Tesla has evidently given an exclusive look at its Optimus robot and its new Cybercab to none other than Kim Kardashian.
The reality TV star has long owned Tesla vehicles, but she has been more public about her ownership of Tesla vehicles since the Cybertruck.
We previously reported that she possibly had the first painted Cybertruck.
Now, Tesla has brought her a couple of Optimus humanoid robots and a Cybercab for an exclusive demo that she shared on her Instagram stories:
The Optimus robot did some of the same tricks that it did at Tesla’s ‘We, Robot’ event, though we know that those robots were remotely operated at the time.
There doesn’t seem to be anything new on that front – although Tesla did bring her a gold Optimus.
Kardashian seemed impressed with the Cybercab as well and even gave congrats to Tesla’s chief designer Franz von Holzhausen. She praised the “rims”, which include painting the side of the tires gold.
It’s unclear if Tesla paid Kardashian for her Instagram stories sent to her hundreds of millions of followers.
Tesla CEO Elon Musk has long claimed that the automaker doesn’t do any favoritism with celebrities or pay for their endorsements, but we have seen signs that it is changing.
Especially with the Cybertruck, many celebrities appeared to have had priority deliveries and more recently, Tesla hired its first celebrity ambassador.
Electrek’s Take
I think this is Tesla now. Look, if they didn’t pay for it, good for them. It’s free publicity. Anyone would take it, but giving an exclusive look at Optimus and Cybercab to literally only Tesla’s own shareholders (at the We, Robot event) and now Kim Kardashian says a lot about the company right now.
Tesla is not letting tech reviewers and journalists test out those products because they would get panned. They are far from ready, but as usual, Tesla still wants the hype from them.
That’s why you go to Kardashian, who generally posts about clothing, jewelry, and makeup. You can’t expect her to analyze robustness of Tesla’s humanoid robots or the potential of the Cybercab to actually achieve better than human driving capabilities.