X Freeze@XFreeze
Elon Musk explains the raw truth on China’s manufacturing edge and why Optimus is America’s real shot at staying competitive
“China is a manufacturing powerhouse next level. If you take refining of ore, I’d say roughly China does twice as much ore refining on average as the rest of the world combined
Like, we actually do rare earth ore mining in the U.S., send the rock… we put it on a train, and then put it on a boat to China, that goes on another train, and goes to the rare earth refiners in China who then refine it, put it into a magnet, put it into a motor subassembly, and then send it back to America
So, we’re really missing a lot of ore refining in America. We kind of need Optimus, frankly, to build ore refineries. We definitely can’t win with just humans because China has four times our population… the average work ethic in China is higher than in the U.S.
So we can’t win on the human front, but we might have a shot at the robot front”