Tesla Optimus — A Humanoid Robot Plan That Began with a Person in a Suit

Tesla Optimus is the humanoid robot Tesla is developing. CEO Elon Musk announced the plan under the name Tesla Bot at the company's AI Day on 19 August 2021: a general-purpose humanoid robot that would take over household chores and other work from people, built in volume the way Tesla builds cars. This page separates what Tesla and Musk have promised from what has actually been shown.

August 2021: a costume

According to TechCrunch, a figure in a white bodysuit with a shiny black mask appeared on the AI Day stage. It was the introduction to Tesla Bot. The plan Musk presented was as follows.

"It's intended to be friendly, of course, and navigate a world built for humans," Musk said, adding that at a mechanical and physical level it was being designed so that a person could run away from it and most likely overpower it. As uses he cited the household tasks people least want to do, such as grocery shopping. A prototype was expected the following year. On that day the robot itself did not exist.

September 2022: a prototype walks

At AI Day on 30 September 2022 an Optimus prototype came on stage. According to CNN, the robot walked stiffly, waved and gestured with its hands for roughly a minute. Musk said it was the first time the prototype had operated without a tether; robotics developers usually use tethers to keep robots from falling and damaging themselves. Before it walked out he acknowledged, "Last year was just a person in a robot suit."

Musk said that in mass production the robot would "probably" cost less than $20,000. Tesla said Optimus's advantages would be independent navigation built on its "Full Self Driving" technology and manufacturing cost savings from its car business. CNN, however, wrote that Optimus's abilities appeared to significantly trail those of Boston Dynamics robots, which had been shown doing back flips and dance routines without a tether, and also cited Honda's ASIMO, developed over nearly 20 years. It added Tesla's history of missed price targets, including $35,000 for the Model 3 and $39,990 for the Cybertruck.

October 2024: We, Robot and teleoperation

On 10 October 2024, at the We, Robot event where Tesla unveiled its Cybercab robotaxi (see Tesla's robotaxi), several Optimus robots walked among guests and served drinks. Musk said the project had started with someone in a robot suit and had progressed dramatically year after year, and that Optimus would be able to do anything you want, from teaching and babysitting to walking dogs, mowing lawns and serving drinks, a personal robot anyone could own. According to Interesting Engineering, he suggested it could eventually sell for $20,000 to $30,000.

Within days it was reported that many of the robots had been controlled by people. According to TechCrunch, Morgan Stanley analyst Adam Jonas wrote in a note that the robots relied on tele-ops, meaning human intervention. People familiar with the matter told Bloomberg that remotely stationed employees oversaw many of the robots' interactions with guests, although the prototypes could walk without external control. A video also circulated in which an Optimus bartender acknowledged that it was being "assisted by a human." Musk did not address teleoperation at the event.

2025–2026: production promises and reality

According to Electrek, Musk predicted in January 2025 that roughly 10,000 Optimus robots would be built that year; the target was missed entirely. In January 2026 he admitted that no Optimus robots were yet doing useful work in Tesla's factories. The reveal of the third generation (V3), originally expected in the first quarter of 2026, had by April slipped to probably the middle of the year. Optimus has more than 10,000 unique parts, and Musk has said the production rate will move only as fast as the slowest part.

According to the second-quarter update Tesla published on 22 July 2026, it had decommissioned the Model S and Model X lines at its Fremont factory and was installing first-generation Optimus production lines, anticipating production in 2026. The first units are to be used in an "Optimus Academy" to collect training data and develop further functionality. Electrek reported that a second Optimus factory is under construction in Texas.

Where Optimus stands

What sets Optimus apart is a carmaker trying to mass-produce humanoids with its own factories and manufacturing know-how. Much of what has been said about performance, timing and price, however, consists of Musk's projections, and the record that outsiders can verify is limited. In the same period the electric Atlas entered production for Hyundai's factories, and Figure published results from work at a BMW plant. The wider story is in the humanoid and AI robots timeline.