Elon Musk is bracing for another round of production hell.
The Tesla CEO said on Tuesday that the ramp-up of the company’s Cybercab robotaxi and Optimus robot, both set to enter production this year, would be “agonizingly slow.”
“The speed of the production ramp is inversely proportionate to how many new parts and steps there are,” wrote Musk in a post on X.
“For Cybercab and Optimus, almost everything is new, so the early production rate will be agonizingly slow, but eventually end up being insanely fast,” he added.
Tesla is set to begin production of the Cybercab, a sleek two-seater robotaxi that Musk has said will ship without a steering wheel or pedals, in April. The billionaire is targeting an eventual production goal of 2 million units a year.
The Cybercab, which Musk said in 2024 would cost around $25,000, is set to enter mass production as Tesla races to expand its robotaxi service after a sluggish start.
The company launched autonomous ride-hailing in Austin last June, but it only has a small number of Model Y robotaxis on the road in the city and has not yet removed human safety monitors from its vehicles.
Meanwhile, Optimus, its humanoid robot designed to help with everyday tasks, is set to enter production by the end of 2026, with Musk saying Tesla could eventually make one million a year.
The Tesla CEO told investors in October that it would take a while to reach that goal as the company was having to manufacture almost the entire supply chain from scratch, with production moving at the speed of the “slowest, dumbest, least lucky thing out of 10,000 unique items.”
Musk’s comments echo what Tesla is telling its employees. In an all-hands meeting in October, the company’s VP of AI software told staff on Tesla’s Autopilot and Optimus teams that 2026 would be the “hardest year” of their lives, Business Insider’s Grace Kay exclusively reported.
‘Production hell’ round two?
It wouldn’t be the first time Tesla has faced a rough road while scaling an ambitious new product.
The company endured a famously brutal period of what Musk called “production hell” while building its Model 3 EV in 2017. Musk and other employees resorted to sleeping on the factory floor as they struggled to scale the mass-market model.
Tesla also faced production challenges with the Cybertruck, the company’s last new vehicle.
The electric pickup’s unique design and stainless steel-clad structure made it highly challenging to produce at scale, and Musk acknowledged in 2023 that Tesla had “dug its own grave” with the Cybertruck’s design.
The divisive electric truck also serves as a caveat for Musk’s ambitious production goals.
Musk’s predictions that Tesla could produce 250,000 Cybertrucks a year have fallen short, with industry data showing the company sold just over 20,000 Cybertrucks in the US last year.
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