Tesla CEO Elon Musk personally explained at the financial report meeting on the 21st that the next flagship product “Optimus humanoid robot” will face numerous challenges before mass production. The bottleneck lies not only in artificial intelligence technology but also in overcoming complex hardware design, developing precision components, and reconstructing the supply chain.
Musk pointed out that creating a robot as agile, safe, and stable as a human is one of Tesla’s most daunting engineering feats to date. The biggest challenge currently faced by Optimus is the lack of an established supply chain, which is still in the early stages of development, especially for the most critical hand components.
Despite suppliers like Samsung, TSMC, and Panasonic joining the Optimus supply chain, Tesla still needs to produce most components internally. In addition, Musk also needs to ensure an adequate supply of AI chips and overcome technical challenges related to memory, chip design, and packaging.
Musk said, “I want to emphasize that the challenges of scaling production are extremely daunting. This will be Tesla’s most challenging product for large-scale manufacturing ever because every component on the robot is brand new. We must build a complete supply chain from scratch or establish production capabilities internally.”
The latest version of Tesla’s humanoid robot, “Optimus V3,” stands at approximately 173 centimeters (about 5 feet 8 inches) tall and weighs around 57 kilograms (about 125 pounds). It is equipped with the latest AI5 chip, with memory transfer performance improved approximately 5 times compared to the previous generation, and the voice function is provided by SpaceXAI’s Grok.
During a telephone conference, Musk praised the precision structure and incredible flexibility of the human hand.
He said, “The more you delve into the human hand, the more you will discover its remarkable aspects. The abilities of the hand go beyond just grabbing with the thumb, but also involve many subtle and complex motion controls that are astonishing. The more closely you observe, the more incredible it becomes.”
He mentioned that the Optimus humanoid robot will possess such capabilities, not only achieving dexterity similar to humans in the future but even surpassing humans to achieve “superhuman-level” operational flexibility.
In order to mass produce Optimus, Musk reconfigured the production line at the Fremont factory in California this spring, halting production of Tesla’s flagship vehicles, Model S and Model X, to make space for robot manufacturing. Tesla is expected to begin production of Optimus by the end of this summer, with approximately 1,000 third-generation (Gen 3) robots already working on the Tesla production line.
Tesla plans to invest $25 billion this year in developing Optimus, three times more than in the past. Wall Street also sees potential in Optimus robots and Robotaxis bringing new business opportunities.
This article referenced reports from Yahoo! Finance and “Business Insider”.