Claim: Tesla has started building a factory to produce 10 million Optimus units per year
From the Robots digest for 2026-10-20
What happened: A translated note.com piece published October 20, 2026 (~8:47 PM ET) claims Tesla has started building a factory intended to produce 10 million Optimus units per year, framing the number as a brutal scale check on the robot program's earlier "millions" and 2027-launch framings. The timing is the night before the company's October 21 Q3 earnings call.
What's genuinely new: A development of the Optimus production record — the dedicated factory with structural steel scheduled by October, the on-record "several hundred Optimus a week" output, and Musk's ">1,000 robots a week" claim with hand troubles. A 10-million-per-year target is an order of magnitude above all of it, and the piece supplies no Tesla source, no site, no timeline, and no filing behind either the target or the claim that construction has started. Against the same record's measured constraints — the China magnet-export restrictions blamed on October 13 for setting Optimus production back by months — this is an announce-grade claim, with the distinction sharp and unaltered: claimed, not shipped.
Watch: the October 21 earnings call for an on-record production figure; a named site and timeline behind the claimed factory; whether the 10-million target appears in any Tesla document.
Links: note.com — Tesla has started building a factory to produce 10 million Optimus units per year