> It seems a bit strange that Tesla can build multiple electrics cars for 150k$ but the robot that consists of much less material should cost that much.
Cars are only cheap because of massive economies of scale. This robot will probably be hand assembled, making it obviously quite expensive. Not to mention the need to recoup a lot the R&D investment money over relatively few units.
But that was the whole premise of Tesla investment in this bot. They don't want to produce 2, the want to produce a lots of them. They already produce the electronics in the millions, and have supply contract for cameras and so on.
Tesla is vertically integrated into producing most of the electronics (including the engine) in the car and in the charging networks. They also design products to be manufactured efficiently.
This suggests that they should be able to mass produce actuators and put those robots together efficiently. Musk looks at mass manufacture as part of the product development. However in the end this relies on enough demand being out-there so that its worth continuing the scale up of manufacturing lines.
It will likely take a many more iteration for this to be more then a tech demo.
Cars are only cheap because of massive economies of scale. This robot will probably be hand assembled, making it obviously quite expensive. Not to mention the need to recoup a lot the R&D investment money over relatively few units.