Full Breakdown
Tesla Begins Optimus Robot Production Amid Sharp Profit Decline
By Drooid · · How we work
Production Launch of Optimus
Tesla repurposed a portion of its Fremont, California plant—previously dedicated to electric-vehicle assembly—to start manufacturing the Optimus humanoid robot. The company described the units coming off the line as the first production-quality bots and said the current manufacturing process is suitable for a commercial product, though it remains in an early, “somewhat bumpy” phase.
Financial Performance
Tesla’s third-quarter earnings showed flat overall revenue at $28.04 billion, a slight dip from the prior year’s $28.09 billion. Vehicle deliveries reached 486,532 units, modestly above the previous quarter but below the same period last year. Revenue from the solar and energy-storage segment fell 16% year-over-year to $2.8 billion, while the services segment—primarily Full Self-Driving (FSD) subscriptions—rose 33% to $4.6 billion, generating a record $734 million in gross profit. Despite these gains, net income dropped 43% to $787 million, down from $1.37 billion a year earlier, reflecting heavy spending on AI projects and Optimus development.
AI and Robotaxi Outlook
Tesla executives remain optimistic about autonomous-driving revenue. Ashok Elluswamy, vice president of AI software, indicated that the company expects to enable the first customer vehicles for a robotaxi fleet around the second quarter of next year. Elon Musk has previously suggested the unsupervised version of FSD could arrive in the fourth quarter of this year, though the timeline has been delayed repeatedly.
Official Statements & Responses
During the earnings call, Musk characterized the Optimus rollout as “early production” and acknowledged the need for design tweaks to ensure durability and safety. CFO Vaibhav Taneja and Elluswamy both emphasized confidence in the long-term value of FSD, despite the current postponement of the fully autonomous (Level 4) release. Musk also projected that Optimus manufacturing could scale to 20,000 units per week by the end of 2027, contingent on further hardware and software refinements.
Verbatim Quotes
- “The bots coming off this line are the first production-quality bots that we have manufactured,” — Tesla
- “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.” — Tesla CEO Elon Musk
- “We suspect somewhere around Q2 next year is when we can turn on some of the first customer vehicles to be part of the robotaxi fleet,” — Ashok Elluswamy