Tesla has announced it will convert an existing U.S. manufacturing plant into a dedicated assembly line for its Optimus humanoid robots, shifting capacity away from vehicle production to support its new robotics initiative.

The move underscores Tesla’s ambition to diversify beyond electric vehicles and capture a robotics market, with leadership explicitly likening Optimus’s growth potential to the revolutionary impact of Apple’s iPhone.

Reconfiguring the plant will involve extensive retooling of assembly floors and retraining of staff to handle robotics manufacturing, marking Tesla’s first large-scale operational pivot from car to robot production.