Who Is Tesla Selling 1 Million Humanoid Robots A Year To?

In its latest quarterly report for shareholders, Tesla mentions “robots” three times. Two of those times were in the “Robotics” paragraph/section:

“Preparations for our first large-scale Optimus factory will begin shortly in Q2. The first-generation line, designed for 1 million robots a year, will replace the Model S and Model X lines in Fremont. We are also preparing Gigafactory Texas for the second-generation line, which is being designed for long-term annual production capacity of 10 million robots.”

So … Tesla ended sales of the Model S and Model X (which weren’t that high anyway these days) in order to start producing the Optimus humanoid robot. Or perhaps those models were being discontinued no matter what and so Elon Musk just decided to use that space to produce the robots. Either way, instead of producing about 40,000 units of the Model X and Model S each year, Tesla plans to build about 1 million robots a year within that same space.

But who is Tesla going to sell these robots to? I’ve been waiting to see if there’s some more news on this or more details on who would be buying the robots, but I’m just seeing various news agencies referencing this quarterly announcement.

Tesla’s humanoid robots have hardly demonstrated any notable capabilities, but they’re supposed to cost tens of thousands of dollars each once they’re launched. At such a high price (relative to products and food people actually need), it’s truly confusing who is supposed to be buying these up like hotcakes. Normal people can’t plop down $30,000 on a robot companion, and how many super rich people are really going to benefit from one? And $30,000 is probably an overly optimistic price. Who is going to spend $30,000 or more on what is basically a toy?

Are these robots going to clean your house, do your dishes, or do your laundry for you? No. Are they going to take your kids to the park or pick them up from school? Are they going to go shopping at the store for you, or do yardwork? No.

Well, sales to individual consumers aren’t supposed to begin until the end of next year, 2027, anyway. So, these robots are initially supposed to be used in Tesla factories and sold to companies running other factories. But, again, who needs to buy $30,000 humanoid robots that are not actually capable of doing that much? There are various task-specific robots for factories. How many companies are going to spend tens of thousands of dollars on humanoid robots that still have various limitations and are much slower on the whole than humans? How many factories need early versions of robots like this?

I just don’t see where Tesla is supposed to be getting orders for a million of these robots a year, or even numbers well below a million. But perhaps someone has an answer on this and there is evidence these Optimus robots are going to be a hot commodity and will sell like french fries at a basketball game. Maybe I’ve missed something on how this makes much more sense than keeping the Model S and Model X production lines running.

By the way, the other line from the Q1 2026 Tesla quarterly report referencing robots is the following: “Digital Optimus represents the next evolution of our AI development. We are working on automating digital workloads, building an intelligence layer that will complement the real-world AI we have built to operate vehicles and humanoid robots.”