Tesla has started building Optimus humanoid robots on its high-volume production lines in Fremont, California, and the company says the bots coming off those lines are the first production-quality units it has ever made.
That’s according to Tesla’s Q3 2026 Update, which the company posted after the market closed on Wednesday, October 21. “Optimus production began in Fremont on our high-volume lines,” Tesla wrote. “The bots coming off this line are the first production-quality bots that we have manufactured.”
Tesla also made a bigger claim about where the program stands. “While we will continue to iterate on the hardware and manufacturing process, we have proven that the current manufacturing process for Optimus is suitable for a commercial product,” the company said.
Optimus now has two rows in the deck’s installed capacity table. California is listed as “Early Ramp,” while Texas is listed as “Construction,” which Tesla defines as factory and infrastructure buildout along with tool installation. Neither row has a capacity number, unlike the vehicle and Megapack lines in the same table. The outlook section repeats the milestone, saying “production has begun for Tesla Semi in Nevada and Optimus in Fremont.”
Several details are missing from the deck, though. Tesla didn’t give a production rate, a unit count, a price or a date for selling Optimus to outside customers, and it didn’t say which version of the robot is being built in Fremont. Those questions could come up on Tesla’s earnings call, which got underway at 2:30 PM PT today.
Fremont’s Optimus line has been in the works since January, when Elon Musk said on Tesla’s Q4 2025 call that the Model S and Model X would be discontinued so their floor space could be used for the robot. Musk said at the time that the goal was to build one million Optimus units a year at the California factory, as we covered in our story on the end of Model S and Model X production.
In April, Musk said Tesla would hold off on revealing Optimus 3 until closer to the start of production to keep competitors from copying the design, and he warned that the initial ramp would be “quite slow,” as we reported in our story on the delayed Optimus 3 reveal. By the second quarter, Tesla said it had decommissioned the Model S and Model X assembly lines to build its first Optimus production lines, with early builds going toward training data collection in what it calls the Optimus Academy. We broke that down in our Q2 2026 earnings recap.
Construction on the Texas side has been easier to follow from the air. Tesla broke ground on a dedicated Optimus factory on the Giga Texas North Campus in late March, and drone footage in September showed its steel frame nearing completion, as we reported in our look at the Optimus factory at Giga Texas. Musk has also said that Optimus and Cybercab will be the vast majority of Tesla’s value, so Wednesday’s update is likely to get plenty of attention from shareholders.
For the rest of the quarter’s numbers, including revenue, margins and FSD, see our Tesla Q3 2026 earnings recap.
Would you buy an Optimus for your home once Tesla starts selling it?
Want to see more of our stories on Google?
P.S. — Buying a new Tesla? Click here to save $1,000 USD, while supporting independent news.
Help support us by shopping on Amazon here.
Links in this post are affiliate links, so we earn a tiny commission at no charge to you. Thanks for supporting independent media!
