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What's happening in robotics and AI — curated by the wujec.ai editors.
Tesla tore down the Model S/X line in 46 days to build Optimus — and Musk says the ramp will be "long and flat"
Tesla has begun installing its first Optimus production line at the Fremont factory, in the hall where the Model S and Model X were assembled until early May. The teardown took 46 days. The stated capacity of this first-generation line is one million robots a year. That number is the headline. The more informative part is what Elon Musk said around it. He has described the initial output as "quite slow" and the ramp as long and flat, and called the production rate for this year "literally impossible to predict" — because Optimus has roughly 10,000 unique parts, almost none of which Tesla has built at volume before, on a line that has never run. The destination of the first units matters too. They are not going to paying customers. Tesla intends to put early robots into its own factories and workflows first, which is both the cautious choice and the one that keeps the feedback loop inside the company. A second line is planned at Giga Texas, targeted at summer 2027. There is a gap here worth naming plainly. A line rated for a million units a year is a statement about tooling, not about output — annual capacity assumes a mature process running at speed, and Musk is simultaneously saying the process is neither mature nor fast. Both things can be true, and reading the first figure without the second is how humanoid timelines have been mis-reported for three years running. It is also worth noting what has not happened: Optimus V3, the generation this line is meant to build, has had its public reveal pushed back more than once. Until Tesla publishes a specification for the robot coming off that line, the catalogue treats its figures as reported rather than confirmed.
Tesla Optimus Gen 3 →Tesla says 380,000 unsupervised robotaxi miles and zero notable incidents — but still will not say how many cars
On its Q2 2026 earnings call on 5 August 2026, Tesla gave the most specific account so far of its driverless ride-hailing service. AI chief Ashok Elluswamy said the company had driven "more than 380,000 miles of unsupervised robotaxi now across six cities" and had "zero notable incidents". Elon Musk said miles driven are growing more than 10% a week. The six unsupervised cities sit in two states: Austin, Dallas and Houston in Texas, with Miami, Orlando and Tampa added in July 2026. Tesla counts a seventh U.S. market. Two things the call did not settle. First, the fleet size: CFO Vaibhav Taneja declined to give a vehicle count, arguing that robotaxis drive almost continuously, so miles rather than units are the meaningful measure. That is defensible, but it also means the mileage figure cannot be checked against how many cars are actually deployed — and the safety claim is Tesla's own, with no independent audit behind it. Second, what the seventh market is. Tesla's Bay Area operation runs under a California charter-party carrier permit — a limousine licence — with a human driver in the seat. The California Public Utilities Commission has stated the company is not operating an autonomous vehicle service there, and Tesla holds no CPUC driverless deployment permit. A Nevada application for Clark County covering up to 5,000 vehicles was filed on 5 June 2026 and remains pending. On hardware, Musk confirmed Cybercab — the two-seat car with no steering wheel or pedals — has started production at Gigafactory Texas, where Tesla lists annual capacity above 125,000 units. Production cars began engineering test drives on public roads during the quarter and employees started taking Cybercab rides on the factory campus in July. The paying service, however, still runs on Model Y. Software is FSD v14, with v15 in development; Elluswamy said the same v15 models that power Model Y will also run on Cybercab. Cars use Tesla's AI4 computer, with AI5 expected in volume production around the middle of 2027.
Tesla Robotaxi →