Tesla Optimus wants to be an American robot, but China has to make its joints
Tesla is preparing Optimus for mass production, and a familiar solution is coming to the rescue once again: when something needs to be made quickly and in large quantities, it is worth looking to China. Tesla is currently auditing suppliers there that could begin making the humanoid robot’s joints, actuators and precision parts.
Tesla’s team began inspections in the Yangtze River Delta industrial region in September. The companies named include Tuopu Group, Zhejiang Sanhua Intelligent Controls and Ningbo Joyson Electronic. The convenient part is that Tesla does not have to invent the supply chain from scratch: most of these companies already make components for Tesla cars.
The automotive supply chain becomes the robotics supply chain
Optimus Gen 3 is expected to be Tesla’s first humanoid robot designed for large-scale production from the outset. According to Chinese sources, supplies from the country include integrated joint modules, linear and rotary actuators, and precision-engineered structures, among other items.
This goes a long way towards explaining why Tesla is looking specifically at existing automotive component manufacturers. A humanoid robot may sound exotic, but from an industrial perspective, much of it consists of familiar elements: electric motors, gearboxes, bearings, sensors, control units, thermal management and precisely manufactured metal parts.
China has a huge manufacturing base in all of these areas. Tesla is also already competing there with local humanoid robot manufacturers. Elon Musk himself has said that Tesla’s strongest competitors in this field will probably come from China.
Orders are being discussed, while Tesla remains silent
According to supply-chain sources, some of the companies being audited had already received Optimus orders before the current round of inspections, and production could begin after quality-control and manufacturing processes have been approved.
However, Tesla has not yet publicly confirmed either specific supply volumes or a full list of Optimus suppliers. Several different production forecasts are also circulating in the Chinese media. There is therefore no reason to present figures for tens of thousands of robots circulating online as a finished production plan.
The factory audit itself is a more reliable indicator. When Tesla engineers inspect a supplier’s production-line quality, cycle times and stability, this is no longer simply about ordering parts for a prototype walking on stage. The company is genuinely preparing the supply chain for series production.
The hardest part of Optimus is not teaching it to walk
Musk has called the mass production of Optimus one of Tesla’s most difficult manufacturing tasks. That is not hard to believe.
A car uses an enormous number of components, but a humanoid robot’s moving joints must be small, light, strong, precise and inexpensive all at once. The hand is particularly challenging, as a large number of moving parts must fit into a volume comparable to that of a human hand.
Tesla’s advantage may ultimately come less from robots being demonstrated on stage and more from the tedious work that no one is particularly keen to show in presentations: standardising the supply chain, bringing down the cost of parts and shortening production-line cycle times.
In that sense, using Chinese suppliers is almost predictable. Tesla may devise Optimus’s software and basic design in California, but China’s industry still holds a very strong position when it comes to manufacturing millions of precision parts at a reasonable price.
And there is a small irony here. Musk wants to turn the humanoid robot into one of Tesla’s next big businesses. To do that, the American technology company may need precisely the same Chinese industrial machine it has to compete against in the humanoid robot market.
