Tesla has started building Optimus. You still can't buy one.

A quiet week for arrivals and a busy one for the Slip Index. Tesla kept one promise, broke another and moved a third, all in one earnings call. Nothing new landed in the UK.

The lead: Optimus is in production, and the robot sales are a year later

Tesla’s third-quarter update on 21 October says “Optimus production began in Fremont on our high-volume lines”, and lists the California line as “Early Ramp”. It calls the output the “first production-quality bots” it has made. It doesn’t say when production started.

On the earnings call, Elon Musk called it “early production” and said reaching full rate would take “at least a year, maybe a little longer”. Deliveries to companies outside Tesla are now “likely to be towards the end of next year”, industrial uses first, with home robots later. A Tesla engineer said the hand is one of the hardest parts of the hardware. There was no price and no date for unveiling the third-generation design. Musk offered a video “in a month or so”.

For the record, here’s how the Optimus entry now scores:

• Kept: production starting “later this year”, from Tesla’s July update.
• Missed: Musk’s April line that production would start in “late July or August”. Tesla’s first public confirmation came on 21 October.
• Moved: sales to other companies, from Musk’s 2024 “hopefully … 2026” to the end of 2027.

The only consumer timing on record is still Musk’s Davos remark about selling to the public by the end of 2027. Tesla has named no countries.

What it means for you: nothing to budget for. There is no pre-order, no price and no UK plan. If you want a humanoid in a British office or classroom this year, the Unitree models at Scan are still the ones you can buy, from £4,799.99 on pre-order for the R1 Air to £20,999.99 for the G1, which Scan lists as “low stock”. They are for education and demos, not housework.

Shipped

• Nothing newly landed this week. We checked every item on the board.
• Still out of stock: the Roborock Saros Z70 is £1,599 on Roborock’s UK store and marked “Out of stock, coming soon!”, as it has been on every check this month.
• Fergus, the trade job-management app, is advertising “90% off til December” on its UK pricing page, which brings Essentials to £3.90 a month. The page doesn’t say how many months the discount lasts, so ask before you sign up.

Due in

• Deliveroo robots: Canary Wharf was promised for “this October”. By Sunday we had still found no report of a completed customer delivery from Deliveroo, Coco or the press. That leaves four days after this lands. If nothing turns up, the Slip Index will score it missed on 1 November.
• Snap Specs: specs.com still says the glasses are available to pre-order in the US, UK and France, with no shipping date and no sterling price. The “this fall” promise runs out on 30 November.
• Meta VR Glasses: Meta’s UK product page now says “Coming early 2027”. The US page still says spring. It’s a rare thing on this board, a date that might be moving earlier, so we’ve logged it as a new promise and will see which one holds. Still no UK price.
• Android XR glasses: nothing official from Samsung or Google. November is still a report from an unnamed Samsung official, not a promise.

Delayed

• Driverless pilots: still no permit reported for a passenger service with nobody at the wheel. The government’s “later this year” now has nine weeks left. Uber and Pony.ai’s London testing, announced on 8 October for “the coming weeks”, hasn’t been reported as started either.
• Waymo London: on 20 October Waymo announced Madrid, aiming for “first riders in 2027”. The post doesn’t mention London, where the promise is still rides “in 2026”.
• Gemini in Google Workspace: skills inside Workspace apps are still “delayed until further notice”, with no new date. Skills in the Gemini app are due to finish rolling out by mid-November, and that’s now on the Slip Index too.
• Vertical’s Valo: the certification target is still 2029, but money is now the bigger question. Aviation Week reports that Vertical’s August filing flagged “material uncertainty” over whether it can continue as a going concern, with funding expected to last only to the third quarter of 2027 without new capital. In September it began a review of “strategic alternatives”. It says certification work continues.

Not orderable, still

• 1X NEO: one headline this week said 1X had started delivering NEO. The article underneath said there was still “no independently verified report of a confirmed customer”. We agree with the article. The US “2026” promise has nine weeks left.
• Tesla FSD: no tenth EU country reported, and no UK application. Tesla’s new “Assisted Driving” name changes nothing about what’s allowed on British roads.
• Figure 03, Neuralink: nothing new for the UK. We checked.

That’s the board for this week. If you know someone who’s been promised a robot colleague, forward this to them. See you next Tuesday at 7am.