Tesla has started production of its Optimus humanoid robot at its Fremont, California factory, in space once used to make electric vehicles. In its third-quarter shareholder letter, Tesla said these are the first production-quality bots it has made. The company also said it has proven that its current manufacturing process is suitable for a commercial product.
Elon Musk called this early production and said the ramp will be slow and somewhat bumpy because Optimus is such a radically new product. He nonetheless claimed Tesla will be able to make 20,000 robots per week by the end of 2027. Musk added that the design still needs work to make the robot safe, reliable and long-lasting. He said quite a lot of AI work remains before the robot is truly useful for open-ended tasks.
Tesla's third-quarter revenue was $28.04 billion, slightly below the $28.09 billion it reported a year earlier and about $200 million lower than the previous quarter. EV sales were flat year-over-year at $20 billion on 486,532 deliveries. Net income fell 43% to $787 million from $1.37 billion as spending on AI and Optimus rose sharply. Lower regulatory credit sales also hurt profitability.
Revenue from solar and energy storage fell 16% year-over-year to $2.8 billion, which Tesla blamed on tariff-related customer refunds. The services business, which includes subscriptions to Full Self-Driving software, grew 33% to $4.6 billion. It also produced a record $734 million in gross profit for the quarter.
Tesla executives were bullish on FSD even though the unsupervised version was delayed yet again. The current supervised version requires drivers to pay attention and be ready to take over at any time. The unsupervised version would be equivalent to Level 4 autonomous driving , similar to robotaxi capabilities. Ashok Elluswamy said the first customer vehicles could join the robotaxi fleet around Q2 next year. In April, Musk had said the release would probably come in the fourth quarter of this year.