Tesla's Optimus Robot Halts Production: Technical Bottlenecks Prevent Humanoid-Like Flexible Operation

According to media reports on October 10, Fast Technology stated that Tesla has suspended the production of its humanoid robot Optimus. The main reason is that the engineering team has encountered significant technical bottlenecks in the design of the robot's hands and forearms, making it impossible to achieve human-level dexterity.

According to informed sources, the engineering team discovered as early as the summer of 2024 that it was difficult to develop a robotic hand with human-like flexibility.

Despite multiple attempts, there has been no breakthrough in technology, causing the assembly process to come to a standstill, resulting in a large backlog of robot bodies lacking hand components in the factory.

Hand design is seen as a key challenge of the Optimus project. Musk previously admitted in an interview that achieving the complex movements of a human hand is a "significant engineering challenge," but did not provide a specific timeline for resuming mass production.

In terms of production capacity, Musk initially planned to produce at least 5,000 Optimus units by 2025. This target was later reduced to 2,000 units, and now the project has come to a halt. As of July this year, the actual production of the robot was only a few hundred units, less than one-tenth of the original plan.