As Elon Musk Preps Tesla’s Optimus for Prime Time, Big Hurdles Remain

When Elon Musk takes the stage at Tesla’s annual meeting next month, one of the centerpieces of his plan to impress shareholders will be a dancing troupe of Optimus bots, the humanoid machines that he says will eventually eclipse Tesla’s electric vehicle business, which is suffering from flagging sales growth. Behind the scenes, however, the Optimus program has been embroiled in technical problems.

Targets Musk set for Tesla to make thousands of the Optimus robots this year were abandoned by the summer, according to two people with direct knowledge of the Optimus program, a reflection of the difficulty Tesla has had with the hands for the robots.