Overview
Tesla Optimus is a bipedal, general-purpose humanoid developed in-house by Tesla. First shown in 2022 and iterated through Gen 2, a production-intent Gen 3 is expected to be revealed in mid-2026. Its defining trait is a vision-only AI brain derived from Tesla’s Full Self-Driving software.
Tech specs
| Spec | Value |
|---|---|
| Height | ~1.73 m (5’8“) |
| Weight | ~57 kg (125 lb); Gen 3 targeted lighter |
| Payload / lift | ~20 kg carry; ~9 kg arm lift (Tesla-cited) |
| Degrees of freedom | 28+ body DoF; hands raised to 22 DoF in Gen 3 (Gen 2: 11) |
| Hands | Five-finger dexterous hands with tactile / force sensing |
| Battery | 2.3 kWh torso pack; operating runtime not disclosed |
| Speed | ~30% faster walking than Gen 1 (no official figure) |
| Onboard compute | Custom Tesla SoC; Gen 3 moves to the Tesla AI5 inference chip |
| Sensors | Vision-only cameras (no LiDAR), IMU, hand force sensors |
| Status | Pre-production; internal factory use only; not for sale, no pre-orders |
Pricing
No retail price. Elon Musk has repeatedly cited a long-term target of roughly $20,000–$30,000 at scale; current build cost is estimated to be far higher. Optimus cannot be purchased in 2026.
AI & autonomy
Optimus runs an in-house, vision-first, end-to-end neural network adapted from Tesla’s FSD stack, mapping camera input to motor commands with no LiDAR, on custom Tesla silicon. xAI’s Grok is integrated for natural-language voice.
Deployment & traction
Optimus development sits inside Tesla (about $20bn of 2026 capex). Several hundred units (estimates up to ~1,000) operate only inside Tesla’s Fremont and Giga Texas factories for training and data collection; Musk has acknowledged none are yet doing commercially useful work. Tesla plans to begin volume production at Fremont in summer 2026 on the converted Model S/X line, chasing a 1M units/year capacity by end of 2026. Prior Optimus timelines have repeatedly slipped.