Why can't Tesla's Optimus robots do general tasks yet?

Tesla is building several hundred Optimus robots per week — but the harder problems, generalization and reliability, remain unsolved.

Tesla is now assembling several hundred Optimus humanoid robots per week at its Fremont factory — roughly ten times its pace in the spring — yet the robots still cannot handle general-purpose work. Reports from the line point to teething problems: fragile hands, parts that do not line up cleanly, and suppliers that cannot hold quality at this volume. Two deeper problems decide whether humanoids can ever turn a profit: generalization — picking up a new task without being retrained from scratch — and reliability, meaning thousands of hours of hands-on work without breaking down.

Neither is solved yet. That is why the factory is the bigger story than the robot right now: building humanoids at industrial scale turned out to be the easier problem.