Milan Kovac, who'd been steering Tesla's ambitious Optimus humanoid robot program, has suddenly departed the company. The Friday exit—announced with all the fanfare of a test dummy falling down stairs—marks yet another high-profile departure from Elon Musk's executive ranks.
I mean, should we even be surprised anymore?
Musk has been absolutely relentless in hyping Optimus as potentially bigger than Tesla's entire car business. That's right—the awkward, shuffling robot we've seen in carefully staged demos is supposedly going to eclipse the company that revolutionized electric vehicles. And now the guy in charge of making that happen is... gone.
Tesla investors barely noticed. After covering the company for years, I've observed that executive departures at Tesla have become so routine they might as well include it as a line item in quarterly reports.
The Elon Executive Experience™
The pattern is almost comically predictable at this point. Talented executive joins Tesla. Musk makes impossible promises about their division. Executive works like hell trying to deliver. Executive mysteriously exits 18-36 months later. Rinse and repeat.
In this particular case, Tesla's doing what it does best—consolidating power around longtime Musk loyalists. Ashok Elluswamy, who already runs Tesla's Autopilot program (which, let's be honest, has its own hefty share of challenges), will now also oversee the robot division.
Because nothing says "we're taking this seriously" quite like making it someone's side hustle.
Look, I've sat through enough Tesla presentations to know the drill. The promises are grand, the timelines are fantasy, and somewhere in between, real innovation actually does happen. It's just that the human cost—the endless churn of talent—seems baked into the model.
Reality vs. Whatever Elon Said Last
Have you seen Optimus lately? The robot moves with all the natural grace of me trying to navigate my kitchen at 3 a.m. without waking the dog. Its capabilities currently include... walking slowly, waving awkwardly, and picking up objects with the confidence of someone handling nitroglycerin.
Yet if you listened to Musk, you'd think we're mere months away from these things cooking your breakfast and folding your laundry—all for "probably less than $20,000."
This gap—between what exists and what's promised—would be career-ending for most executives. At Tesla, it's just another Tuesday. (Or in this case, Friday.)
I spoke with several robotics experts after Tesla's last Optimus demo who couldn't decide whether to laugh or cry. One told me, "What they're showing is genuinely impressive for the timeframe... but it's about 5% of what Musk is claiming they'll deliver."
The Revolving Door Spins Again
Tesla's executive suite has all the stability of a Jenga tower in an earthquake. Just in recent memory, we've lost:
- Drew Baglino, the Supercharger chief
- Andrej Karpathy from the AI team
- Multiple Autopilot leaders
- Several manufacturing execs
Each departure brings the same questions. Each time, the market collectively shrugs and says, "But Elon, though!"
And that's the thing—it's worked! Despite (or weirdly, because of?) this chaos-driven approach to management, Tesla has delivered returns that make traditional automakers look like they're moving backwards.
The question now isn't whether Tesla can build cars—they've proven that. It's whether this same organizational hurricane can successfully birth an entirely new product category that's stumped robotics experts for decades.
Having tracked humanoid robotics since Boston Dynamics was just a twinkle in DARPA's eye, I can tell you this: the gap between what's technically possible and what's commercially viable remains massive. Companies with far more robotics experience than Tesla have been working on this problem for generations.
Will Kovac's departure derail the Optimus program? Probably not fundamentally. The real constraints aren't organizational—they're physics, battery technology, artificial intelligence, and economic realities.
But it does make you wonder how many more executives will pass through Tesla's revolving door before we see a robot that can actually... you know... do something useful.
In the meantime, I'm still waiting for my Cybertruck and that robotaxi network we were promised would be operational by [checks notes]... 2020.
Huh. Maybe executive departures aren't the only things running behind schedule at Tesla.
