Tesla Optimus V3: What Is Confirmed and What Is Rumor

Tesla's own filings confirm four things about the next Optimus: production lines are being installed at Fremont, production is expected in 2026, the first robots will stay inside Tesla to collect training data, and a second Optimus building is going up in Texas. Everything else in circulation about Optimus V3, from its height to its battery, comes from Elon Musk's remarks, earlier prototypes or fan sites. As of our check on 26 September 2026, V3 had not been revealed, and Musk has said it will be shown closer to production start. If Tesla unveils it before you read this, trust the official spec sheet over anything below.

This post separates what Tesla has put on record from what has not been, and compares Optimus with the humanoids you can actually order.

What Tesla has put in writing

Tesla's Q2 2026 shareholder update, filed with the SEC on 22 July 2026, has one short robotics paragraph and two passing mentions of Optimus. It says Tesla has decommissioned the Model S and X lines at Fremont and is installing the first-generation Optimus lines there, "where we expect to start production soon". It says the initial builds "will be used in our Optimus Academy for training data collection and further functionality development". And it says building construction for Optimus at Gigafactory Texas is "in full swing". The capacity table lists both Optimus sites, California and Texas, as under construction.

The same document contains no price, no unit target, no customer, no delivery date and no specification. That absence is informative. Tesla puts its vehicle production rates, energy storage volumes and compute capacity in these updates. Optimus gets a construction status.

The Optimus Academy wording matters too. It means the first robots off the line are data-collection tools for Tesla's own training, the same role Apptronik gave Apollo 2 in 2026. A robot built to gather training data inside the maker's plant is a development stage, not a product launch, however many units it runs to.

What Tesla has said but not filed

A second tier of facts comes from Tesla demonstrations and Musk's public statements. They are official in the sense that Tesla said them, but they are not in a regulated filing and several have moved over time.

The hand is the clearest hardware fact. Tesla's Gen 2 hand, shown in 2023, had 11 degrees of freedom. The newer hand, shown in 2024, has 22. Reports describing it add three more in the wrist and forearm, with the motors moved into the forearm, for 25 actuators per side and 50 across both hands and forearms. That 50 is a figure for the hands and forearms, not for the whole robot, a distinction many summaries lose.

The price target is $20,000 to $30,000 per robot at scale. Musk has used that range since late 2024; earlier he spoke of under $20,000. It is a target for high-volume production, not a list price.

Musk has called 1 million robots a year the long-term goal for the Fremont line (Q4 2025 earnings call) and, according to reports of Tesla's November 2025 shareholder meeting, has spoken of a Texas line for 10 million a year. Those are goals, not production forecasts, and Tesla's filings repeat neither figure.

The timeline has already slipped once in 2026. In January Musk said V3 would be unveiled "in a few months"; on the 22 July earnings call Tesla gave no new date.

The table: source by source

| Claim | Status | Source | |---|---|---| | Fremont S/X lines decommissioned, Optimus lines being installed | Confirmed | SEC filing, Q2 2026 update | | Production expected in 2026 | Confirmed | SEC filing, Q2 2026 update | | First builds go to internal Optimus Academy | Confirmed | SEC filing, Q2 2026 update | | Texas Optimus building under construction | Confirmed | SEC filing, Q2 2026 update | | Hand with 22 degrees of freedom | Shown by Tesla | 2024 demonstration | | 50 actuators across both hands and forearms | Reported, not specified by Tesla | Press and analyst coverage | | $20,000–$30,000 at scale | Stated target | Musk, repeatedly | | 1M/year Fremont, 10M/year Texas | Stated long-term goal | Musk, Q4 2025 call; Texas figure per reports | | V3 height, weight, total DOF, battery, runtime | Not published | Fan sites and estimates | | Consumer version, sale date, SDK | Not announced | None |

Read the right-hand column before the middle one. Only the first four rows come from a document where Tesla carries legal responsibility for accuracy.

What is rumor

Search for Optimus V3 specs and you will find confident numbers: a height of about 173 cm, 78 degrees of freedom, specific weights, battery sizes and runtimes. None of them comes from a Tesla spec sheet for V3. Some are carried over from the original Optimus specification Tesla published for earlier versions. Some are extrapolations from the hand. Some are guesses.

The same caution applies to spec databases, including ours. Our Optimus Gen 3 page marks the robot as in development with no price, and its price note says V3 is unrevealed. Its estimated fields, including weight, payload, joint count, runtime and speed, are placeholders until Tesla publishes figures. The Optimus Gen 2 page is only partly firmer. Its absolute figures come from Tesla's 2021 concept (57 kg, 20 kg carry, 2.2 m/s) and 2022 prototype (a 2.3 kWh battery and 28 structural actuators). For Gen 2 itself, shown in December 2023, Tesla gave only relative figures: 10 kg lighter and 30% faster than its predecessor. The Gen 2 vs Gen 3 comparison will be meaningful only once V3 has a real spec sheet.

A useful test for any Optimus number: can you find it in a Tesla filing, on tesla.com or in a Tesla video? If the answer is no, it is not a spec.

What you can actually buy instead

The comparison that matters for a buyer is not Optimus against its rumoured specs. It is Optimus against robots that ship.

Figure 03 is the closest US equivalent in ambition. Figure reported more than 350 Figure 03 units delivered by April 2026, when its BotQ plant reached one robot per hour, and announced its 1,000th unit built on 23 July 2026. It has a working price model at BMW of about $25 per robot-operating-hour. The Figure 03 vs Optimus comparison shows the gap between delivered hardware and a robot that has not been revealed. 1X NEO is the home-robot alternative. It takes a $200 deposit on a $20,000 Early Access unit, or $499 a month, with priority delivery promised in 2026. As of mid-August 2026 no customer delivery had been independently verified. That is further along than Optimus, which takes no deposits at all, but it is not yet a delivered product either.

If you need a humanoid on your bench this year, the answer is a robot with a public price and a store. Unitree G1 starts at $13,500. The full picture of who delivers what is in who actually ships humanoid robots in 2026.

What to watch for

Three signals will tell you Optimus V3 has moved from rumor to product.

A spec sheet on tesla.com with height, weight, payload, battery and runtime. Until that exists, every V3 number is someone else's.

A production number in a Tesla shareholder update. Tesla reports vehicle output every quarter; when Optimus gets a line in that table, production is real.

An external customer or a price. Internal use in the Optimus Academy is training, not a product. The first named outside customer, or the first price Tesla will accept money for, marks the start of Optimus as something you can plan around.

Until then, plan around the robots that already have all three.