Fremont Line Shifts From Cars to Robots

Tesla has begun manufacturing its Optimus robot on a line at its Fremont factory that assembled Model S and Model X vehicles until this spring. The company stated in its third quarter shareholder letter that the units leaving this line are the first built to production standard, and that the process now used for Optimus is fit for a commercial product.

The vehicle line was cleared in 46 days to make room for robot production, which is sized for one million units annually. Most of the equipment needed for that capacity is already at Fremont, Elon Musk said on the Wednesday earnings call, with weekly output expected to approach 20,000 as the line scales up. Musk described the ramp as a shallow S curve and said work on the robot's artificial intelligence, electromechanical design, reliability and service life continues through the end of next year.

Tesla intends to begin delivering Optimus to outside companies by the end of next year for dangerous, repetitive and continuous jobs. A new Optimus video showing the robot carrying out tasks through artificial intelligence rather than preprogrammed steps should appear within one or two months, Musk said. He criticized rival humanoid demonstrations that rely on scripted routines, saying those would not survive contact with real-world conditions.

Training presents a problem Tesla's vehicle fleet does not. Cars send driving data from millions of vehicles back to the AI team, Musk said, while Optimus has no comparable base of machines in the field. Tesla's approach is an Optimus Academy, where 10,000 to 20,000 robots practice tasks and pass what they learn into the next version of the model. Every unit built at Fremont feeds into that process.

Tesla plans to install its AI5 chip in Optimus next year. Production of the robot for outside customers is scheduled to begin by the end of 2027.