Optimus Bot: Tesla cancels ambitious production targets

Tesla is deviating from its goal of producing at least 5000 humanoid Optimus Bot by 2025. This was reported by the US tech magazine The Information on Tuesday. Design changes and technical problems are apparently thwarting the ambitious goal.

Tesla originally planned to produce at least 5000 Optimus robots by 2025. As recently as March, Tesla CEO Elon Musk said at an employee meeting that he wanted to build this number of humanoid robots. However, this increase from a few dozen Optimus Bot in 2024 to at least 5000 in the current year is too ambitious, so the company has currently lowered the production target to 2000, reports The Information.

Problems with the hands

However, this target now also appears to be jeopardized. The robot's hands, the most technically demanding part of the design, have caused issues and led to delays. Design changes, particularly to the hands but also to the forearms, were intended to improve the construction of the third version of the Optimus Bot. The current version is 2.5, which means that thousands of robots can no longer be produced this year. The hands are currently being reworked, and further design improvements are being made, for example, to the forearms, reports The Information. It is unclear what the current status is there.

However, the delays are not only due to the demanding design of the hands. The departure of Milan Kovac, former head of the engineering department for robots at Tesla, in June also left a gap. Since then, the hardware design has been in the hands of Konstantin Laskaris, while Ashok Elluswamy is responsible for the software.

According to The Information, Tesla employees are now privately questioning whether it even makes sense to build complex humanoid robots for use in production. The technical hurdles and the effort involved are high. For example, training the robots is time-consuming. Special videos often have to be created first for the training of skills. Tesla is currently using its employees for this. In the future, Tesla hopes to be able to use freely available videos on the internet to train its humanoid robots to perform every conceivable task.

Currently, the Optimus bots' tasks are still rather simple: at Tesla, for example, they sort batteries. They also carry out inspections in the factories.

(olb)