> The Fremont factory lines that built those cars are converting to manufacture Optimus humanoid robots: one million units per year at $20,000 each, with public sales beginning in 2027.
Sure, why not? Seems just as likely as Tesla having 1 million robotaxis on the road by the end of 2026. =)
Sorry, are all of those model 3 and Y vehicles robotaxis?
Or are you saying that because they produced 1.5 million non-robotaxi cars in 2025 that the estimate of producing 1 million robotaxis in the following year is pretty reasonable, because making them autonomous taxis is a minor feature bump...?
No, I'm saying that the original content is low-effort shitposting, and that Tesla has the ability to scale industrial production to over 1mm 'things' per year, as evidenced by production last year. I did the OP the mild courtesy of asking him to open up a useful conversation. For instance, "Is there going to be demand for 1mm robots, and if so, when?" Or "How much actual retooling is necessary in Fremont for this?" Both seem like useful and interesting things to talk about.
Thinking back to case-studies around the Therac-25 [0], I would like to pre-emptively highlight the differences between:
1. Technique X is unsafe.
2. Technique X is unsafe because too much can go wrong even with the best intentions.
3. Technique X is unsafe without strong QA and interlocking safety measures, and there's too much economic pressure for the manufacturer to cut corners.
The obvious problem with steer-by-wire is that in the traditional design, it's not uncommon to lose power assist but not the mechanical connection to the wheels, so you can still steer the car. To completely lose steering control you'd need significant mechanical damage.
If the whole thing goes through the computer then there are lots of new ways to fail. Steering wheel position sensor goes bad on the highway? Computer gets bad data. Control wires get disconnected or damaged? No data. Completely unrelated wires get shorted and fry the computer? No steering. Anything pops the wrong fuse? No power, no computer or steering motors.
Some of those can be mitigated with redundancy but you're still vulnerable to common causes. You have three position sensors and someone dumps their beverage down the steering column, are there any left and do you have any good way to determine which one(s)? The vehicle took some minor damage allowing water to get somewhere it's not intended to, any way to guarantee you're not about to lose both sides of a redundant electrical system the next time it goes through a puddle infused with conductive road salt?
Safety is a great reason to not do something. Utility and enhanced safety are great reasons to override that reflex. A lot has happened since the Therac 25 incident in the medical world with AI, machine learning, robotic neuro surgery, all sorts of computer aided diagnostics, etc. This stuff undeniably saves lives. The incident did inspire some level of scrutiny of course. But compared to modern medical equipment, that machine is from the stone age.
Steer by wire (which the article highlights) is common on all modern airbus planes for decades. The first ones flew shortly after the Therac incident. Boeing has also started implementing that on their newer models. And of course most of the vtol planes/drones currently starting to operate and progress through certification programs also commonly use steer by wire. Several of these flew without pilots before their first manned test flights. These are computer controlled, pilot directed pretty much by default with that part being optional by design.
Beyond Tesla, there are now several other manufacturers implementing steer by wire in the car industry. Nio, Lexus, Toyota, Mercedes, and a few others each either already have cars on the road for this or are working on new ones. And while Tesla has received quite a bit of criticism on their FSD system, I don't think there have been a lot of incidents implicating the steer by wire in Cybertrucks. It seems to work and drivers seem to mostly like it once they get used to it. The car is controversial of course. But there's a lot of cool tech inside that is being copied across the industry now.
The implied warning "we should be careful with this stuff because Therac-25" is a bit of a cliche at this point. Yes, we need lots of checks and balances when using automation in safety critical systems. And that has been common for decades.
Moreover, Technique X does not actually provide any significant value.
The whole steer-by-wire in CT happened because Musk wanted a yoke as the control system. And a yoke requires progressive steering which is impractical without steer-by-wire.
Vehicles include low-utility features for market positioning all the time.
Do buyers need a motorised hood ornament? A tiny vase built into the dashboard? A built-in champagne chiller? Gull wing doors? A spoiler and a 300-horsepower engine?
If it boosts sales by giving the vehicle a distinctive character, though, there's a place in the market for that tiny vase.
The motorized hood ornaments on Rolls Royce vehicles were a solution to the problem of people being injured by, or stealing the (Spirit of Ecstasy) ornaments.
> Today's Spirit of Ecstasy, from the 2003 Phantom model onward, stands at 3 inches (7.6 cm) and, for the safety of any person being accidentally hit, is mounted on a spring-loaded mechanism designed to retract instantly into the radiator shell if struck from any direction.
steer-by-wire makes safety nannies way easier, eg, the ones that jerk the wheel out of your hands when they decide you're too close to a line on the road.
The best selling car in the world in 2025 was the Tesla Model Y, with a little over 1 million sold. ~350k total vehicles have been sold in 2026 as of April.
One million robots to be manufactured in a year - one million robots which will likely be obsolete within five years (if that, I wouldn't be surprised if they're dead on arrival).
I don't know the figures for Earth's resources and their sustainability, so this may be a naive take, but I'm always left with the impression that these organisations want to speedrun the depletion of the planet.
The next step is just selling tickets to that flight in advance as a preorder. One could call it roadster preorders because of the difficult road ahead
This article is written with a little bit of a journalist’s misunderstanding of a topic.
They seem to have done research but have strung together unrelated subjects due to their lack of expertise in the subjects.
As a result it reads more like a summary or recap of vaguely related stories.
For example, Tesla’s pivot to robots has nothing to do with their advanced nature of their wiring harnesses, but it’s spoken in the same breath as if to imply that a Tesla Cybertruck (which is a Model Y with paneling literally glued on top) is more similar to a humanoid robot than a Mustang Mach-E.
In reality, what has happened is that the Model S and X have been discontinued and they’re the only products the Fremont, CA plant produces. Tesla has literally nothing else they can make in that plant. They either make Optimus robots or shut the plant down.
Optimus robot production is a face saving move. Tesla barely needs a fraction of that factory to build robots…it’s a much lower-volume and physically smaller product.
I should note that none of that has anything to do with Tesla being great at robotics and seeing it as a better business than automobiles. It has everything to do with competitors catching up and Tesla having insufficient development capability to iterate on those vehicles.
Who in the buyer demographic for a Model S wouldn’t take a Porsche Taycan, AUD A6 Sportback, or Lucid Air over that vehicle?
Who in the buyer demographic for the Model X won’t take a Kia EV9, Lucid Gravity, or Volvo EX-90?
Maybe if you aren’t paying attention to the car industry you’ll disagree with me but the problem here is the Model S and X are positively ancient with about zero dollars spent on keeping them updated and they’ve become completely irrelevant to the market as a result.
> Maybe if you aren’t paying attention to the car industry you’ll disagree with me but the problem here is the Model S and X are positively ancient with about zero dollars spent on keeping them updated and they’ve become completely irrelevant to the market as a result.
In practice they essentially got replaced with the Model 3 and Y, which didn't exist when the models being discontinued first came out.
It's because of the decline in battery prices. When the Model S came out, an electric car with that range had to be that price. Now it's overpriced for what it is so they'd either need to design one which is significantly more premium while still selling into an inherently lower volume market segment, or lower the price to reflect the current battery costs and then have it be too close to the Model 3.
What they really need to do is continue to move down, i.e. release a subcompact with less range than the Model 3 but on the cheap.
> Who in the buyer demographic for a Model S wouldn’t take a Porsche Taycan, AUD A6 Sportback, or Lucid Air over that vehicle?
I guess me, though I’d probably opt for the Y instead. I have a friend who drives a Taycan, one of the sportier variants with 4 wheel steering and blistering acceleration, and it’s nice, but it’s clear that they’re still crap at computers and interfaces, and I just really don’t want to go back to traditional car industry software interfaces and feature sets after our Tesla. I doubly don’t want to deal with a dealership ever again. Also, love their mobile service which comes to our garage and fixed a flat on two different occasions while I was working at home, super convenient. Roadside assistance was great when we got a flat in the middle of nowhere with no shops open anywhere nearby, they coordinated getting a tow truck out to us to tow it to a Costco like 40 miles away, gratis. Also, it’s just been a great car for us, extremely practical, great for long road trips, fun to drive, the autopilot works well and makes long drives much more pleasant, especially traffic. I don’t know why people confidently declare them to be bad cars - our experience hasn’t been flawless, but as a total package, it’s been the best car ownership experience I’ve had, including Acura, Toyota, Subaru, BMW, Nissans. I guess some combination of not liking Elon, and the issues from the scale-up period when they were making model 3s in tents, though those are long gone.
From what I can see doing some quick searches the EV9 sold 22,017 in 2024 just in the US, while Tesla's global deliveries of "other models" (S, X, and Cybertruck combined, which includes over 10,000 Cybertrucks) totaled 85,133. This, critically for this comparison, includes China.
The X is not competitive with proper 3-row SUVs as the 3rd row is not usable enough, and it was cannibalized by the Y which is not an upmarket luxury SUV as luxurious as EV SUVs that are in the Model X's price range.
Similar story goes for the Model S: they're discontinuing their upper luxury full-size sedan and no longer compete in that market at all.
Since Tesla doesn't split the numbers out it's hard to say but I would say anecdotally, seeing a Model S on the road is most common with older model years as most of those buyers clearly switched over to the Model 3 or Y instead.
The type of buyer who is actually looking for a $90,000 luxury vehicle, that's the type of person I am saying the X and S are not competitive with, which is why they're being discontinued.
Someone spending that much in 2016 on an S or X was getting a vehicle that was bleeding edge technology you couldn't get anywhere else.
Someone spending that much in 2026 will choose the extra luxury features, build quality, and brand prestige of something like a Porsche, Audi, BMW, Mercedes, or Lucid.
> The Fremont factory lines that built those cars are converting to manufacture Optimus humanoid robots: one million units per year at $20,000 each, with public sales beginning in 2027.
Sure, why not? Seems just as likely as Tesla having 1 million robotaxis on the road by the end of 2026. =)
I heard it will be 100 billion robotaxis on the road by the end of 2026!
Tesla delivered 1.5 million model 3 and y together in 2025. What part of this estimate do you take issue with?
Sorry, are all of those model 3 and Y vehicles robotaxis?
Or are you saying that because they produced 1.5 million non-robotaxi cars in 2025 that the estimate of producing 1 million robotaxis in the following year is pretty reasonable, because making them autonomous taxis is a minor feature bump...?
No, I'm saying that the original content is low-effort shitposting, and that Tesla has the ability to scale industrial production to over 1mm 'things' per year, as evidenced by production last year. I did the OP the mild courtesy of asking him to open up a useful conversation. For instance, "Is there going to be demand for 1mm robots, and if so, when?" Or "How much actual retooling is necessary in Fremont for this?" Both seem like useful and interesting things to talk about.
> Steer-by-wire
Thinking back to case-studies around the Therac-25 [0], I would like to pre-emptively highlight the differences between:
1. Technique X is unsafe.
2. Technique X is unsafe because too much can go wrong even with the best intentions.
3. Technique X is unsafe without strong QA and interlocking safety measures, and there's too much economic pressure for the manufacturer to cut corners.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Therac-25
The obvious problem with steer-by-wire is that in the traditional design, it's not uncommon to lose power assist but not the mechanical connection to the wheels, so you can still steer the car. To completely lose steering control you'd need significant mechanical damage.
If the whole thing goes through the computer then there are lots of new ways to fail. Steering wheel position sensor goes bad on the highway? Computer gets bad data. Control wires get disconnected or damaged? No data. Completely unrelated wires get shorted and fry the computer? No steering. Anything pops the wrong fuse? No power, no computer or steering motors.
Some of those can be mitigated with redundancy but you're still vulnerable to common causes. You have three position sensors and someone dumps their beverage down the steering column, are there any left and do you have any good way to determine which one(s)? The vehicle took some minor damage allowing water to get somewhere it's not intended to, any way to guarantee you're not about to lose both sides of a redundant electrical system the next time it goes through a puddle infused with conductive road salt?
Safety is a great reason to not do something. Utility and enhanced safety are great reasons to override that reflex. A lot has happened since the Therac 25 incident in the medical world with AI, machine learning, robotic neuro surgery, all sorts of computer aided diagnostics, etc. This stuff undeniably saves lives. The incident did inspire some level of scrutiny of course. But compared to modern medical equipment, that machine is from the stone age.
Steer by wire (which the article highlights) is common on all modern airbus planes for decades. The first ones flew shortly after the Therac incident. Boeing has also started implementing that on their newer models. And of course most of the vtol planes/drones currently starting to operate and progress through certification programs also commonly use steer by wire. Several of these flew without pilots before their first manned test flights. These are computer controlled, pilot directed pretty much by default with that part being optional by design.
Beyond Tesla, there are now several other manufacturers implementing steer by wire in the car industry. Nio, Lexus, Toyota, Mercedes, and a few others each either already have cars on the road for this or are working on new ones. And while Tesla has received quite a bit of criticism on their FSD system, I don't think there have been a lot of incidents implicating the steer by wire in Cybertrucks. It seems to work and drivers seem to mostly like it once they get used to it. The car is controversial of course. But there's a lot of cool tech inside that is being copied across the industry now.
The implied warning "we should be careful with this stuff because Therac-25" is a bit of a cliche at this point. Yes, we need lots of checks and balances when using automation in safety critical systems. And that has been common for decades.
Moreover, Technique X does not actually provide any significant value.
The whole steer-by-wire in CT happened because Musk wanted a yoke as the control system. And a yoke requires progressive steering which is impractical without steer-by-wire.
> does not actually provide any significant value
If that were true, it would not explain why other manufacturers are headed the same direction. The CT is not the only steer-by-wire vehicle.
Vehicles include low-utility features for market positioning all the time.
Do buyers need a motorised hood ornament? A tiny vase built into the dashboard? A built-in champagne chiller? Gull wing doors? A spoiler and a 300-horsepower engine?
If it boosts sales by giving the vehicle a distinctive character, though, there's a place in the market for that tiny vase.
The motorized hood ornaments on Rolls Royce vehicles were a solution to the problem of people being injured by, or stealing the (Spirit of Ecstasy) ornaments.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spirit_of_Ecstasy
How does it being motorized prevent injury?
> Today's Spirit of Ecstasy, from the 2003 Phantom model onward, stands at 3 inches (7.6 cm) and, for the safety of any person being accidentally hit, is mounted on a spring-loaded mechanism designed to retract instantly into the radiator shell if struck from any direction.
I don't think that mentions it being motorized
The motor allows you to raise it after it has been retracted.
Then why is it spring-loaded?
What other manufacturers? There's Mercedes EQS and Geely. Both are trialing it in one model each as luxury gimmicks.
steer-by-wire makes safety nannies way easier, eg, the ones that jerk the wheel out of your hands when they decide you're too close to a line on the road.
Other models got the yoke but not the steer by wire.
Cars that nobody buys replaced by robots that nobody buys
The best selling car in the world in 2025 was the Tesla Model Y, with a little over 1 million sold. ~350k total vehicles have been sold in 2026 as of April.
https://www.focus2move.com/world-car-market/, https://ir.tesla.com/press-release/tesla-first-quarter-2026-...
Actually i think it was the RAV 4 and BYD sold more EVs than Tesla.
Tesla only selling 4 models makes for difficult comparisons with companies like Toyota that sell several cars in overlapping segments.
The limit to EVs makes it fine (if excl. PHEVs). If BYD/Toyota have more models that is fine for the comparison. That is the point.
Only 4 models and still slipped from #1.
The Fremont plant doesn’t make Ys, only Xs and Ss. And no one is buying the latter two.
Yeah but the OP offhand comment is a political soundbite that is technically half true and half prediction but misleading.
Unbelievable. Really shows how much of a bubble the internet is - Elon was the internets most hated man in 2025 yet Tesla sold like hotcakes
Who is this "nobody" that bought more than half a million Teslas last year?
Who bought half a million Model S and Model X?
One million robots to be manufactured in a year - one million robots which will likely be obsolete within five years (if that, I wouldn't be surprised if they're dead on arrival).
I don't know the figures for Earth's resources and their sustainability, so this may be a naive take, but I'm always left with the impression that these organisations want to speedrun the depletion of the planet.
More customers for the related Space exploration company.
Assuming they don't starve to death before insert-space-company can get them to the next Goldilocks planet.
The next step is just selling tickets to that flight in advance as a preorder. One could call it roadster preorders because of the difficult road ahead
This article is written with a little bit of a journalist’s misunderstanding of a topic.
They seem to have done research but have strung together unrelated subjects due to their lack of expertise in the subjects.
As a result it reads more like a summary or recap of vaguely related stories.
For example, Tesla’s pivot to robots has nothing to do with their advanced nature of their wiring harnesses, but it’s spoken in the same breath as if to imply that a Tesla Cybertruck (which is a Model Y with paneling literally glued on top) is more similar to a humanoid robot than a Mustang Mach-E.
In reality, what has happened is that the Model S and X have been discontinued and they’re the only products the Fremont, CA plant produces. Tesla has literally nothing else they can make in that plant. They either make Optimus robots or shut the plant down.
Optimus robot production is a face saving move. Tesla barely needs a fraction of that factory to build robots…it’s a much lower-volume and physically smaller product.
I should note that none of that has anything to do with Tesla being great at robotics and seeing it as a better business than automobiles. It has everything to do with competitors catching up and Tesla having insufficient development capability to iterate on those vehicles.
Who in the buyer demographic for a Model S wouldn’t take a Porsche Taycan, AUD A6 Sportback, or Lucid Air over that vehicle?
Who in the buyer demographic for the Model X won’t take a Kia EV9, Lucid Gravity, or Volvo EX-90?
Maybe if you aren’t paying attention to the car industry you’ll disagree with me but the problem here is the Model S and X are positively ancient with about zero dollars spent on keeping them updated and they’ve become completely irrelevant to the market as a result.
> Maybe if you aren’t paying attention to the car industry you’ll disagree with me but the problem here is the Model S and X are positively ancient with about zero dollars spent on keeping them updated and they’ve become completely irrelevant to the market as a result.
In practice they essentially got replaced with the Model 3 and Y, which didn't exist when the models being discontinued first came out.
It's because of the decline in battery prices. When the Model S came out, an electric car with that range had to be that price. Now it's overpriced for what it is so they'd either need to design one which is significantly more premium while still selling into an inherently lower volume market segment, or lower the price to reflect the current battery costs and then have it be too close to the Model 3.
What they really need to do is continue to move down, i.e. release a subcompact with less range than the Model 3 but on the cheap.
Or build a truck people actually want.
> Who in the buyer demographic for a Model S wouldn’t take a Porsche Taycan, AUD A6 Sportback, or Lucid Air over that vehicle?
I guess me, though I’d probably opt for the Y instead. I have a friend who drives a Taycan, one of the sportier variants with 4 wheel steering and blistering acceleration, and it’s nice, but it’s clear that they’re still crap at computers and interfaces, and I just really don’t want to go back to traditional car industry software interfaces and feature sets after our Tesla. I doubly don’t want to deal with a dealership ever again. Also, love their mobile service which comes to our garage and fixed a flat on two different occasions while I was working at home, super convenient. Roadside assistance was great when we got a flat in the middle of nowhere with no shops open anywhere nearby, they coordinated getting a tow truck out to us to tow it to a Costco like 40 miles away, gratis. Also, it’s just been a great car for us, extremely practical, great for long road trips, fun to drive, the autopilot works well and makes long drives much more pleasant, especially traffic. I don’t know why people confidently declare them to be bad cars - our experience hasn’t been flawless, but as a total package, it’s been the best car ownership experience I’ve had, including Acura, Toyota, Subaru, BMW, Nissans. I guess some combination of not liking Elon, and the issues from the scale-up period when they were making model 3s in tents, though those are long gone.
> Who in the buyer demographic for a Model S wouldn’t take a Porsche Taycan, AUD A6 Sportback, or Lucid Air over that vehicle?
> Who in the buyer demographic for the Model X won’t take a Kia EV9, Lucid Gravity, or Volvo EX-90?
The S and X are plenty competitive here for many buyers. Did any of those cars outsell the S in 2025 in the US? I would not trust a Kia or Volvo EV.
From what I can see doing some quick searches the EV9 sold 22,017 in 2024 just in the US, while Tesla's global deliveries of "other models" (S, X, and Cybertruck combined, which includes over 10,000 Cybertrucks) totaled 85,133. This, critically for this comparison, includes China.
The X is not competitive with proper 3-row SUVs as the 3rd row is not usable enough, and it was cannibalized by the Y which is not an upmarket luxury SUV as luxurious as EV SUVs that are in the Model X's price range.
Similar story goes for the Model S: they're discontinuing their upper luxury full-size sedan and no longer compete in that market at all.
Since Tesla doesn't split the numbers out it's hard to say but I would say anecdotally, seeing a Model S on the road is most common with older model years as most of those buyers clearly switched over to the Model 3 or Y instead.
The type of buyer who is actually looking for a $90,000 luxury vehicle, that's the type of person I am saying the X and S are not competitive with, which is why they're being discontinued.
Someone spending that much in 2016 on an S or X was getting a vehicle that was bleeding edge technology you couldn't get anywhere else.
Someone spending that much in 2026 will choose the extra luxury features, build quality, and brand prestige of something like a Porsche, Audi, BMW, Mercedes, or Lucid.
Sources:
https://insideevs.com/news/746147/kia-ev-sales-record-2024-u...
https://ir.tesla.com/press-release/tesla-fourth-quarter-2024...
> Tesla Cybertruck (which is a Model Y with paneling literally glued on top)
Doesn't seem true?