BURBANK, CA — Tesla boss Elon Musk unveiled his new product, ‘Self-Driving Legs,’ at his ‘We, Robot’ event today.
Whilst many were expecting the announcement of Musk’s long-awaited Cybercab, instead the billionaire took to the stage with long, leggy steps to discuss Tesla’s new division, ‘LegsX’, and their first product, ‘The CyberLeg’.
As Musk spoke it became clear to the audience that these were neither futuristic prosthetic legs, nor shiny cybernetic legs but simply regular legs.
“They really do drive themselves,” Musk chirpily explained, “Look, I just lean forward a little, and off they go. I don’t even know where they’ll take me next, that’s the beauty of it.” Musk then proceeded to strut about the stage for the next 40 minutes.
Once Elon had finished mincing about, he invited CyberLegs lead designer Franz von Holzhausen to the stage to throw heavy steel balls at his legs. The demonstration was supposed to show off the legs’ safety features but instead left Musk crippled on the ground and screaming in pain.
After Musk was wheeled off stage the event quickly transitioned to a slideshow noting the legs’ various features: rechargeable battery (stomach), reduced carbon footprint (regular footprint instead), adjustable height (shoes) and best of all… “Feet!”
The announcement follows significant delays to Musk’s Cybercab project with some pundits commenting that the leg revelation (‘revelegtion’, if you will) was merely a stalling technique (‘treading water’, if you will) to delay a project that fundamentally would not work (‘it did not have legs’, if you will).
Supposedly CyberLegs is just the beginning for Musk with CyberArms, CyberEars and even a CyberPancreas all rumoured to be in the works. Of course, like the legs, these would just be the regular body parts you would already own but licensed out from Elon’s company for a proportional fee.
It’s clear that Musk hopes to make strides in the growing leg market with Google-parent Alphabet already walking out their self-driving legs ‘Google Hobble’ for a trial run last spring.
Whether Tesla can guarantee its legacy by taking the right steps to keep pace with Google or whether it will be left running on the spot depends on whether Musk can put in the leg work and step up production. This ‘legs race’ is a sprint, not a marathon and fancy footwork alone won’t guarantee putting the best foot forward.
Legs.