Elon Musk's Making the Biggest Bet in Industrial History: Why Optimus Collapses the Cost of Labor

Tesla, the company best known for its game-changing electric vehicles, has been teasing the capabilities of their third-generation Optimus humanoid robot, which includes a hand with 50 actuators, which are basically the little motors that control each finger and wrist movement and 22 degrees of freedom, capable of thousands of distinct tasks. >> Now, what's even crazier is that on their Q4 earnings call in January of 2026, Tesla announced they're discontinuing the Model S and the Model X, two of the most iconic electric vehicles ever made, and converting those production lines at Fremont to manufacture humanoid robots at millions of units per year. And the craziest thing of all, this humanoid product has the potential to take the average labor wage from $46 an hour for a human to under $2 for a humanoid. Overall, this points to specialized systems and vertically integrated players shaping what comes next far more than surface narratives suggest.

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