Tesla starts building its humanoid robot, but admits it is not ready

Tesla has started early production of Optimus, its humanoid robot, at its Fremont, California factory. In the same breath, CEO Elon Musk listed what is still broken. The robot's hands, its safety, reliability and durability, and the AI that would make it a useful worker all need more work. He said so on Tesla's earnings call on Wednesday.

What Tesla said

Tesla called the robots coming off the Fremont line its first "production-quality bots." It said its manufacturing process is suitable for a commercial product. Musk was blunt about the limits. "We're building robots that do not have perfected hands," he said. He also said there is "still quite a lot of work to do" on the AI before the robot is truly useful for open-ended tasks.

Tesla did not say how many robots it has built. It also did not say what tasks they can do on their own, or how often they finish a task without a human stepping in.

A slow start on purpose

Musk said production will start slow and bumpy. "There's like 10,000 things that have to go right," he said, and the process moves as fast as the slowest one. Most equipment for a line meant to make a million robots a year is already in Fremont. Reaching 20,000 robots a week will take "at least a year, maybe a little longer."

• Robot hands must last through heavy use yet stay soft enough to handle delicate items.
• Musk said the robot "can't, like, wear out after a month."
• A new AI5 chip, with about 10 times the computing power of the current one, is targeted for around April 2027.

The software gap

Tesla's cars have a huge fleet that gathers data. Optimus has no such base. Musk said Tesla needs to build roughly 10,000 to 20,000 robots to practice tasks in what he calls "Optimus Academy," then feed what they learn back into the system.

Ken Goldberg, a robotics professor at the University of California, Berkeley, told The Verge: "You can produce them, but the software is lacking." He said robots have gotten good at walking, running and jumping. Handling wires, fabric or assembly work is much harder. He does not expect those problems to be solved on Musk's timeline.

What happens next

Musk expects the pieces to come together near the end of 2027. Tesla could then begin delivering Optimus to outside companies, though he did not say which ones or what the robots would do for them. Factory work comes first. Robots for the home would come later, as the machines learn a much wider range of skills.