Tesla confirmed this week that Model S and Model X production is over. Roughly 600 vehicles remain in inventory worldwide. The Fremont factory lines that built those cars are converting to manufacture Optimus humanoid robots instead, with a target of one million units per year at $20,000 each and public sales beginning in 2027. Tesla also placed a $685 million actuator order with Chinese supplier Sanhua Intelligent Controls, according to Telemetry by The End Effector, enough components for roughly 180,000 robots.
Modern cars have been quietly becoming robot platforms for years. The Cybertruck runs on 48-volt architecture with Ethernet replacing the CAN bus, using just 155 wires compared to 400-500 in traditional vehicles. Steer-by-wire, centralized compute, zonal controllers, sensor fusion through a unified data bus. They're automotive robotics concepts, and they apply whether the robot carries passengers or walks on two legs.
Ford CEO Jim Farley admitted his engineers found the Mach-E wiring harness was 70 pounds heavier and 1.6 kilometers longer than Tesla's equivalent when they tore down a Model Y in 2022. Ford's next-gen electric vehicle platform now adopts the same zonal architecture, with a wiring harness 4,000 feet shorter than the Mach-E's. S&P Global estimates Tesla holds a five-year lead in this electrical architecture over every other automaker.
The tier-1 automotive suppliers are following the money. At CES 2026, Hyundai Mobis announced it will supply actuators for the new Boston Dynamics Atlas. Actuators make up over 60% of a humanoid robot's material cost and have been a persistent bottleneck in robotics. Atlas GM Zack Jackowski said the partnership lets Boston Dynamics access the cost structures and scale potential of the automotive industry. Boston Dynamics has since asked Mobis for five additional components including grippers, sensors, controllers, and battery packs. All 2026 Atlas allocations are already committed, with fleets shipping to Hyundai's Robotics Metaplant and Google DeepMind.
German supplier Schaeffler partnered with China's Leju Robotics to develop all-in-one actuators and opened a dedicated embodied intelligence unit in Suzhou.
There's a strategic catch. Chinese manufacturers control roughly 70% of the global humanoid component supply chain. A Goldman Sachs survey found suppliers like Sanhua and Tuopu Group are building capacity for 100,000 to one million robot-equivalent units annually, ahead of firm orders. The global robotics supply chain is starting to look like solar panels and EV batteries, where Chinese manufacturing dominance creates a structural advantage Western firms can't easily match. Tesla's $20,000 Optimus price depends on that Chinese supply chain. And skepticism persists about whether Tesla can hit its aggressive timeline, given the company's history of overpromising on autonomous tech and the safety requirements of software-defined physical actuation.