Tesla workers balk at training Optimus humanoid robots as replacements
Ars Technica Jeremy Hsu ● Covered by 2 sources
Tesla’s robot push is running into trouble: workers don’t want to train the machines that could replace them. That’s awkward for Musk, who’s betting Tesla’s future on Optimus.
Based on reporting by Ars Technica, Jeremy Hsu — read the original for the full story.
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Tesla’s shift from cars to humanoid robots is getting messier by the week. The company is trying to build Optimus at scale, but The Information says it’s running into two very human problems: robot hands are hard to make work, and some employees are openly unhappy about training what could become their own replacements.
That tension sits at the center of Elon Musk’s latest bet. On Tesla’s second-quarter 2026 earnings call, he called Optimus potentially “the biggest product ever,” while also admitting that an autonomous humanoid robot that can handle many different tasks is “one of the hardest things to solve.” Those two thoughts now look less like bravado and more like a warning label.
The reporting also shows how far Tesla is leaning into the effort. At its Fremont factory in California, the company stopped making the Model S sedan and Model X SUV in May 2026. According to The Information, line workers and engineers there have been moved over to Optimus work instead.
But making a robot is not the same as making a car, even for Tesla. Cars can be stubborn in their own ways; hands that need to do many different jobs in the real world are a nastier problem. And if the people building the thing are already resentful about the role they’ve been given, that does not exactly scream smooth scaling to mass production.
My take — AI-written commentary, not fact-checked reporting
This is the cleanest example yet of Tesla trying to sell the future before it can assemble the fingers. Musk has a habit of describing tomorrow as if it were already on the loading dock, and this one has all the usual ingredients: grand claims, hard engineering, and workers being asked to cheerfully help build their own obsolescence. If a company can’t get its own staff excited about the robot project, the hype machine may be doing more work than the factory.
Read more about this at: Ars Technica
