The Model S and X Are Gone. Tesla's Fremont Factory Now Has a New Purpose.

The line that built the Model S and Model X is gone. Forty six days was all it took to close one chapter and open another.

Tesla shared a short video showing the entire decommissioning process of the original Model S and Model X assembly line at its Fremont factory, and that number, 46 days, is what stands out. In less than two months, a production line that once represented the cutting edge of electric vehicle manufacturing was stripped out completely and replaced with the foundation for something entirely different.

What is going in its place is Optimus, Tesla's humanoid robot.

It is worth pausing on what this factory meant before we talk about what comes next. Tesla started producing the Model S at the former General Motors and Toyota plant in Fremont in 2012. It was the car that proved electric vehicles could be desirable, practical, and genuinely fast. The Model X followed in 2015, bringing the same platform to a family SUV format with those unmistakable Falcon Wing doors. Together, they changed what people believed electric cars could be, and over 14 years, the two models combined for more than 610,000 vehicles produced on that same floor.

As the Model 3 and Model Y grew to dominate Tesla's sales, the Model S and Model X gradually faded, eventually being grouped together with the Cybertruck under the label "Other Models" in Tesla's quarterly reports. Their final units rolled off the line in early May. On May 12, Tesla held a small farewell ceremony for the two models, producing 350 invitation-only final vehicles, with the last Model X covered in handwritten signatures from the workers who built it. Then the line went dark.

What is being built in its place is unlike anything Tesla has attempted before. Optimus has roughly 10,000 unique parts, and unlike Tesla's cars, there is no established supply chain to draw from. Everything is being built from scratch. As Elon Musk put it on X, after walking the newly installed Fremont production line:

"No, Optimus production will be extremely slow at first, as everything is new. This is not like making a car."

That honesty is worth appreciating. Tesla has set an ambition of producing one million Optimus units per year from this facility eventually, and an internal production target of 50,000 to 100,000 units by year end. But Musk has been clear that getting there will take time. The manufacturing setup also looks different from a traditional car assembly line. Rather than a single linear production system, Tesla is using a modular approach with multiple sub-assembly lines, most of which are expected to be heavily automated.

More than 1,000 Optimus units are already working inside Tesla's Fremont and Giga Texas facilities as of early 2026, sorting battery cells, moving parts between stations, and performing basic quality checks. Musk acknowledged these are primarily collecting real-world data and learning rather than doing productive work at scale. But the learning those robots are doing now is what will inform how the production line operates once it is running.

Beyond Fremont, Tesla is already breaking ground on a second Optimus factory at Gigafactory Texas, targeting a long-term annual production capacity of 10 million robots per year with production expected to begin in summer 2027. That Texas facility is being built for the higher-volume next generation variant. The scale Tesla is describing here would make Optimus one of the most mass-produced robots in history if it is achieved.

Tesla has said enterprise customers will be the first to receive units, with early access pricing expected in the range of $100,000 to $150,000 per robot. Consumer pricing at Tesla's long-term target of $20,000 to $30,000 is not expected before 2028 at the earliest, and only becomes possible at production volumes of one million units or more per year.

The Model 3 and Model Y lines at Fremont are staying put and are not affected by any of this. They remain America's best-selling EVs and the core of Tesla's vehicle business for the foreseeable future.

The floor that launched the modern electric car era is now being set up to build something that could eventually be just as significant. Whether Optimus gets there is still an open question. But Tesla has already made its bet, and the factory walls are the proof.

Source: InsideEvs