While Tesla postponed its plans with Optimus in July last year, it now believes it is capable of meeting its objectives, or even accelerating them. The brand's humanoid robot, which made headlines during the Cybercab presentation, should arrive "by the thousands" by the end of the year. To this end, during the publication of its results for the first quarter of 2025, the manufacturer showed a first image of its production line at Fremont, California.
Elon Musk, back at Tesla after spending the past two months "optimizing" the resources allocated by the federal government to institutions under Donald Trump, indicated during an analyst conference that Optimus production would still only concern a "development program". It's hard to understand what the boss means by that, when he said earlier that he planned to "have thousands of Optimus robots in service in Tesla factories by the end of the year.".
"Large-scale" production will therefore have to wait, even though it was originally planned for 2026 anyway. Tesla wanted, last year, to make 2026 the year of the first deliveries to Tesla's external customers. In July 2024, Elon Musk revised his ambitions to announce "low production for internal use next year" by talking about this year 2025. Once the factories are at their maximum production rate, the humanoid robot Optimus would see its production cost increase to $10,000.
The Tesla Optimus needs China
At the same time as showing the first images of his production line in Fremont, Elon Musk mentioned that the embargo between China and the United States would pose a problem, particularly for access to Chinese rare earths, essential in many components. As a counterattack to Donald Trump's surge in tariffs on Chinese products, Beijing responded by completely halting rare earth exports.
Addressing China directly, Elon Musk added that he did not foresee his humanoid robots being used for "military purposes." He declared: "China wants assurances that these robots will not be used for military purposes, which is obviously not the case." While waiting to find an alternative solution to Chinese components, the Tesla boss declared that he would obtain "with a bit of luck" a special license. This is enough to avoid falling further behind schedule, which should, theoretically, lead to production of more than a million units per year within 5 years.
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