Tesla's robotics team landed in Ningbo on September 16 and began a new round of production audits for the Optimus humanoid robot on September 17, focusing on verifying exclusivity and consistency for mass production1. The audit is also assisting supply chain partners with equipment debugging and migrating manufacturing capabilities from U.S. factories to Chinese suppliers.
Tesla has already placed orders with supply chain companies, with plans to produce approximately 50,000 Optimus units in 2026 for deployment across its global gigafactories. Batch purchase orders for approximately 5,000 Optimus components were placed with core suppliers in early September. Tesla issued capacity guidance to suppliers requiring production capacity to reach 1,000 units per week by September and 2,000–2,500 units per week by year-end.
China supply chain reacts
The audit news triggered a rally in China's A-share Tesla supply chain stocks2. Joyson Electronics hit the daily limit up, while Tuopu Group rose 4.36% and Zhejiang Sanhua Intelligent Controls gained 2.70%.
Morgan Stanley calculated that excluding Chinese components would raise Optimus Gen2 material costs from approximately $46,000 to approximately $131,000. China imposed export controls on seven rare earth elements and related magnetic materials in April 2025, and Elon Musk acknowledged during that quarter's earnings call that the controls had affected Optimus production. Five Chinese companies were approved to build factories in Thailand to produce humanoid robot skeletons, joints, and control systems for arms and fingers.
Hardware iteration and team turnover
Optimus has undergone five years of iteration since the Tesla Bot concept debuted at AI Day in August 2021. Tesla released the official GEN-1 version in March 2023, followed by Gen2 in December of that year. Tesla disclosed in February that Optimus Gen-3 will not use any existing supply chain and has been redesigned from first principles, with a next-generation prototype planned for Q1 2026.
The program has also seen leadership changes. Milan Kovac announced his departure from the Optimus project engineering head role in mid-2025, and Ashish Kumar left Tesla's Optimus AI team in September to join Meta.
ANALYSIS The scale of the capacity guidance—ramping to 2,000–2,500 units per week by year-end—would need to sustain for roughly five months to reach the 50,000-unit annual target, assuming the ramp begins on schedule. The Morgan Stanley cost differential between Chinese and non-Chinese sourcing underscores why Tesla is deepening its China manufacturing footprint for Optimus despite the geopolitical friction around rare earth export controls.
Elon Musk's history of shifting production timelines leaves the market cautious about whether the 50,000-unit target will be met on schedule, according to the supply chain report.