Tesla will open Optimus reservations in December. Here's the fine print.
Reserve your Optimus soon?
Tesla will open consumer reservations for its Optimus humanoid robot in early December, timed to the Humanoids Summit in San Mateo on December 1-2. Modar Alaoui, the conference organizer, told The San Francisco Standard that Tesla confirmed the timing directly, and that the reservation window would open either at the event or in the days immediately following. Tesla is a key partner of the conference this year and plans to demo the Optimus V3 there.
It's the first time ordinary consumers will be able to put their name on a list for a Tesla robot. But ... the robots likely wouldn't ship for another year.
What a reservation actually means
Tesla did not respond to questions about whether a deposit will be required, how many units will be allocated to consumers versus businesses, or what exactly a reservation holder is agreeing to. So be aware: the price could be a target, not a guarantee. The deposit structure is unknown, and even when you order, the delivery timeline is likely to be an estimate.
Elon Musk has stated a long-term consumer target price of under $20,000 at volume production. That is in line with 1X's Neo, but it's very aggressive.
This may work as a very limited introductory price, but the robot is likely to eventually cost more.
On the October earnings call, he said he expects to be "delivering Optimus to companies outside of Tesla" around end of 2027. So ... companies first, consumers second, and probably in smaller numbers.
The gap between that target price and the actual build cost is significant.
Current manufacturing cost is estimated at $50,000 to $100,000 per unit. Getting from there to $20,000 requires a the kind of supply chain maturation and production volume that has, so far, proven difficult ... even for the highest-volume Chinese manufacturers.
On the same earnings call, Musk described Optimus as "the hardest product to scale manufacturing that we've ever made," and noted that everything on the robot is new.
What Optimus V3 actually is
The V3 stands 173 cm tall, weighs 57 kg, and features hands with 22 degrees of freedom, double the Gen 2 hands. It runs on Tesla's AI5 chip, which the company says delivers roughly 5x the memory bandwidth of the prior generation. The chip shares neural network architecture with Tesla's Full Self-Driving platform. There are 37 joints in the full body, 9 more than the previous generation.
Payload specs:
- 20 lbs carry
- 150 lbs deadlift (I'll believe this one when I see it)
- Walking speed: 1.2 m/s
- Balancing on 15-degree slopes
Big caveat: these are not independently verified specs. Tesla has not published an official spec sheet, held a full product reveal, or demonstrated V3 in a comprehensive public task evaluation.
The production numbers Musk keeps mentioning
Tesla is targeting 20,000 units per week by end of 2027.
At scale, Musk has suggested 1 million Optimus units could ship annually by late 2026, scaling toward 10 million at Gigafactory Texas. Those are aspirational figures. The more grounded number on the earnings call was "companies outside Tesla, end of next year."
For context: Tesla missed its stated goal of shipping roughly 10,000 Optimus units in 2025. As I've previously noted on Forbes, what Tesla has shown publicly in public demos has not reached the capability level of Figure, Apptronik, or 1X's NEO.
Tesla has serious advantages in motors, actuators, batteries, capital, and compute. Converting those advantages into a deployed robot performing real tasks at competitive quality is the massive challenge.
Why the December timing makes sense for Tesla
Opening reservations generates press coverage, builds a waitlist, and creates a concrete signal of consumer demand without requiring anything to ship. It's a great buzzy, viral way to launch a potentially very hot product.
Apple has used this playbook repeatedly. Tesla itself used it for years with the Cybertruck. Reservations also let Tesla gauge early adopters' price sensitivity before committing to a final retail price. If 100,000 people reserve at an implied $25,000, that's a different launch than if 5,000 do.
The December timing places the announcement squarely in the holiday news cycle and creates a natural cadence: reserve now, delivery countdown in 2027. It ties to a conference where Optimus will be demoed, giving press something to write about beyond the reservation form itself.
What to watch
The December announcement will tell us the deposit amount (if any), whether Tesla is still targeting sub-$20,000, and how they describe the enterprise vs. consumer allocation split. The Optimus V3 demo at the Humanoids Summit will be the most significant public performance evaluation the robot has had. What tasks it performs, how well, and whether it does them continuously without resets or interventions: that's the information the industry actually needs.
Musk has a long history of optimistic timelines on Optimus. The December event is real, but whether it marks a demonstration of a market-ready product or a sophisticated preview of what might become one is the question the demo will answer.
Sources
Written by
I tell stories with data and build startups. I've raised angel and VC funds, led software companies and startups, and chronicled the rise of the mobile economy. Currently I write for Forbes, host several podcasts, and am starting up HumanoidMegaHub. I was TUNE's mobile economist and Singular's VP of Insights, built the research team at VentureBeat, and managed teams creating software for partners like Intel and Disney. In past lives I built websites, e-learning platforms, and mobile apps, and, a long time ago, was named to Folio's top 100 of the media industry's "most innovative entrepreneurs and market shaker-uppers.”