Tesla is ending manufacturing of the Model S sedan and Model X SUV, CEO Elon Musk introduced Wednesday throughout the firm’s quarterly earnings name.
The firm will make the closing variations of each electrical autos subsequent quarter, he mentioned, including that his firm will supply help for current Model S and Model X house owners “for as long as people have the vehicles.”
“It’s time to basically bring the Model S and X programs to an end with an honorable discharge, because we’re really moving into a future that is based on autonomy,” he mentioned. “So if you’re interested in buying a Model S and X, now would be the time to order it.”
The Model S and Model X are each constructed at the firm’s Fremont, California manufacturing facility. Once manufacturing ends, Tesla will construct Optimus robots in the similar manufacturing facility house, based on Musk. Production of Tesla’s Cybertruck, which is made at the firm’s manufacturing facility outdoors of Austin, will proceed.
Tesla launched the Model S in 2012, and it’s thought to be the first automotive that made electrical autos broadly interesting. The Model X was Tesla’s second main electrical car program.
Tesla at all times supposed for its extra inexpensive fashions — the Model 3 sedan and Model Y SUV — to tremendously outsell their predecessors.
But gross sales of each fashions have flatlined in recent times, regardless of inside and exterior refreshes alongside the manner. Tesla has confronted elevated competitors in the luxurious EV house from legacy automakers, in addition to upstarts like Rivian and Lucid Motors.
Techcrunch occasion
San Francisco
|
October 13-15, 2026
“So that is slightly sad, but it’s… it is time to bring the S and X programs to an end,” Musk mentioned.
Tesla’s first ground-up design
The Model S was not Tesla’s first automotive — that title goes to the authentic Roadster. But the Model S was the first automotive Tesla created from the floor up.
That helped it ditch a variety of the tradeoffs of the Roadster, and paved the manner for the Model S to develop into one in all the first true mass-market electrical autos.
Tesla launched the sedan in 2012 with a base worth of $57,400. It had a floor-mounted battery that helped make it roomier and much more dynamic to drive than the few different all-electric autos that have been out there at the time.
Tesla additionally supplied the Model S with a number of battery sizes, permitting clients to pay up for extra EV vary.
The automotive was immediately in style, with Tesla amassing greater than 10,000 reservations for it by the time the first deliveries began in June of that yr. By 2013, it had develop into MotorTrend’s automotive of the yr, beating out the greatest gasoline automobiles from round the world.
“At its core, the Tesla Model S is simply a damned good car you happen to plug in to refuel,” MotorTrend wrote.
Tesla iterated on the Model S in the years that adopted. It modified up battery choices — at one level even providing bigger battery packs with vary that was software-limited, in a bid to get clients to undertake a form of “buy now pay later” angle.
The Model S was additionally the first Tesla to get “Ludicrous Mode,” which made it attainable to go from 0 to 60 m.p.h in simply 2.8 seconds. It was an exhilarating characteristic that additionally turned one in all Tesla’s sharpest word-of-mouth advertising and marketing instruments.
Tesla saved bettering the Model S, giving it industry-leading vary that also beats most different EVs and an general exterior and inside refresh in 2021. But by that time the firm’s success had skyrocketed on the backs of the less expensive Model 3 and Model Y.
The Fabergé SUV
The Model X was not so easy.
First teased earlier than the launch of the Model S in 2012, the Model X SUV didn’t hit the streets till 2015. When it did, it arrived with overly complicated “Falcon Wing” rear doorways that folded up.
These made it extraordinarily straightforward to get in and out of the Model X. But the doorways — together with the remainder of the SUV — proved to be very laborious to construct at scale with any dependable high quality over the years. Musk ultimately known as it the “Fabergé of cars.” It was a nod to the luxurious stylings and options, but additionally to the Model X’s brittle nature.
The Model X nonetheless bought pretty properly alongside the S, and it additionally acquired an enormous refresh in 2021. But manufacturing issues plagued the new model, too, and Musk admitted in early 2022 that Tesla made a mistake by halting manufacturing earlier than the redesigned Model X was able to be made at scale.
A very long time coming
In hindsight, the retirement of the Model S and Model X have been a very long time coming.
Musk himself mentioned in 2019 that Tesla was nonetheless making these “niche” autos extra for “sentimental reasons than anything else.”
“They are really of minor importance to our future,” Musk mentioned at the time.
At that time, Tesla was nonetheless promoting tens of hundreds of Model S and Model X SUVs per quarter. But the firm’s first actually new mannequin was on the horizon: the Cybertruck.
Revealed in 2019, Tesla had large plans for the Cybertruck. The firm acknowledged it will promote a base model for $40,000, and make 250,000 of them a yr. Delays introduced on by the Covid pandemic, together with the car’s complicated new design, meant the car hit the market far later than anticipated.
Once it did hit the street, the Cybertruck bombed — though Tesla continues to publicly help it, together with throughout Wednesday’s earnings name. A supposed backlog of two million orders by no means materialized, and neither did the $40,000 base worth. Tesla has struggled to promote just some thousand of them per quarter ever since.
The Cybertruck’s failure probably gave the Model S and Model X some cowl. Not solely did the two legacy EVs assist barely offset the garish truck’s horrible reputation, Tesla additionally bucketed the three autos as “other models” when reporting quarterly gross sales figures, making it laborious to say simply how badly the Cybertruck was doing.
But Tesla is now an organization aimed toward fixing autonomy in automobiles, and in robots, based on Musk. That’s apparently what finally did in the Model S and Model X.
They could have been of “minor importance” to [Tesla’s] future seven years in the past. But they are going to at all times be essential to the firm’s early years, and the building of Musk as an uber-rich businessman who now looms over trendy society.
