Elon Musk is betting that Tesla’s future isn’t about cars at all. And the Tesla CEO has once again reiterated what he said last year too. Tesla’s future won’t ride on cars but on humanoid robots. On Tesla’s earnings call this week, Elon Musk laid out a literal replacement of Tesla cars by robots – announcing Tesla would discontinue the Model S and Model X in favor of making more of its Optimus robots.Tesla also announced plans to end production of its Model S and Model X vehicles. The company will now use the manufacturing plant in California that made those cars to produce its line of humanoid robots – known as Optimus. “We’re gonna take the Model S and X production space in our Fremont factory and convert that into an Optimus factory … with the long-term goal of having 1 million units a year of Optimus robots in the current SX space in Fremont,” Musk said.In 2024, Musk said that Optimus could eventually make Tesla a $25 trillion company (the market cap sits at $1.4 trillion today) and last year said that 80% of Tesla’s value will eventually come from the robots. While Musk said that the company is planning to spin up a production line for Optimus that can build a million units per year, he acknowledged that, “we’re still very much at the early stages of Optimus,” and referred to it as a research and development project. “We wouldn’t expect to have any kind of significant Optimus production volume until probably end of this year,” said Musk, who is notorious for missing self-imposed deadlines.

Elon Musk calls China ‘the biggest competitor’ in the humanoid robot market

During Tesla’s recent earnings call on CEO Elon Musk acknowledged that “China is good at scaling and manufacturing, and is also strong in artificial intelligence (AI),” while claiming that he believes China will be a key competitor in the humanoid robot market, and China will be the toughest competitor for Tesla. “I think China will be by far the biggest competitor in the humanoid robot market. China is extremely good at scaling and manufacturing, and is also strong in AI — the models being released there are already quite good and are improving rapidly,” Musk said, in response to a question about the recent surge of startups — particularly from China.In April 2025, Musk said, “Tesla and SpaceX are No. 1, and then now, I’m a little concerned that on the leaderboard, ranks two through 10 will be Chinese companies, but I’m confident rank one will be Tesla,” Musk continued.China is the world’s largest manufacturer and user of robots, and competitions in the sector are expected to drive the development of robotics technology for the benefit of society. According to an industry report by Omdia, Chinese robotics firm AgiBot shipped over 5,100 humanoid robots in 2025, securing a 39 percent share of the global humanoid robot market.