able to do this fully autonomously and in an arbitrary environment (won’t require a fixed table with box that has only one shirt).” As they say in the legal business, “If the facts are not on your side, baffle ’em with bullshit.”

All Is Not Quite As It Seems

That’s exactly what some people think Elon and Tesla are doing with Optimus. After the miracle of the folding shirt, Zachary reposted a comment from a reader that said, “And Elon clarified that Optimus is not autonomous in this video. So it is basically another staged video, just like the 2016 FSD video. Elon is doing the same thing with Optimus that he did with FSD — put out staged videos to hype something that likely won’t be real for many years to come.” I was thinking precisely the same thing myself. Some of you may be as well.

Zach wrote, “The person, self-described as ‘average guy who loves autonomous vehicles,’ sees FSD as being massively overhyped via staged videos for years, and sees Tesla doing the same with Optimus. At least it was clarified (somewhat), but the original tweet made it seem like the robot was folding clothes autonomously, but even the followup tweet indicates that the robot will be able to do this autonomously, someday.”

Bloomberg reports that Tesla “got lots of attention last October when it used Optimus prototypes to tend bar and interact with guests at a flashy event in the Los Angeles area to generate investor enthusiasm for upcoming products.” It was only later the company revealed that humans were used to remotely control some capabilities of the robots. More bait and switch from the mind of Musk.

Optimus And Autonomy

What is interesting is that tomorrow, June 10, Tesla is supposed to begin robotaxi service in Austin, Texas. The public will see a small fleet of Tesla Model Ys on the streets of the city and think, “Hey, look. A driverless car! How cool is that?” But in fact, they won’t be driverless cars. A bunch of highly trained flunkies will see everything the cars’ cameras see on screens in a control room somewhere and will be able to control the cars remotely.

The truth is that Waymo Robotaxis actually drive themselves. There are human monitors, but they cannot control the cars directly. All they can do is make suggestions. Waymo has robotaxis, some of them in Austin. Tesla has fake robotaxis. It will be interesting to see how the public rates the Tesla service compared to Waymo’s, but no matter how you slice it, Waymo is way ahead of  Tesla when it comes to self-driving cars.

Now that the head of the autonomous driving team is taking over the Optimus program, we are left to wonder whether autonomy will be allowed to drift without a rudder for a while, just the way the Supercharger program did after Musk fired its leader.

The Verge reports that in March, Musk claimed the company could make “at least one legion of robots this year and then probably 10 legions next year,” which would mean around 5,000 robots by the end of this year, and 50,000 in 2026. But there is a problem. In order to achieve that goal, Tesla “will have to overcome China’s recent restrictions on exports of rare earth minerals and magnets, which are essential for the robots’ construction,” The Verge says.

Gee, Mister Wizard!

What would be delightful would be if the Incredible Mister Musk actually brought some of his Buck Rogers dreams to fruition and got them into the marketplace instead of spinning truckloads of hype. In the meantime, he is saying very little about his core business — manufacturing and selling electric cars. The news today is that electric car sales in Germany in May were up strongly, while sales of Tesla automobiles were down sharply for the fifth straight month. That’s where investors should be focused, not on more pie in the sky blandishments from one of the greatest hucksters of all time.

BTW, in case you were wondering, this story was not written by an Optimus robot, although Zachary and Scott may be wondering in the back of their minds why CleanTechnica needs all these highly paid writers. In the future, all our stories may be written by robots and read by robots. What a wonderful world that will be. What a glorious time to be free.