AUSTIN, Texas — Elon Musk has put a timeline on one of Tesla's most anticipated products, saying he wants the Optimus humanoid robot available to the public by late 2027. Speaking at the X Takeover event at Giga Texas on October 10, Musk paired the ambition with unusual candor about how difficult the ramp will be, a mix of confidence and realism that frames the next two years for Tesla's robotics bet.
A Slow Start by Design
Musk was blunt that Optimus will not scale like a car. Because there is no existing supply chain for humanoid robots, Tesla has to build one from scratch, and he warned that the early part of the production curve will be "very slow at the beginning." A reported internal goal calls for more than 1,000 units a week by the end of 2026, though Tesla has not published updated figures. That measured tone is consistent with the company's hands-on approach we saw when Tesla put Optimus to work on the Model Y line in Austin.
The Hands Are the Hard Part
Pressed on the engineering, Musk singled out the robot's hands as the toughest challenge, calling them "shockingly difficult." The problem is combining precision with force while packing in touch sensors durable enough to survive a high number of cycles, all within an actuator small enough to fit a humanlike arm. New patent filings covering the Optimus V3 hand and arm hint at how seriously Tesla is attacking the problem. He also took a swipe at rivals, describing elaborate robot demonstrations as "canned" and arguing that real artificial intelligence means handling tasks a robot has never encountered before.
