during tesla’s q1 2026 earnings call, ceo elon musk confirmed that the optimus robot will enter formal production at the fremont factory in late july or august this year. the production line will be converted from the former model s and model x assembly lines.
to advance this plan, tesla will officially discontinue production of the model s and model x in early may, bringing to a close the 14-year and 11-year production runs of these two models, respectively. subsequently, tesla will spend about four months completely dismantling the old production lines and installing brand-new optimus manufacturing equipment, including wiring, communication systems, and testing infrastructure.
regarding expectations for the initial phase of production, musk stated that, since optimus is an entirely new product comprising more than 10,000 unique components and requires adaptation to a completely new production line, initial output will be very slow. he admitted that current production rates are difficult to predict and noted that the robot’s capabilities in the early stages will be largely limited to simple tasks within the factory. in addition, the gen 3 version, originally scheduled for release in q1 2026, has been postponed until mid-year; tesla said this move was intended to prevent competitors from conducting frame-by-frame analysis and copying the design.
in terms of capacity planning, tesla is building a second optimus factory at giga texas, which is expected to begin producing the higher-volume gen 4 version in the summer of 2027. back in january 2025, musk had predicted that approximately 10,000 optimus units would be produced that year; however, in early 2026 he acknowledged that this target was not met and that no robots had yet performed actual work on the factory floor.
