Tesla is reportedly having trouble keeping up with Elon Musk’s bold goal of building 5,000 Optimus humanoid robots this year.
With 2025 more than halfway over, Tesla has produced only a few hundred units—well below the pace needed to hit its goal, according to The Information. Sources close to the project cite production delays, leadership changes, and technical issues as key setbacks that may delay the company’s timeline.
Tesla Faces Financial Strain Amid Declining Sales and Looming Headwinds
The news comes at a challenging time for Tesla. This week, the company reported a 12% drop in total revenue and a 16% decline in automotive sales—its steepest in over a decade. With federal EV tax credits winding down, Elon Musk cautioned during Tesla’s Q2 earnings call that the company is heading into “a few rough quarters.”
Musk’s tone on the call was unusually subdued. “We’re in this, like, weird transition period,” he said—prompting analysts to describe it as his most somber performance yet, a sharp contrast to the optimism that’s long buoyed Tesla’s stock. Shares dropped 9% the next day as investors questioned whether Musk’s long-term visions could still justify the company’s high valuation.
As car sales slide, Musk has been trying to steer focus toward Tesla’s new bets—highlighting early deployments of its robotaxi service in Austin and efforts to ramp up humanoid robot production.
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At the core of Musk’s vision for investors is Optimus, Tesla’s two-legged humanoid robot first revealed in 2022. Musk has suggested the robot could eventually handle everything from factory labor to household chores—and even help boost Tesla’s valuation to $25 trillion.
Tesla had internally aimed to produce 5,000 units in 2025, but according to The Information, output is still only in the “hundreds.”
This week, Musk told investors that production of the latest “Optimus 3” model won’t begin until early next year. “We will scale Optimus production as fast as possible and try to get to a million units a year as quickly as possible,” he said, adding, “We think we can get there in less than five years. That’s a reasonable aspiration.”
However, the tone was noticeably more restrained than in 2023, when Musk confidently predicted thousands of bots would be active in Tesla factories by year’s end. This time, there was no mention of the robots doing useful work—only that prototypes are currently “walking around the office.”
Dexterity Challenges Slow Optimus Development
One major hurdle: the hands. Sources told The Information that Tesla has had difficulty developing human-like dexterity for Optimus—an essential capability for performing a wide range of tasks.
The company has reportedly been accumulating mostly finished Optimus bodies that are missing hands and forearms, as production of those parts falls behind.
These difficulties have been made worse by leadership changes. Just last month, Milan Kovac, Tesla’s VP of engineering and head of the Optimus program, departed the company. Soon after, Tesla filed a lawsuit against a robotics startup co-founded by a former employee, accusing it of stealing trade secrets related to robotic hand development.
These challenges mark yet another entry in Tesla’s pattern of delayed goals. Musk’s earlier pledges—like putting one million robotaxis on the road by 2020 and launching mass production of autonomous taxis by 2024—have yet to materialize.
Missed Deadlines Test Tesla’s Credibility with Wall Street
Analysts caution that Wall Street’s confidence in Tesla is starting to erode as ambitious timelines repeatedly clash with slow-moving reality. The company recently confirmed that its long-promised budget EV won’t arrive in volume until late 2025—and will closely resemble the existing Model Y. Robotaxi testing is still limited to a few geofenced vehicles with safety drivers in Austin and possibly San Francisco. In contrast, competitors like Waymo and Zoox continue to expand real-world operations.
“Robotaxis are not going to do anything about a few rough quarters,” Forrester VP and analyst Paul Miller told Quartz. “There is no way they will scale fast enough to move the needle over the next few quarters.”
Whether Optimus can live up to Musk’s bold vision—or become yet another missed milestone—remains one of Tesla’s biggest unanswered questions.
Read the original article on: Qz
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