Tesla Reportedly Faces Production Challenges With Optimus’ Hands

An Investing.com article published Sept. 25, 2026, identified problems with the hands as a production challenge for Tesla’s humanoid robot, Optimus. The report did not focus on the company’s mass-production plan itself, but said the hands may be a bottleneck in Optimus’ production process.

Even if mass production of Optimus advances, lingering problems with the hands could create a gap between production targets for complete robots and the number that can actually be put to work. As Tesla is reportedly expanding production, attention is on whether manufacturing difficulties in individual components could become a limiting factor.

What is new in this report is that the debate over Optimus mass production has shifted from the number of units to the manufacturing challenges of a specific component: the hands. While targets for expansion to hundreds of units per week and more than 1,000 units per week by year-end have been reported, if the bottleneck is the hands rather than overall assembly, the feasibility of mass production may depend more on a stable supply of end-effectors, actuators and precision components than on the total assembly capacity for the robot. This follows the production ramp-up outlined in Tesla Raises Optimus Production Capacity 10-Fold, Targets 1,000 Units Per Week by Year-End and Tesla Optimus Weekly Production Reportedly Exceeds Several Hundred Units. However, those reports focused on expanding production scale, while this one puts component-level constraints in the foreground. There are two implications for the industry. First, in humanoid robot mass production, yields for highly articulated components such as hands and fingers may matter more than targets for the number of complete robots. Second, as the reported production rate approaches 1,000 units per week, low-volume production for prototyping and evaluation remains a separate challenge from stable mass production for actual factory use. The focus going forward is therefore whether the hand design will be changed, where supply constraints lie, and whether the shift from hundreds of units per week to more than 1,000 per week will actually continue. The original article is a secondary report, and specific production processes and the timing of improvements have not been confirmed.

Although this is based on secondary reporting, if the hands become a constraint on humanoid robot mass production, the supply capacity of Japanese makers of precision reducers, actuators, sensors and micro-machined components could become an issue. When yields at the component level, rather than the number of complete robots, are in question, the mass-production capabilities developed in automotive and industrial equipment could become relatively important.