IT Home, October 22: Tesla’s Q3 2026 earnings report revealed that the company has initiated production of the Optimus humanoid robot on a high-volume assembly line at its Fremont factory. However, CEO Elon Musk stated that it will still take approximately a year or longer for this production line to reach its target capacity of 20,000 robots per week.
In its Q3 2026 business update, Tesla stated that the Optimus robots produced at the Fremont facility are the first to meet mass production standards, and the current manufacturing process is capable of supporting commercial product production.
Tesla removed the production line previously used for Model S and Model X at its Fremont factory in just 46 days to make space for Optimus production.
Recently, Musk acknowledged that the Optimus project still faces numerous challenges, including technical difficulties with the robotic hand and limitations in the supply of rare earth magnets from China.
Musk said during Wednesday’s earnings call that Tesla has “begun what I call the early production phase on the high-volume line in Fremont,” and that “the vast majority of equipment for this million-unit line” is now in place.
“I expect it will take us at least a year, perhaps a little longer, to achieve an annualized production capacity of 20,000 units per week,” Musk said. He noted that approximately 10,000 details need to be fully fine-tuned. Because Optimus is a “groundbreaking new product,” the initial phase of production ramp-up has been slow and fraught with challenges.
IT Home noted that Musk also revealed Tesla plans to integrate the Tesla AI5 chip into the Optimus robot, with related work expected to be completed by April next year, assuming everything proceeds as planned. This chip offers significantly higher computing power than the AI4, and Tesla has reduced the AI5’s memory configuration to better suit Optimus’s use cases.
Elon Musk expects Tesla to resolve the remaining design, reliability, and lifespan issues of this robot by the end of 2027, at which point it will be made available to the public. He stated that early applications of the robot will focus on industrial settings, primarily for high-risk, repetitive tasks requiring 24/7 operation.
Musk said that before then, Tesla plans to release a video showcasing Optimus completing tasks that are not pre-programmed; the video is expected to be released in about one to two months.
“I still firmly believe that Optimus will become the largest product in the world,” Musk said. With the Fremont factory now operational and a second Optimus factory under construction in Texas, Tesla’s next challenge is to prove it can mass-produce stable and reliable humanoid robots.