# Tesla Started Building Optimus in Fremont. Musk Says the First 10,000 to 20,000 Are for Practice.

> Markdown twin of https://roboterminal.app/posts/optimus-fremont-training-fleet · https://roboterminal.app/posts/optimus-fremont-training-fleet.md

**Published:** 2026-10-23

Tesla said on October 21 that Optimus production has begun on high-volume lines in Fremont, California, and that the bots coming off this line are the first production-quality bots Tesla has manufactured; on the earnings call that evening, Elon Musk said most of a one-million-unit-a-year line is now in Fremont, but reaching 20,000 robots a week will take at least a year, and robots for outside customers come around the end of 2027.

Tesla said on October 21 that Optimus production has begun on a high-volume line in Fremont, a line Elon Musk described as most of a million-unit-a-year setup. On the same call he said reaching 20,000 robots a week will take at least a year, outside customers come around the end of 2027, and Tesla first needs on the order of 10,000 to 20,000 robots doing self-play to gather the training data it lacks. The early output is a training fleet, and the capacity column in Tesla's own deck is still a dash.

**Companies:** [Tesla](https://roboterminal.app/companies/tesla)

**Tags:** humanoids, tesla, optimus, manufacturing, production-ramp, training-data, self-play, robot-hands

[Tesla](https://roboterminal.app/companies/tesla) said on October 21 that Optimus production has begun "on our high-volume lines" in Fremont, California, and that "the bots coming off this line are the first production-quality bots that we have manufactured" (https://assets-ir.tesla.com/tesla-contents/IR/TSLA-Q3-2026-Update.pdf). On the earnings call that evening, Elon Musk said "the vast majority of a 1 million unit per line production line" is now in Fremont, but that it will take "probably at least a year, maybe a little longer" to reach the rate that line is built for, 20,000 robots a week. Robots for companies outside Tesla, he said, come "around the end of next year" (https://www.fool.com/earnings/call-transcripts/2026/10/22/tesla-tsla-q3-2026-earnings-call-transcript/).

TechCrunch's headline paired the news with a 43% fall in profit, and noted the robots are being built in space once used for electric cars (https://techcrunch.com/2026/10/21/tesla-stars-optimus-robot-production-in-california-as-profit-falls-43/). Tesla's deck says the company has "proven that the current manufacturing process for Optimus is suitable for a commercial product," while adding that it "will continue to iterate on the hardware and manufacturing process" (https://assets-ir.tesla.com/tesla-contents/IR/TSLA-Q3-2026-Update.pdf).

Our view: the start of production is real, but the call made clear what the first robots are for. **Musk said Tesla needs "on the order of 10,000 or 20,000 bots" doing self-play to get the training data Optimus lacks, so the early output of the Fremont line is a training fleet, not a product line, and the number to watch is how fast that fleet gets built, not the million-unit figure.**

## Why Tesla has to build its own data

Asked whether crowdsourced data or Tesla's in-house "Optimus Academy" would feed the robot, Musk said "crowdsourcing is not the issue for Optimus," and that Tesla is still working on "a lot of things we have to get right about the AI architecture." Then he gave the number: "in order for Optimus to get the training data we need, we actually need to make a lot of Optimi. So we need to make, I think, on the order of 10,000 or 20,000 bots and then have them do self-play" (https://www.fool.com/earnings/call-transcripts/2026/10/22/tesla-tsla-q3-2026-earnings-call-transcript/).

He explained the difference from the car business plainly: "we don't have this vast fleet of cars from which we can gather training data. So with Optimus, we have to bootstrap it by making the robots." Ashok Elluswamy of Tesla added that "there's no exoskeleton for humans to get into and like make Optimus into a puppet," so the plan is "initial base training done from humans to bootstrap and then put it on Optimus and do a lot of self-play both in simulation and in the real world" (https://www.fool.com/earnings/call-transcripts/2026/10/22/tesla-tsla-q3-2026-earnings-call-transcript/).

That reverses the usual order for a factory. A car plant builds cars to sell. By Musk's account, Fremont's first tens of thousands of humanoids are needed to teach the humanoid, and only then does selling them make sense. Tesla is also adding compute for that loop: the deck says it plans to reach 400 MW of training compute by year end, "supporting the development of both vehicle and humanoid robot autonomy software" (https://assets-ir.tesla.com/tesla-contents/IR/TSLA-Q3-2026-Update.pdf).

## The arithmetic of a shallow ramp

At 20,000 a week, 52 weeks comes to 1,040,000 robots a year (arithmetic), which is where the million-unit description comes from. At that rate, a 10,000-robot practice fleet is half a week of output and a 20,000-robot fleet is one week (arithmetic).

But Tesla is not at that rate, and says so. Musk called the start of the ramp "a shallow slope and is somewhat bumpy," and said production "will move as fast as the slowest least likely of the 10,000" things that have to go right (https://www.fool.com/earnings/call-transcripts/2026/10/22/tesla-tsla-q3-2026-earnings-call-transcript/). Tesla did not give a current weekly rate or a count of robots built so far.

Its deck is careful in the same way. In the table of installed manufacturing capacity, Cybercab in Texas is listed at more than 125,000 a year and Tesla Semi in Nevada at 25,000. Optimus has two rows, California marked "Early Ramp" and Texas marked "Construction," and both show a dash where the capacity number goes. A footnote warns that "installed capacity ≠ current production rate and there may be limitations discovered as production rates approach capacity" (https://assets-ir.tesla.com/tesla-contents/IR/TSLA-Q3-2026-Update.pdf). CFO Vaibhav Taneja said a second Optimus factory is under construction in Austin, one "which would be able to do a lot more robots as compared to the Fremont one" (https://www.fool.com/earnings/call-transcripts/2026/10/22/tesla-tsla-q3-2026-earnings-call-transcript/).

"At least a year" from October 21 puts 20,000 a week no earlier than late October 2027 (arithmetic). That lines up with Musk's date for outside customers, so the practice fleet and the first sales arrive on roughly the same schedule.

## What is still changing

The design is not frozen, and Tesla named the parts that are moving. Konstantinos Laskaris said "most of the electromechanical system" is "relatively high confidence," but the hand "is, from an electromechanical point of view, more complicated than actuators for the locomotion system," and "there are some bespoke gears that are carrying a lot of burden" for reliability "that we are developing still" (https://www.fool.com/earnings/call-transcripts/2026/10/22/tesla-tsla-q3-2026-earnings-call-transcript/).

Musk confirmed Tesla is building robots now "that do not have perfected hands," while it trains Optimus and works out the supply chain in parallel. He also said the robot "can't, like, wear out after a month," and that reliability, usage life, the AI and the hand design should be "solved around the end of next year." A new onboard chip, AI5, with "an order of magnitude more compute" than the current one, is due in Optimus "in approximately April of next year" if things go to plan (https://www.fool.com/earnings/call-transcripts/2026/10/22/tesla-tsla-q3-2026-earnings-call-transcript/).

On cost, Taneja said Tesla is "tracking pretty well" internally but that "it would be a little too early to say that we have got there because ... we're still making a lot of design iterations." No unit cost was given.

This is consistent with what we saw earlier this month, when supplier orders for Optimus parts were running ahead of the robots themselves (https://roboterminal.app/posts/optimus-parts-orders-vs-robots). Building a supply chain and a line before the design settles is how Tesla says it wants to work. It also means the robots coming off the line today may not match the ones sold in late 2027.

## Objections

**"Production started, so the commercial story has started."** Tesla's own timeline puts outside customers around the end of 2027. Until then, by Musk's description, the job of these robots is to practice and generate data.

**"A million a year is the headline."** That is what the line is built for. Tesla's deck lists no installed Optimus capacity and gives no current rate, and Musk put the full rate at least a year away.

**"Self-play is a choice, not a requirement."** Musk framed it as a requirement, because Tesla has no existing fleet to learn from. Other companies collect data by having people operate robots remotely or by recording human demonstrations. Elluswamy said Tesla will use human demonstrations to bootstrap, then rely on the robots practicing.

## Three things to check

1. **An unscripted video, by about late December 2026.** Musk said Tesla "may be ready to release like an Optimus video in a month or so," and that it may take "a month or 2" for "a demo that you can believe what you see." He said he wants it to show tasks that are "not preprogrammed" (https://www.fool.com/earnings/call-transcripts/2026/10/22/tesla-tsla-q3-2026-earnings-call-transcript/).
2. **AI5 in Optimus, around April 2027.** Tesla tied the chip to a large jump in capability. A slip here would push the rest.
3. **Outside deliveries and 20,000 a week, around the end of 2027.** Musk said the first customers will be industrial: "dangerous repetitive tasks" that "you want done 24/7." The first number worth watching before then is a count of robots built, which Tesla has not yet given.

## Sources

- [Tesla, Q3 2026 update](https://assets-ir.tesla.com/tesla-contents/IR/TSLA-Q3-2026-Update.pdf)
- [Motley Fool, Tesla Q3 2026 earnings call transcript](https://www.fool.com/earnings/call-transcripts/2026/10/22/tesla-tsla-q3-2026-earnings-call-transcript/)
- [TechCrunch, Tesla starts Optimus production in California](https://techcrunch.com/2026/10/21/tesla-stars-optimus-robot-production-in-california-as-profit-falls-43/)

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Source: Roboterminal · https://roboterminal.app/posts/optimus-fremont-training-fleet.md