Elon Musk wrote “No” on X on Friday afternoon when asked whether Tesla would open ordering for its Optimus humanoid robot in December, a direct denial of a report published earlier the same day.
The reply came under a post by Robert Scoble that quoted a San Francisco Standard article claiming Tesla was preparing consumer reservations in early December 2026.
The Standard’s report, by Rachyl Jones, cited Modar Alaoui, a robotics investor at ALM Ventures who also runs the Humanoids Summit. Alaoui told the publication that Tesla had said reservations would open around the Dec. 1-2 summit in San Mateo, California, or in the days immediately afterward.
Tesla did not respond to the Standard’s request for comment, and the company has not published any consumer order page or confirmed a reservation fee.
Musk’s reply is the only primary-source response to the December claim. TeslaNorth noted that Scoble’s post combined a timing question with a joke about ordering a robot, so the “No” should be read as a reply to that post rather than a formal company statement on when orders will open.
Even though Elon Musk said a big no, I still have a question: when, if ever, will consumers be able to reserve an Optimus?
On the Q3 2026 call, held Oct. 21, Musk said Tesla expects to begin delivering Optimus to companies outside Tesla around the end of 2027. He listed the AI, the electromechanical design and reliability as the remaining technical hurdles, with the robot’s hand singled out as a particularly difficult hardware problem. An Optimus engineer on the call said custom gears still carry reliability concerns.
Tesla has begun early production on a high-volume line at its Fremont factory, in space previously used for Model S and Model X vehicles.
Musk said it will take at least a year, possibly longer, to reach a rate of roughly 20,000 units per week, which would annualise to about one million robots. The company plans to build 10,000 to 20,000 robots for internal task training in what it calls an Optimus Academy, and it intends to put its AI5 chip into Optimus around April 2027.
For our readers who want to buy an Optimus, the practical consequence is straightforward: there is nothing to reserve today, no confirmed price for consumers and no delivery date for households.
The Standard reported that the first shipment is expected to include the Optimus V3, with most units going to businesses and a smaller allocation for consumers. Alaoui put the expected consumer price above $20,000. Those figures come from a single industry source, not from Tesla, and remain unconfirmed.
The gap between a reservation rumour and a firm order window is familiar territory for Tesla watchers.
We should note that Tesla has accepted reservations for its Roadster car for a decade, with buyers paying more than $50,000 to join a list that has produced no deliveries yet in 2026’s end.
Musk’s public comments regarding the timeline for Optimus have also changed: in 2024 he said Tesla would build Optimus for internal use in 2025 and hopefully in high volume for other companies in 2026; in January 2025 he said Tesla would build about 10,000 robots that year, with several thousand doing useful work by year-end, and later acknowledged none were.
A reservation page, if it ever appears, would be a customer-interest exercise that runs well ahead of the manufacturing reality Musk described on the earnings call.
Until Tesla publishes an order page, a price list, and a consumer delivery schedule, the December waitlist story is just a rumor.
