Inside Tesla’s Secretive Optimus Robot Program

Elon Musk says humanoid robots will be the future of Tesla. The company has a long way to go.

Tesla is well behind the pace necessary to meet Musk’s publicly stated goal of producing at least 5,000 of its Optimus humanoid robots this year, according to two people with knowledge of the program. So far, the number of robots it has made is in the hundreds, one of the people said—implying that Tesla will have to dramatically increase its output of robots during the second half of the year to hit Musk’s target.

Musk has a history of falling short of the ambitious timelines he has promised for delivering new products and technical breakthroughs. But the stakes for Tesla of blowing through a key milestone for Optimus could be especially high.