U.S. electric vehicle corporations Tesla will begin mass production of the Humanoid Robot Optimus as early as late July. Optimus is currently being test-run at Tesla's factories, focusing on relatively simple tasks such as parts sorting and box stacking and transport. Tesla plans to deploy Optimus in its electric vehicle plants once it produces a certain volume, replacing repetitive or dangerous tasks previously done by people.
Hyundai Motor Group also recently announced a mass-production plan to produce 30,000 units of the Humanoid Atlas by 2028. With China's Unitree aiming to ship 20,000 units this year and leading on the mass-production front, competition among representative Humanoid Robot corporations in Korea, the United States, and China is heating up. Having a comparative edge in performance while securing price competitiveness appears to be the key variable that will determine leadership in the Humanoid market.
According to the robotics industry and foreign media reports on the 1st, Tesla plans to start mass production of the third-generation Optimus V3 from late July to early August. Since May, it has been dismantling the Model S and Model X electric vehicle production lines at its Fremont, Calif., plant and building an Optimus production line. Separately from the Fremont plant, Tesla is building a dedicated Optimus factory around the Giga Texas plant in Texas, aiming to begin operations next year.
Tesla has not disclosed a production target for how many Optimus units it will produce this year on the dedicated line. Tesla CEO Elon Musk said after the first-quarter earnings release in April, "Optimus contains more than 10,000 parts and will be mass-produced for the first time on an entirely new production line, so it is impossible to predict the production rate."
Optimus has been developed as a general-purpose Humanoid Robot capable of performing various tasks in diverse environments such as factories and homes. Its goal differs from that of industrial robots that handle only specific processes in factories. In the initial mass-production phase, Optimus will be deployed in factories and logistics sites for industrial use, and over the long term it is planned to be used for housework or care services in homes and service fields.
The specific specifications and design of the third-generation Optimus have not yet been disclosed. On this, Musk said, "Every time we reveal something, competitors analyze it frame by frame in great detail and copy it to the maximum extent."
Unlike Tesla's Optimus, Hyundai Motor Group's Atlas is an industrial robot that will work in manufacturing and logistics sites. Hyundai Motor Group presented 2028 as the start of Atlas mass production. Starting in 2028, Hyundai Motor Group plans to produce 30,000 Atlases annually and deploy 25,000 units first to electric vehicle plants such as Hyundai Motor Group Metaplant America (HMGMA) in Georgia. Initially, the group said it will apply Atlas to regular logistics tasks at HMGMA, such as parts sorting and transport, and from 2030 it will expand Atlas's scope to core manufacturing processes such as parts assembly.
Boston Dynamics, the robotics affiliate that developed Atlas, decided to build a robots and AI center in Waltham, Mass., as its research and development (R&D) hub. The robots and AI center will improve technical completeness across the robot lineup—including Atlas, the quadruped robot Spot, and the logistics robot Stretch—and establish assembly standards for commercialization. Atlas production is expected to be handled exclusively by a new Robotics holding company that Hyundai Motor Group will establish in the United States.
The most advanced in mass production at present is China's Unitree. After shipping 5,500 Humanoid Robots last year—the largest annual volume in the world—Unitree is aiming to ship up to 20,000 units this year. Unitree plans to use about 4.2 billion yuan (about 1 trillion won) to be raised through a Shanghai Stock Exchange listing in the second half for new product development and production facility expansion.
Unitree is considered to have an advantage over Tesla's Optimus and Hyundai Motor's Atlas in terms of production cost and price competitiveness. The average selling price of Unitree's Humanoid lineup fell from 600,000 yuan (about 130 million won) in 2023 to around 160,000 yuan (about 36 million won) last year. In particular, the most popular product, the G1, has a base price of around 99,000 yuan (about 22 million won).
The reason Unitree was able to sharply cut prices in two years is that it secured cost competitiveness by designing and producing key components in-house. Unitree's production cost is around $9,000 (about 13 million won), about one-tenth of the estimated production cost of Tesla's Optimus (about $100,000). Unitree produces in-house the actuator—the key component that accounts for more than half of a Humanoid's cost and controls joint motion—as well as motors, reducers, and motor drivers. The robotics industry estimates that the share of externally sourced parts in Unitree's Humanoid manufacturing cost is around 20%.
By contrast, Tesla and Hyundai Motor Group are known to have a higher reliance on external supply chains. Tesla is said to use parts supply chains in China and Taiwan while doing final assembly in the United States, and over the long term it is expected to increase in-house production of key components such as actuators. Through mass production, Tesla aims to lower production costs and eventually set the consumer sales price at around $30,000.
A robotics industry source said, "Because the core component supply chain for Humanoid Robots is already concentrated in China, it is unavoidable to use the Chinese supply chain," and added, "However, as the Trump administration has recently moved to curb the use of Chinese robots and parts, there will likely be moves to adjust procurement methods for supply chain stability."
The production cost of Hyundai Motor Group's Atlas is currently estimated in the mid-$100,000 range. Samsung Securities expects that if Atlas production reaches 30,000 units, production costs will fall to one-fourth of the initial level. Once a certain level of economies of scale is reached, production costs can be significantly reduced. To secure price competitiveness, Hyundai Motor Group announced plans to build actuator production facilities by 2028 to secure annual capacity of 350,000 units.
While China is overwhelmingly strong in cost competitiveness, some say it lags the United States in performance. According to analysis by Song Yeji, an analyst at Hana Securities, Tesla's Optimus can carry 20–25 kilograms and operate for 4–5 hours, whereas Unitree's G1 is usable for light logistics tasks with a load capacity of around 3–5 kilograms.
In fact, 75% of the Humanoid Robots that Unitree sold are being used for education and research at universities and research institutes. Some also say there is a long way to go before real-world industrial deployment. Increasing utilization at industrial sites—currently under 10%—is cited as the key for Unitree to expand its market.