Tesla is shifting production at its Fremont factory from electric vehicles to Optimus humanoid robots, but faces manufacturing challenges with complex robot hands and employee resistance to training their potential replacements. CEO Elon Musk has positioned Optimus as potentially Tesla's biggest product, though the company struggles to scale production toward its 1,000-per-week target by end of 2026.
Toyota is training humanoid robots with worker assistance to deploy 400,000 factory robots by 2028, investing $6.42 billion annually. The company plans 150,000 robots in its own plants and 250,000 at group facilities, though executives claim the shift aims for human-robot coexistence rather than workforce replacement.