More than 100 screws still go into each Optimus hand by hand
Tesla built several hundred Optimus robots a week last month, against a stated goal of 20,000 a week. On the V3 machines a worker still fits more than 100 screws into each hand and forearm. The robots stay inside Tesla for now, and the company plans to lease them before any customer deployment.
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Hundreds a week, not 20,000
The Information, cited by The Verge, says Tesla built several hundred Optimus robots a week last month, against a stated goal of 20,000 a week. On the V3 robots a worker still fits more than 100 screws in each hand and forearm by hand. Electrek, also citing The Information, reports the same hand-and-forearm count of over 100 screws and small components, and says fixtures at the hand, joint and electronics stations cannot consistently line up parts that are smaller and tighter-tolerance than car parts. The result Electrek describes is more robots needing rework after they come off the line.[1], [2]
The car lines moved, the glove has not
Tesla turned its Model S and Model X lines over to Optimus earlier this year. The parts are smaller than car parts and have to line up more tightly, and the V3 hand has no sensing glove yet that would let a touch sensor be swapped without replacing the whole hand. Electrek reports that some of the hand's touch sensors have had reliability issues, and that Tesla's planned fix is a replaceable sensing glove next year so the whole hand does not have to be swapped. Electrek also reports that Tesla relies on outside suppliers, many in China, for the motors and the precision gears that drive the joints.[1], [2]
Inside the factory, not at a customer
The robots are used internally on specific tasks in limited areas, not as a general deployment. Tesla plans to lease them first and to use the training data, and they are not at a customer site. Electrek adds a separate limit on the software: three people familiar with the system told The Information that Optimus' AI cannot yet reliably handle a wide range of tasks, and that its behavior can be unpredictable in situations it has not been trained on.[1], [2]
Related columns
For more information on this topic, you can read the related columns.
