Musk: Optimus Production 'Extremely Slow at First'
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- Elon Musk rejected fan booster "Doctor Jack"'s theory that Tesla is secretly ahead on Optimus, writing on X: "Optimus production will be extremely slow at first, as everything is new... This is not like making a car."
- On Tesla's Q1 2026 earnings call, Musk said Optimus production would begin at Fremont in late July or August, calling output "quite slow" and "literally impossible to predict" given the robot's roughly 10,000 unique parts running on an entirely new production line.
- Tesla ended Model S and Model X production at Fremont to convert the lines to Optimus, a dramatic bet that leaves no room to quietly overdeliver.
- In early 2025, Musk predicted Tesla would build "roughly 10,000 Optimus robots" that year — a target he admitted in January Tesla badly missed, with no robots doing 'useful work' in its factories and only several hundred deployed for learning.
- Tesla's stated 2026 target is 50,000–100,000 units, with Fremont aiming for a 1-million-unit annual run-rate by year-end and a planned second factory at Giga Texas eventually targeting 10 million units annually.
- The Optimus V3 reveal has been pushed back repeatedly through 2026, with every major production timeline since 2022 — from "production ready by 2023" to "thousands in factories" — slipping.
Why it matters: Musk used the prospect of an Optimus 'army of robots' to justify shareholders giving him more control over the company; now that he has it, production is officially an 'extremely slow' ramp on a new line at a converted Fremont plant. The gap between the narrative used to win shareholder votes and the stated production reality is the real story.
