Tesla Optimus Hits Hundreds Weekly, Can't Generalize — SkimNews
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- Tesla now builds several hundred Optimus humanoid robots per week at Fremont, roughly 10x its Q2 output, with managers targeting more than 1,000/week by year-end and an eventual ~20,000/week.
- Optimus units still can't handle generalized tasks; those deployed inside Tesla's factories are confined to tightly controlled, supervised areas and programmed for specific jobs rather than running as general-purpose machines.
- Tesla ended Model S and Model X production in early May and converted the Fremont line to Optimus, pulling workers and engineers from those programs onto the robot effort.
- The Optimus hand contains over 100 screws and small components still assembled by hand, with fixture misalignment on the line and touch sensor reliability issues; Tesla plans a replaceable "sensing glove" for next year.
- Optimus AI takes several days to learn even basic tasks and behaves unpredictably in situations it hasn't been trained on, despite Tesla holding 500,000+ hours of training data and aiming to double that by year-end.
- Musk said in January 2025 Tesla would build ~10,000 Optimus in 2025 with "several thousand" doing useful work by year-end; a year later he admitted zero are doing useful work, and a V3 reveal promised by mid-2026 hasn't happened by late September.
- XPeng started running an automated IRON humanoid production line in Guangzhou this month, targeting commercial sales in 2027.
Why it matters: Tesla killed the Model S and Model X to convert Fremont capacity into an Optimus line whose AI can't yet do what the product needs it to do—Musk's own January 2025 timeline said thousands would be working by year-end, but he later admitted zero are. If the V3 reveal keeps slipping and a competitor like XPeng ships commercial humanoids first, Tesla's lead narrative for the program erodes just as investors are being asked to fund the hardware bet.
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