Tesla Chief Executive Elon Musk blamed overreliance on factory robots for sending the electric carmaker to "production hell" four years ago, saying humans were better at certain jobs.

How times have changed.

Musk's Texas company now is floating ambitious plans to deploy thousands of humanoid robots, known as Tesla Bot or Optimus, within its factories, expanding eventually to millions around the world, according to job postings. Buzz is building within the company as Tesla is having more internal meetings on robots, a person familiar with the matter said.