The news came after we learned that Milan Kovac, the head of the Optimus program left Tesla last month, just months after being promoted to senior vice-president by Musk. The new reports confirm that Ashok Elluswamy, who was elevated to senior vice-president in charge of self-driving at the same time as Kovac, is taking over responsabilities. AI Invest reported some concerns from Tesla about Optimus that reportedly trickled down to Chinese suppliers: According to Tesla’s feedback to suppliers, Optimus still faces hardware challenges, including overheating in some joint motors, low load capacity in dexterous hands, short lifespan of transmission components, and limited battery life. Tesla is currently evaluating samples from multiple dexterous hand suppliers, testing at least three different technical approaches. On the software side, Tesla may use more synthetic data to train the robot model, improving Optimus’ autonomous operation capabilities and success rate in performing complex tasks. According to the report, Tesla had secured parts to build over 1,000 Optimus robots earlier this year and built quite a few, but they are currently only used “for moving batteries in Tesla’s battery workshops, with efficiency less than half that of human workers.” The redesign is expected to delay plans by at least two months and could push many of Tesla’s goals. However, Tesla is expected to still move ahead with the prgroam and it is likely to unveil the new generation of Optimus robots at its shareholders meeting this year. Electrek’s Take