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Tesla ending Models S and X production
- deleted 8mo ago[deleted]
- rajnathani 8mo ago> Tesla’s far more popular models are the 3 and Y, which accounted for 97% of the company’s 1.59 million deliveries last year. TIL that Model S hasn't been as popular. But hopefully when the 2nd gen Roadster finally gets released that it will fill in the slight gap left by Model S's discontinuation.
- shawn_w 8mo agoNo more S3XY lineup of models? I'm surprised Musk was okay with breaking that up.
- Cornbilly 8mo ago[flagged]
- NoPicklez 8mo agoThey've just refreshed their Model 3 and Model Y within the last year or so. With the model Y looking considerably different so I'm not sure where you got that from
- Cornbilly 8mo agoI can give you the Model Y but take a look at the rest of the lineup compared to when they were first released. Hell, you're in this very post calling the S/X old.
- akmarinov 8mo agoAnd yet absolutely no under the hood stats have changed in 8 years - battery capacity, charging rate, charging curve, performance
- NoPicklez 8mo agoSorry? The midrange model 3 now has 750km range as of last year.
- akmarinov 8mo agoIt has 702 WLTP, not 750 And that's because they got the long range battery and put it in a RWD configuration - something they haven't done before. It's not due to any improvement in battery technology, range, charging rate/curve, etc
- jatora 8mo ago[flagged]
- Cornbilly 8mo ago>irrational Oh buddy. I don't think that's the word you want to use here.
- NoPicklez 8mo agoWhy is it seen initially so negatively? There's nothing inherently wrong with a company deciding to stop producing models that are extremely old, have newer comparable models that are more widely available globally and sell multiples more of. So why would you keep those older models? If anything its a good thing. But its Tesla so nothing they do will be spoken positively of.
- mrcwinn 8mo agoYou are, of course, exactly right but you will nevertheless be downvoted for the same reasons you allude to.
- michelsedgh 8mo agothe voting rings at HN are hard at work :))
- browningstreet 8mo agoAs a car company the expectation is that they develop new car models for consumers. They don’t seem to be doing that either.
- NoPicklez 8mo agoThey developed the Model 3 and Y, which is partly why they're stopping the S and X? They completely refreshed the Model Y last year and made a number of updates to the Model 3 including different body word.
- TulliusCicero 8mo ago"Completely refreshed" is doing a lot of work here in that sentence. The new refreshes don't look nearly as big in terms of changes as new generations of car models for other manufacturers, and Lord knows even Tesla fans have plenty of things they'd like to see improved.
- 8mo ago
- SilverElfin 8mo agoFeels a lot like giving up. I guess this is why there is such a strong change in the Tesla messaging, to Robotaxis and robots. But maybe this is inevitable. The cars being made in China are pretty amazing and I don’t think it is possible for American or European companies to compete.
- reactordev 8mo agoWe outsourced it and it would take us 10 years to retool and rebuild that kind of capability. No one wants to take that kind of investment on.
- stackghost 8mo agoThe narrative from Musk cultists has been "Tesla isn't a car company, it's a bet on $excuse_du_jour" for at least a year and a half.
- neets 8mo agoI am surprised that nobody here is talking about grid energy storage, they basically invented that business vertical. It's about 13% of their revenue.
- jbm 8mo agoCertainly longer than that. I actually thought Tesla as an energy company made sense — sadly just an excuse to buy and shelve solarcity.
- baron816 8mo ago> converting Fremont factory lines to make Optimus robots I’m very bullish on humanoid robots, but this seems absolutely batshit insane to me. These things are no where near ready for full scale production.
- ocdtrekkie 8mo agoElon Musk says something absolutely insane on the weekly. Almost none of it actually happens.
- mrcwinn 8mo agoThat’s just nonsense, of course. Almost everything he says happens. It rarely happens on time.
- etchalon 8mo agoA few of the things he says will happen, happen. Many of them happen late. Most of what he says will happen never happens, but people point to the few things that did happen, but were late, and say, "This too will happen."
- malfist 8mo agoAlmost everything he says happens? Thats pretty far from the truth. Isn't Tesla still embroiled in a legal tussle over "full self drive"? What about the $30k model 3? What about the $200/kg to space? He has very little connection to the truth. He's a hypeman and a conman
- rogerrogerr 8mo agoThere are driverless Teslas roaming Texas giving rides _right now_. It happened. It was late, and there will be some fallout for HW3 compatibility with unsupervised FSD, but it happened.
- breve 8mo ago
- harshaw 8mo agoI am confused about what Tesla is doing. They have effectively two automobile products now with one failed product (cybertruck). reading various articles about this doesn't make it more clear. Do they not want to be a car company?
- RickJWagner 8mo agoEVs are becoming commoditized. Tesla doesn’t have the scale ( or experience ) to play that angle.
- Ancalagon 8mo agoliterally what are the gigafactories for then?
- observationist 8mo agoBatteries - lots of uses beyond EVs, but lots of EVs are making use of the batteries they can produce, as well.
- Ancalagon 8mo agoyou could make the same argument about batteries. Panasonic and other exist.
- tyre 8mo agoThe benefit of having control is that they can adapt them to their priorities. Similar Apple designing its own chips when there were already viable producers in the market. They won’t need to rely on others prioritizing their priorities, like low volume, high cost early investments in batteries designed for a market (humanoid robots) that doesn’t exist. If they then scale them up, they also have the benefit that there is no 3p supplier who can turn around and sell those to a competitor.
- avs733 8mo ago
- jmyeet 8mo agoIt seems fairly easy to find figures on how many cars Tesla has produced each quarter but, surprisingly (at least to me), it's harder to find compiled information on (for each quarter): - Average Selling Price; - Cars produced vs cars sold; - How many unsold cars are in inventory. I did find this [1]; - A model breakdown of the above 2. The reason I'm interested in this because my theory is that: 1. Sales have been shifting from the Model S/X to the Model 3/Y, which reduces average selling price and overall profit. Stopping production is really about the inventory glut; 2. Unsold inventory is going up, particularly for the Cybertruck; and 3. Tesla marketshare is collapsing in many markets due to a combination of brand collapse among the most likely EV buyers and competition from lower-priced alternatives, particularly Chinese EVs in developing markets. So what exactly is propping up this company at an above $1T market cap? [1]: https://electrek.co/2025/06/17/tesla-tsla-inventory-overflow-parking-lots-all-over-us/ https://electrek.co/2025/06/17/tesla-tsla-inventory-overflow...
- lotsofpulp 8mo agoWhile this isn’t sale price data, it should be pretty close, and the trends should be clear: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/u/0/d/1F5IQOynIawoXiJPVarLDgPQDJAdzY8b5Vamw-Vf3eSY/htmlview#gid=231426599 https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/u/0/d/1F5IQOynIawoXiJPV...
- tcdent 8mo agoNobody here seems to remember that this was always the plan: release expensive cars to bootstrap the company which allows them to release progressively cheaper cars until everyone can afford one. Not a fanboy, but this seems like it went exactly according to plan.
- mattas 8mo agoWhich phase of the plan talks about repurposing the cheap car factory to make humanoid robots?
- malfist 8mo agoWhere exactly are those cheaper cars? Still waiting for a 30k model 3 like promised.
- willio58 8mo agoElon got distracted and decided we want humanoid robots.
- avar 8mo agoYou already have it. Musk's earliest promise of a $30k price point appears to be an interview in September 2009: https://www.wbur.org/onpoint/2009/09/25/teslas-elon-musk-on-a-sub-30000-electric-car https://www.wbur.org/onpoint/2009/09/25/teslas-elon-musk-on-... Adjusted for inflation, $30k then is around $45k now. Tesla sells a Model 3 for just over $35k. It doesn't make any sense to hold someone to a promise like that and not adjust it for inflation. I think you can legitimately complain that he didn't meet the timeline he was aiming for.
- consumer451 8mo agoI think your point is fair, but look at the 2026 Nissan Leaf. The base is around $28k. This feels like one of the first "affordable" EVs in the USA. It also comes with decent tech without a subscription, and has comparable ranges to Teslas. https://www.caranddriver.com/nissan/leaf https://www.caranddriver.com/nissan/leaf
- reenorap 8mo agoDropping the S and X is going to kill the market for them. Who is going to buy a car that they know is getting discontinued?
- jdross 8mo agoIncluding Cybertruck, it's just 2.75% of sales Q4 sales: Model 3 & Model Y: 406,585 deliveries All Other Models (S/X/Cybertruck): 11,642 deliveries
- _1 8mo agoIt's not like they aren't going to support any new purchases.
- smileysteve 8mo agoS launched in 2012. X launched in 2016. Both launched with slow rollouts. Meanwhile, the average car in use today is 13 years old and getting older. (I currently drive a 22 year old car) It definitely turns me off buying a used model S to know it's being discontinued. And if I extrapolate that to the 3/Y, a new purchase. Given my desire for a midsize family sedan, it makes it feel like BMW i4 or Porsche Taycan just won me over in the future.
- rconti 8mo agoI think of the i4 as being more of a Model 3 / BMW 3 series size car, isn't it? The S is more in line with with 5er. I love the way the Taycan CrossTurismo thing looks, but holy hell getting in and out of it is like getting in and out of a sports car. I expect it to be slightly compromised compared to the competition, not.. extremely compromised.
- ebbi 8mo agoCarmakers discontinue models all the time. The support network is still around, and parts will still be produced for a while.
- 8mo ago
- mrcwinn 8mo agoI’m a little sad (nostalgic?) about this decision. Model S is a truly historic vehicle.
- deleted 8mo ago[deleted]
- vannevar 8mo agoThe next shoe to drop will be shifting Model Y production from Fremont to Austin. Fremont will make Model 3s. Austin will make Model Ys and Robotaxis/2s. Cybertruck will be canceled. None of the Tesla plants will be making robots at any scale for many years.
- phendrenad2 8mo agoYeah I don't buy this announcement. Converting their huge Fremont facility to just making humanoid robots? Do they have some large buyer or something? I'm skeptical.
- deleted 8mo ago[deleted]
- bdangubic 8mo agothey have a large buyer - all of the silly people investing money in the company
- phs318u 8mo ago[flagged]
- epicwynn 8mo agoWe can kill robots without remorse, and they're likely going to be worse than a human agent at most things for a few years. Not a bad timeline for them to waste their time on.
- xnx 8mo agoI'm almost surprised they didn't end model 3 production too. Benefit would be much smaller since 3 and y are already so similar.
- throwaway85825 8mo agoBy the same logic it costs less to keep the 3 in production.
- dzonga 8mo agoTesla has no moat - but one thing I will give to Elon is his incredible strategy in building Tesla 1. Build sports car 2. Use that money to build an affordable car 3. Use that money to build an even more affordable car 4. While doing above, also provide zero emission electric power generation options he got distracted by side-missions, his personal shitty side however if you separate the ideas from the person you can see how such a simple strategy was executed successfully
- willio58 8mo agoThe thing is it’s hard to stop at 4. 5. Peace out from Tesla for a while to pivot hard into far-right politics, using outsized power and influence to wage culture wars, alienate core customers, and inject volatility into a brand that was built on trust, optimism, and engineering credibility. 6. Unveil Optimus as the next grand pillar of the vision, not as a shipping product but as a perpetual demo, a future-shaped distraction that soaks up attention while core execution, margins, and credibility quietly erode.
- SideburnsOfDoom 8mo agoThe problem is that Tesla in step 1 and 2 was a ground-breaking EV market leader. Tesla step 6 Optimus robot is not. Others are ahead, with less hype and more delivery. See Boston Dynamics / Hyundai
- kanbara 8mo agoit’s not a difficult strategy to come up with, tbh. tech companies do this sort of thing all the time.
- sergiotapia 8mo agoIs there another car out there in the US that has a way to type in an address, tap a button, and it drives you there? All other car manufacturers software is terrible.
- bhouston 8mo agoTesla is a meme stock in a similar manner to GME. You cannot bet against them even if they have incredibly unsure future prospectives because there are too many believers who will buy any dips.
- al_borland 8mo agoThat might be a little extreme. Tesla is making electric cars and robots. These are very much things of the future. GameStop is buying and selling used games, which is becoming impossible as consoles keep pushing for digital games. GameStop requires a major shift in their business model to stay relevant, while Tesla just needs to hope the public doesn’t reject the idea of electrics cars out of stubbornness or politics. While there is a lot of hype baked into both stocks, it seems like hype with Tesla is founded in more reality than the GameStop hype.
- jeltz 8mo agoTesla's sales are standing still in a growing market. Are they GameStop? Maybe not, but they still require a major shift or their competitors will leave them behind in the dirt.
- MBCook 8mo agoDidn’t they just announce their profits dropped like 45% year over a year? https://techcrunch.com/2026/01/28/tesla-earnings-profit-q4-2025/ https://techcrunch.com/2026/01/28/tesla-earnings-profit-q4-2... They’ve been overvalued for a very very long time. And then the head of the company decided to alienate as many people as possible. All while pouring a ton of resources into a product that very few people want instead of saner things.
- guywithahat 8mo agoSure but they also beat earnings and revenue targets, and the stock price rose. I think it was expected for EV profits to drop when the tax credit left
- formvoltron 8mo agoTesla's secret weapon will be the dyson sphere. Probably complete within 2.. 3 years maximum.
- eco 8mo agoElon's $1T tranches are mostly based on market cap, right? Switching from just a carmaker to a "physical AI" company could be all he needs to convince the stock market to ignore Tesla's declining profits and raise the market cap even higher.
- bdangubic 8mo agohe’s done it time and time again and I don’t see him failing this time either.
- aunty_helen 8mo agoThe market for humanoid robots hasn’t been established like the market for $40,000 personal transport. Saying that, I wouldn’t be too surprised if robotaxi replaces 90% of taxis and Ubers in the next 5-7 years. But yea, stepping from sinking raft to the next…
- jeltz 8mo agoPotentially in a few cities with high cost of living and nice weather, but certainly not worldwide. Not even the best can handle bad weather yet.
- nebula8804 8mo agoWaymo is launching in Detroit.
- dmbche 8mo agoAnd hit a child today
- nebula8804 8mo agoWaymo said its robotaxi struck the child at six miles per hour, after braking “hard” from around 17 miles per hour. The young pedestrian “suddenly entered the roadway from behind a tall SUV, moving directly into our vehicle’s path,” the company said in its blog post. Waymo said its vehicle “immediately detected the individual as soon as they began to emerge from behind the stopped vehicle.” “Following contact, the pedestrian stood up immediately, walked to the sidewalk, and we called 911. The vehicle remained stopped, moved to the side of the road, and stayed there until law enforcement cleared the vehicle to leave the scene,” Waymo wrote in the post. If a human were driving that child could be in much worse shape. You are being disingenuous by leaving out context.
- cosmicgadget 8mo ago> “If you’re interested in buying a Model S and X, now would be the time to order it.” I can't tell if this is real and he realizes the traditional luxury brands have beaten him or if he's just using the classic rug store sales tactic.
- jeltz 8mo agoIs that an international thing? There was a rug store next to where I grew up in Stockholm which had a sale because they were closing the shop from at least the early 90s until ca 2020 during covid when they closed the shop for real. There are also a couple more rug stores doing the same thing, one of them still to this day.
- cosmicgadget 8mo agoWell, at least Sweden and the US. Kind of amazing.
- decimalenough 8mo agoIt's an international thing, down to the neverending "Closing now fr fr" sales. There was general bemusement in Sydney when one shop notorious for this actually closed down, but only because the building was demolished to make way for a highway interchange. https://www.smh.com.au/business/consumer-affairs/rozelle-rugs-shop-really-is-closing-down-as-westconnex-moves-in-20171220-h07mon.html https://www.smh.com.au/business/consumer-affairs/rozelle-rug... In many countries, "carpet salesman" is equivalent to "used car salesman" as the least trustworthy occupation imaginable.
- Slothrop99 8mo ago"Rug merchant"
- flexagoon 8mo agoThere is a jewelry store in my country which constantly used this tactic and had a "closing soon" sale for YEARS, to the point where it became a meme associated with that specific company. Then they launched a new marketing campaign with the slogan "this time we're not closing - but our prices are as low as if we were!"
- nunez 8mo agoThis is sad in that I was serious about finally getting one in two to three years (We have two Model 3 LRs already), but is fantastic in that no other car interests me and I now don't have this hyper materialistic goal distracting me. If Tesla completely exits automotive and decides to license their FSD tech (or someone else catches up), then I'll probably just get whatever the equivalent of a Bolt is then with that and premium sound. And they just might, too. Recall that the EV tax credit went away this year along with regulatory credits to other auto OEMs, which was a huge part of their business. This combined with the Cybertruck (unsurprisingly!) missing sales targets is problematic.
- lavezzi 8mo ago> This is sad in that I was serious about finally getting one in two to three years Couldn't have said it better
- rconti 8mo agoWait, an S? Why? I've got a 3 LR too and.... I just can't say anything about the extraordinarily long-in-the-tooth S excites me. Usually something is desirable when it's new, then the desirability fades as the product ages and other new, hot things come onto the market. Don't get me wrong, I don't generally lust after EVs, but I am looking forward to the R3X....
- nunez 8mo agoBigger battery, larger center console and the cabin is slightly more premium. Not $76k premium but moreso than the 3. I also really like the yoke. However, the 3 is lighter, has better headlight clusters, the light accent inside of the cabin (that I thought the S was getting, but I guess not), and a marginally better sound system.
- rconti 8mo agoGot it. Yeah, the headlights and sound system on my (2018) 3 are AMAZINGLY good, especially (now) for the age. I drove a 2017 S fairly regularly-- so it's a first year (?) of the refresh, but pretty dated now. The sound system is abysmal (I'm sure it's the low end option) and the car generally feels less cohesive. The yoke and button turn signals would be a deal breaker for me, but to each their own.
- insane_dreamer 8mo agoX sure, but the S? it was the best in the lineup why not kill the cybertruck instead?
- aglavine 8mo agoRoadster will replace S
- driverdan 8mo agoThe same vaporware Roadster that was supposed to come out years ago and that Tesla has not shared any updates on?
- rhplus 8mo agoThe S is simply too expensive. People in the market for $100K+ sedans/coupes are gonna perceive more curb appeal from a Mercedes, Audi, BMW or Porsche. Tesla crashed the allure of its brand by lowering the price point of the Y and 3. The X and S aren’t different enough to attract $100K+ purchasers. (It’s one reason why Toyota and other brands use different marks like Lexus for their high end offerings).
- 46493168 8mo agoSo is the new roadster just not happening?
- csa 8mo agoTesla designer I know said that it’s not something that anyone is currently working on. As such, my guess is “not any time soon”.
- testing22321 8mo agoOn the earnings call Elon said “we’re hoping to debut [next gen roadster] in April, hopefully. It’s gonna be something out of this world.” (I’m just the messenger, don’t shoot me)
- kccoder 8mo agoHe didn't specify the year.
- officerk 8mo agoHe said it's on April 1st [1]. So, yeah. [1] https://techcrunch.com/2025/11/06/tesla-delays-reveal-of-production-roadster-2-to-april-fools-day/ https://techcrunch.com/2025/11/06/tesla-delays-reveal-of-pro...
- system2 8mo agoOn an earnings call, everyone expects it to be this year. Unless specified, it should be this year.
- akmarinov 8mo agoIt’ll be out and immediately cancelled
- vtail 8mo ago"HN is dying" is a cliche, I know, but I seriously want to bookmark this thread to revisit it in 10 years - I'm sure it will age even better than (in)famous Dropbox thread. So from that perspective, HN is alive and well :). The level of cynicism of the discussion is overwhelming, frankly. I get it that some people don't like Musk because of his politics, but why should that prevent people interested in technology to at least try to present a steelman case? Let me try it, at a risk to be down-voted to oblivion... 1. As people correctly point out, S&X are outdated, low volume models. Investing more engineering time in them doesn't make any business sense; these engineering resources and capital should be clearly redeployed elsewhere. 2. People think that Waymo is supposedly better(?) than FSD, but at least some very well informed people (and NVIDIA as a company) believe that it's not. Personal anecdote: an older (HW3) version of Tesla drove me perfectly well in Yosemite last weekend, in on winding mountain roads with 0 cell phone coverage. It will take Waymo forever to map everything there properly with LIDAR, and true autonomy only in selected metro areas has limited value. 3. It's obvious that when we have autonomous, general purpose humanoid robots, they will completely transform our societies. Any such robots would require an enormous AI/vision investment. Say what you want about Elon, but xAI basically caught up with the top LLM shops in ~18 months, and now have comparable AI training capacity. You can bet against Optimus, but who else would have the skills to bring both the technology and the AI to market first? China? Good robotics, but no enough data to train their vision models comparing to Tesla, at least not yet. 4. So the bear case is that (a) driving autonomy is not possible without LIDAR, (b) Tesla can't bring another very complex product to market, and (c) autonomous robots are not possible in our lifetime. If you look at the AI progress even in the last 12 months, that's a tough sell to me. What are the serious, tech-based counterarguments to the points above?
- Der_Einzige 8mo agoDropbox really was shit, the fact that we lampoon the HN anti-Dropbox guy is evidence that this place died long ago. You really could have just done it with rsync and I'm so glad Claude Code exists to kill every other shit SaaS business that doesn't deserve to exist. Dropbox first please.
- 8mo ago
- jaimex2 8mo agoMakes sense and it sounds like Optimus is getting ready for prime time. Are they betting Robotaxi will replace all cars in the future?
- bamboozled 8mo agoHow does it "make sense" to you, really? Can you provide more rationale ?
- jaimex2 8mo agoIf state backed car industry like China's is dumping world wide it would be silly to head to head with them. You're just going to burn cash and a country can go at that a lot longer than a public company ever could. So you double down on what you have that no one else can compete on.
- bamboozled 8mo agoInteresting argument because most Americans seem to have decided governments are inefficient at doing things? So they're efficient at car building now?
- steve_adams_86 8mo agoI'm likely out of the loop, but what evidence is there that Optimus is anywhere close to ready for prime time, or any commercialization at all? I haven't seen anything compelling yet outside of highly edited videos in controlled settings.
- jaimex2 8mo agoIf they're making that move they must have confidence in the progress.
- Gud 8mo agoProbably one of the dumbest decisions taken by a CEO?
- vtail 8mo agoShutting down low-volume, complex project, that needs to be substantially redesigned to be competitive, while these resources can be redeployed elsewhere, in high growth areas? I disagree: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46805773 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46805773
- deleted 8mo ago[deleted]
- shevy-java 8mo agoI think ever Elon made some strange moves (the chainsaw image, mass-firing people at DOGE and elsewhere or the right-arm gesture) people question more why they should give money to where he is associated with. Tesla suffered from this, in addition to the design becoming awkward compared to older models.
- _ea1k 8mo agoIt is sad, but big sedans do not sell well and the X really needed to be replaced with something completely different. There are now several other 3 row EV SUVs competing with it, and even low volume ones (eg, R1S) outsell it easily. Don't be surprised if something else takes its place as they do need something larger than Y and less expensive than X was.
- rpmisms 8mo agoReally sad. I loved my Model S. Amazing car.
- CalChris 8mo agoOne of Oxide+Friends predictions was "6 year: Tesla is out of the consumer car business". https://oxide-and-friends.transistor.fm/episodes/predictions-2026 https://oxide-and-friends.transistor.fm/episodes/predictions...
- ted_dunning 8mo agoEven Tesla pessimists would probably agree with that. The question is whether they will be in any other business by then.
- aetherspawn 8mo agoIf they want to sell a buttload more cars just make FSD free on all Tesla’s, done. The possibility of FSD is probably the only reason I paid $10K more for a M3 over a BYD Seal. But free FSD? Who can compete with that. Nobody. Also, turning FSD into a subscription is total enshittification and I hate it. It would also go a long way to coax back peeved off buyers and convince them not to make their 2nd EV a different brand. My current sentiment towards Tesla for making FSD subscription-only AFTER I bought my car? Screw you. Go to hell. It’s MY $80k asset. I feel betrayed.
- Fischgericht 8mo agoSitting over here in Asia, I am doing a wild guess: Most people in the western world have no clue HOW bad the crisis in our electronics industry caused by AI BS, tariff wars etc is. When you wanted to get anything done in China as a western company, last year you might have issues to have China allow EXPORT. For example due to the pissing contest about Nexperia, a lot of really basic chips like USB controllers suddenly were forbidden for export. And since January 1st 2026, things got far worse: Now some standard connectors (that are, amongst others, used in cars) that are made in the USA can no longer be IMPORTED into China. Which means that you now can typically will have parts missing on PCBAs that you then have to re-solder with the missing US components somewhere else. And many don't have the competence for this anymore. This is all just wild speculation. And I am pretty sure that right now it will be next to impossible to source parts for such a complex product like a robot. I need grey market brokers locally in Shenzhen to get even the most basic stuff at insane prices. And a lot of stuff simply is no longer available at all, due to things like "Intel has replaced anyone with a brain with an AI, and now no longer is able to produce and chip embedded N150 CPUs from the US to China, because... how?". Tesla is now putting in 4680 battery cells back into the Model Y. Years after they had discontinued the 4680 program. What does that mean? They are using up whatever parts they still have, like everybody else in the electronics industry is now doing. Good luck buying a computer, phone, fridge, car or toaster in the second half of 2026.
- bayindirh 8mo agoThe elephant Tesla mocked has run, and stomped over them. Now there comes the pivot. While "The old auto establishment" is not a benevolent structure, they proved that experience is something earned with time and doing things. Corporate knowledge and memory is real, and you can't beat it with brute force. They started the change, but they failed to keep up with the pace. Also hubris, greed and monies.
- uejfiweun 8mo agoI don't really get this take... not when Tesla is by a wide mile the world's most valuable automaker. How does Tesla ending production of the S and X equate to the old auto establishment "stomping over them"?
- bayindirh 8mo agoWorth related statistics doesn't mean anything in the realm of hard engineering. I completely look from the point of "what the companies are doing tech-wise". When Tesla came about, they were distinctively different. A different chassis, a different weight distribution, completely different dynamics. Since they started with a blank slate, their cars were greenfield projects, and they correctly took note of the pitfalls, and avoided them. On the other hand, avoiding past pitfalls or remedying them doesn't make you immune from the future ones, and doesn't mean the other companies can't learn, too. This is where they made the mistake. They overpromised (esp. with the Autopilot thingy) and underdelivered massively on that front, and while they "made" the software-defined-vehicle, they underestimated the problems and behaved like the problems they face are as simple as configuring a web service right. This is what slowly broke them. They also underestimated hardware problems of the car (like using consumer grade parts in the critical parts of the hardware. Remember wearing down flash chips and bricking cars?) Because while car is software defined now, it's also an "industrial system". It has to be robust. It has to be reliable, idiot-proof even. Playing fast and loose with these things allowed automakers to catch them, maybe slowly but surely. Because, "the old automakers" has gone through a lot of blood, sweat and tears (both figuratively and literally), and know what to do and what not to do. They can anticipate pitfalls better then a "newbie" carmaker. They shuddered, sputtered, hesitated, but they are in the move now. They will evolve this more slowly, but in a more reliable and safer way. They won't play that fast, but the products will be more refined. They won't skimp on radars because someone doesn't believe in them, for example. Not everything is numbers, valuations and great expansions which look good on quarterlies, news, politics, and populists. Sometimes the slow and steads wins, and it goes for longer. Physics and engineering doesn't care for valuations. They only care about natural laws. This is what I'm seeing here.
- rswail 8mo agoSo he milked Tesla for another $2B to subsidize xAI, has dropped the models to 2 (3 and Y), revenue is down, growth is negative, BYD is eating Tesla for lunch, followed by the other CN and KR vehicle companies. He doesn't have FSD, camera only navigation without sensor fusion with LIDAR will fail, the only thing keeping Tesla where it is is the bullshit dispersal field that surrounds Musk.
- CursedSilicon 8mo agoCareful now. You'll get branded as a "Tesla hater" for stating facts like that. Or you'll get unflattering ad-homs comparing you to the Electrek guy
- cschmatzler 8mo agoI agree that this decision is insane and the whole Optimus/xAI bullshit is tiring, especially with the shareholders actually voting against the xAI investment, but you should try today's FSD. It's genuinely good and shouldn't be discarded wholesale because the guy sucks.
- tonyedgecombe 8mo agoI'm not sure it is a bad decision given: "Tesla’s far more popular models are the 3 and Y, which accounted for 97% of the company’s 1.59 million deliveries last year."
- rightbyte 8mo agoThat just indicates that the other models were allready being wound down.
- rswail 8mo agoThe problem is not how well Tesla's FSD works, compared to other FSD from other manufacturers. The problem is that Musk has been promising it for almost 10 years and it is still not sufficiently stable to be rolled out and relied upon by car owners. FSD is only actually "ready" in terms of the whole "don't need to own a car for personal transport" when there can be passengers and no driver. When Mom can dispatch the family car to pick up the kids from school.
- Nevermark 8mo agoElon should be sending robots to the Moon, Mars and the Asteroid Belt. That would make much more sense. Setup automated low gravity refueling depots. Then automated mining of the solar system will scale up as it more than pays for itself. And as with Starlink, SpaceX synergy would give him a serious advantage. Much faster to achieve (despite the challenges), less expensive, and more profitable than a human Mars colony which would burn money without return for decades. (Regardless of wishful thinking, civilizations coming backup is a second substrate adapted to the rest of the solar system, not a colony suffering truly miserable conditions. Although I am all for human exploration, which would also be easier and cheaper on the back of expanding automated infrastructure.)
- bob1029 8mo agoI think Tesla would make way more sense if they got out of the car part of the business. Serving the consumer market directly is very expensive. Their electronics, batteries, motors, etc., are world class. Packaging this up into something a partner can use to build actual cars could have less risk. An electric motor or battery can propel many kinds of automobile. They tend to keep their value better when stored in this format too. The moment everything is integrated into a car, things get very bad very quickly unless you're selling Ferraris or Lamborghinis.
- notahacker 8mo agoThat would be lower margin and narrower moat even if they had the partners lined up and didn't have a valuation based on the assumption one day the car everyone would use would be a Tesla.
- flakeoil 8mo ago> Their electronics, batteries, motors, etc., are world class. This was maybe true 5-10 years ago, but not today.
- WorldMaker 8mo agoYou can compare the market cap of say GM (automaker) to Bosch (massive automaker supply chain and logistics company) to get a sense of why that sort of pivot would probably not be appreciated by the market. Supply chain companies are usually considered "lesser" companies.
- 2OEH8eoCRo0 8mo agoThey don't make their own battery cells they are an integrator of third party cells.
- apparent 8mo agoInteresting that they're cutting S/X but keeping the Cybertruck. Whatever metric they're using (revenue, profit, units, etc.) that led them to cut the S/X would surely have similar numbers for the Cybertruck, if not worse.
- protastus 8mo agoThe metric for the Cybertruck is the impact to Elon's ego. Nothing about this project is rational.
- apparent 8mo agoThe only rational reason I could come up with is that the pool of potential Cybertruck buyers is not as saturated as for S/X, which have been around for quite a while.
- numpad0 8mo agoPainted metallic chassis of a car is always dipped in car sized acid baths and primer baths. Dipping the whole cars held on a carriage is the only way it's done, anywhere, for any brands, using any metals, even many Ferrari, as well as with many classic car restoration projects. Your cars will be competing with brand new 1960s Fords and Mazdas if you were not doing it in terms of corrosion resistance - unless, I'm guessing, you're making DeLoreans and Cybertrucks.
- snek_case 8mo agoPart of it is they wanted that factory space at Fremont for the Optimus production line. That's because the Optimus team is located there, in Silicon Valley.
- apparent 8mo agoWondered about that also. Seems like a really big decision to cut off the S and X though! Will they have something else to offer customers who want something more than a Y?
- mdavid626 8mo agoSo many Tesla/Musk haters around here.
- deleted 8mo ago[deleted]
- flakeoil 8mo agoPeople are just being rational and pragmatic.
- sidcool 8mo agoHow so?
- throwaway132448 8mo agoThey have self-respect.
- flakeoil 8mo agoThey say Tesla cars are not better than any other EV nowadays. They say the Tesla stock is overvalued. They say the Tesla robot will likely not be a super hit in terms of sales. I don't see it as hate. It's quite pragmatic views.
- anon_anon12 8mo agoI can imagine Musk selling these very models with AI slapped onto them and call it revolutionary
- nusl 8mo agoFSD will launch next year, of course. Just like every year.
- dabinat 8mo agoBefore Tesla came along there were a small number of EVs but they were all pretty bad because their only purpose was to serve as “compliance cars” in states like California so automakers could sell more gas cars. (See the documentary Who Killed the Electric Car? for more on this.) So Tesla deserves credit for building the first electric cars that people actually wanted to buy. They also deserve credit for building the largest and most reliable charging network - a key factor in making electric car ownership more feasible. But they’ve made a lot of poor decisions recently and all the money and power went to Elon’s head. I think it was beneficial to the world for Tesla to exist and do that important work early on, and now it’s beneficial to the world for the company to die.
- snarky_dog 8mo ago[dead]
- WorldMaker 8mo agoThe sequel Revenge of the Electric Car is a very interesting follow up, especially now with hindsight. It followed the stories of the Tesla Roadster, Nissan Leaf, and Chevy Volt all in about the exact same time period and stages of development. Of those, the Leaf is the only model that has continuously existed since then, and from the documentary there is a sense of that. GM admits the Volt was a stepping stone and not the final product. Tesla's part of the documentary involves a lot of trials and tribulations and even Tesla seeming unsure about their manufacturing problems. (Though the documentary itself spins a hopeful tune.) Of the figures in the documentary the most prescient seems to be Carlos Ghosn, then in charge of Renault-Nissan. He very much insisted that EVs weren't just the future, they were the scramble for the present. Renault took that message to heart and seemed to be the side that won it in the messy divorce that also eventually wound up with Ghosn getting charged for treason and embezzlement in Japan. Which is an incredible and weird story on multiple levels and maybe the documentary makers will get a chance to include that in a third movie for the series.
- Ekaros 8mo agoI can get them ending products. That is natural cycle. But what should be worrying is that they have not already introduced at least one model that replace either one. It looks like real stagnation which in long term will kill the company.
- antonyh 8mo agoAny other car company would create an S / X MkII.
- cesarvarela 8mo agoYup, and most are dying and getting bought by Chinese capital.
- podgorniy 8mo agoI guess self-driving will be done by the humanoid robots now
- sgjohnson 8mo agoTesla will become a case study on how to completely waste the first-mover advantage. For many people, the very term EV itself is still ubiquitous to Tesla. And somehow Tesla is still worth more than every other non-Chinese automaker combined. $1.5T. GM? $80B. Stellantis? $40B. Toyota? $280B. Mercedes-Benz? $60B. BMW? $55B. Volkswagen Group? Also $55B. I’m sure I’ve missed plenty of others, but I could miss some 18 $50B automakers, and Tesla would still be worth more than all of them combined. If Tesla was valued fairly, it would probably be at the tune of $5B. But I’ll never bet against it, because the markets can remain irrational for longer than I can remain solvent. And for some unbeknownst to me reason, the markets value Tesla as a hot tech company, not a 3rd rate automaker, which is what it actually is. And to add insult to injury, even GM Super Cruise is widely renowned as better and safer than Tesla’s current “FSD”.
- vagab0nd 8mo agoI feel like there's this weird information gap that shouldn't be there in this day and age. FSD drives me around every day. 99% of the time, I don't touch the steering wheel for the entire trip, both city and highway. It's obvious to me that it is working well and has tremendous value. As far as I know, no other car on the market can do this. But apparently this info is not reaching a large number of people. I'm genuinely confused.
- Traster 8mo agoI think you're totally wrong on this. Tesla didn't waste the first mover advantage. They benefitted from it whilst it existed, but Electric vehicles turned into a commodity, which was entirely expected and there's no moat. You've explained yourself why it would be untenable for Musk to pursue becoming the biggest car manufacturer in the world - if he succeeded in that goal... he would have succeded in shrinking the value of the company significantly. It's pure logic that Tesla has to pursue bets that would justify billion dollar valuations and being a car company isn't that.
- CRConrad 8mo ago> It's pure logic that Tesla has to pursue bets that would justify billion dollar valuations and being a car company isn't that. Isn't this in reply to a post (or was that another reply just below it?) about how other, "traditional", car companies are valued at 55, 60, 80, and 280 billion dollars...? Seems being a car company and having a billion dollar valuation isn't all that incompatible.
- cmoski 8mo ago> Tesla is developing Optimus with the aim of someday selling it as a bipedal, intelligent robot capable of everything from factory work to babysitting. I did not look forward to the news articles about robots accidentally dropping or squashing babies.
- slowhadoken 8mo agoI wish people that jeer Musk would decide if he’s running his companies or not. They think he’s an ignorant figure head and a conniving strategist. I don’t care either way just stick to one.
- varjag 8mo agoSo essentially down to making one car huh.
- podgorniy 8mo agoElectric cars hype topic is has rotted away. Time to bring new, yet novel for the the public. Now people will belive in the musk stories of the future shaped by the humanoid robots, not shaped by the electric cars. Who cares if in 3 years they will switch to another subject if stock keeps being pupmed (and compoensation keeps flowing in the hands of this guy). His idea is to keep involving more investors, more people, government is possible in tesla's orbit with nice stories. When other are so invested the failures aren't his problem anymore, he got hist compensation which is tied to the company price.
- Havoc 8mo agoTesla must be in serious trouble given recent erratic moves
- yazantapuz 8mo agoRelevant part: "Tesla's far more popular models are the 3 and Y, which accounted for 97% of the company's 1.59 million deliveries last year."
- danw1979 8mo ago> Tesla is developing Optimus with the aim of someday selling it as a bipedal, intelligent robot capable of everything from factory work to babysitting. “Full Automated Parenting”. You win a Darwin award on behalf of your kids if you fall for this shtick.
- dlisboa 8mo agoElon Musk is already doing that kind of parenting, so I can see how he likes it.
- DalasNoin 8mo agoThese robots give of a kind of dark vibe to me, especially with everything going on in his AI company. How long until one of them kills someone? I'd prefer a home robot that can't kill me (like something that is passively safe).
- shanehoban 8mo agoHard to believe, but it's almost 10 years since they announced the new Roadster
- sidcool 8mo ago[flagged]
- davedx 8mo agoFSD has been maturing for ~an entire decade now. Their latest stunt with moving the supervisor to chaser cars has made a lot of people understandably angry anew: Musk has to hit his robotaxi milestones to get more billions, so he's forcing the programme ahead with smoke and mirrors to get his stock option grants. Their profit is decreasing, revenue growth is negative. Their autonomy programme is always "just one more update" away. Humanoid robotics is already full of competition from hundreds of other startups and larger companies (even Amazon, an AI sceptic, has a significant robotics programme). I wouldn't call them a failure, but they certainly seem to have lost their way, and you have to really drink the kool aid to be able to justify the valuation in any sense.
- sidcool 8mo agoI agree that Tesla over promised. I strongly feel they'll deliver, albeit late. That does not make it a failure though.
- top_sigrid 8mo agoThere is no evidence of unsupervised robotaxis actually rolling out. These are just the same promises Elon has wrongfully done since literally 10 years and some publicity stunts.
- sidcool 8mo agoPeople have taken rides in unsupervised Teslas. Please check news.
- top_sigrid 8mo agoYes, privy influencers. And it was supervised from the car behind it. No one else was able to find such a ride. Tesla cars also autonomously self-delivered. Which also turned out to be a one-off publicity stunt. Up until now, nothing points to that this is something different this time.
- RCitronsBroker 8mo agosomeone is stuffing their channels, huh? first the fsd fiasco, now this
- cs702 8mo agoFive years ago, during the 2021 Q1 earnings call, Musk was asked about Models S and X. He responded: > I mean, they’re very expensive, made in low volume. To be totally frank, we’re continuing to make them more for sentimental reasons than anything else. They’re really of minor importance to the future.
- wodenokoto 8mo agoAs someone who isn’t deep into Tesla, I honestly don’t know what they have to offer that 3 and Y doesn’t. Now the Roadster, I could see make sense as a trophy car that rubs off coolness and sportiness to the rest of the lineup
- slantaclaus 8mo agoI recently helped my parents buy a Tesla. Shopping the SUVs it was confusing to us comparing the X and the Y. From what we could tell the only major difference between X and Y was the X’s acceleration and top speed which we didn’t care about. Twice the money for X and it just didn’t make any sense at all to even consider buying the X over the Y
- swedishuser 8mo agoPretty sad seeing people take pleasure in the company failing. See past your opinion about it's leader. At the end of the day, it's the company that brought vehicle electrification to the masses and has acted cash cow for SpaceX, Starlink and Neuralink.
- nessbot 8mo agoHe's not just the leader, he's the primary beneficiary, and he's a blatant white supremacist. He's arguably responsible for the deaths of over 1 million people world wide from his short tenure shutting down USAID[0]. So yeah, I'd say its more than fine to take pleasure in his failings. [0] https://www.cgdev.org/blog/update-lives-lost-usaid-cuts https://www.cgdev.org/blog/update-lives-lost-usaid-cuts
- deleted 8mo ago[deleted]
- sidcool 8mo agoIs Tesla really failing? They have $40 billion cash at hand. More than some legacy automobile market cap.
- snek_case 8mo agoThey're clearly not failing, but if you read comments here or on reddit, lots of people want them to, and have wanted them to for a decade.
- throwaway132448 8mo agoNot nearly as sad as people getting emotionally invested in corporations. Add why should anyone look past their opinions about the leader? We have the saying “the fish rots from the head” for a good reason. Tesla has been rotten ever since Elon got involved.
- snek_case 8mo ago> Add why should anyone look past their opinions about the leader? Because it's the most advanced car manufacturing in the US... Virtually the only successful EV maker outside of China, and it provides over 100,000 jobs worldwide.
- thelastgallon 8mo agoComing up next: Tesla to end production of all cars and sell only NFT/Crypto with pictures of Cybertruck going to the moon/mars. This is the only company which provides Speculation as a Service. With a complete monopoly on SPaaS, the market cap will skyrocket to $20 Trillion. Elon will be given Nobel peace prize for saving mankind from itself as well as physics.
- el_nahual 8mo agoThere is in fact one person who has won both the Nobel Peace prize and a hard-science one: Linus Pauling. Chemistry 1954, peace 1962.
- sebastian_z 8mo agoA genuine question, what are the use cases for Tesla's Optimus robots? Are they consumer products that help with household chores, industrial robots for warehouses or manufacturing, a play toy, something else?
- palmotea 8mo ago> A genuine question, what are the use cases for Tesla's Optimus robots? Are they consumer products that help with household chores, industrial robots for warehouses or manufacturing, a play toy, something else? Convincing investors to buy and hold Tesla, because of the vague promise of some great technological innovation being just around the corner. Electric cars and partially automated driving don't serve that purpose anymore.
- ozten 8mo agoThey are one of several memetic devices which keep Tesla’s stock price in orbit, untethered from reality.
- testing22321 8mo agoIf they actually work (and I’m not saying for one second they will), they’re intended to be all those. I have no doubt there will be many tens of millions of them, it’s just a question of when. 5 years? 10? 50?
- WarmWash 8mo ago>A genuine question, what are the use cases for Tesla's Optimus robots? A longer horizon promise of multi-trillion dollar wealth generation for Tesla. As the whole robotaxi thing is starting to fizzle, Elon has quite notably talked more and more about how actually Optimus is the true gem of Tesla.
- deleted 8mo ago[deleted]
- blinding-streak 8mo agoThey are a financial engineering product with limited real world utility, in an attempt to keep the company solvent.
- yalogin 8mo agoLooks like they are not selling the larger vehicles at all, so why not kill the truck too? It’s god awful and a flop. Ego? Or thy want to try to revive it? What they are really signaling though is with EVs they are not able to differentiate between the higher and lower cost models enough to show value to the higher end models. This is a huge failure IMO. Model S was the OG car that really was looked up to when it launched. It did have them luxury image, by not matching the build and interior of the car to the image Tesla really dropped the ball. Now the S is seen as inferior to the other luxury cars in that price range and so it’s becoming tough for Tesla to differentiate between the 3 and S. This actually brings up the larger question, does musk care about cars at all at this point? Or does he just want to move on to robots? Feels like his heart is not on the cars.
- diamondfist25 8mo ago[flagged]
- mdjt 8mo agoHaving read through the comments I think this is pretty bad take. The vast majority of the criticism seems pretty reasonable to me. By any metric you would use on any other company, Tesla is overvalued. It trades largely on hype/missed promises. It’s bitcoin but with regular earning reports. Your inability to read critical thought and not scramble to claim mental derangement because those doing the criticizing don’t agree full heartedly with your supreme leader is pretty funny to me.
- nkotov 8mo agoI know that the Model S platform is old but for me it was always seen as a halo car. I've owned three of them and I really wished they would release a completely redesigned S version.
- m463 8mo agoI think this is where someone says "you're not the target market" I thought the same thing about the (usable, upgradable) mac pro, but then they came out with the trash can mac pro 2013.
- frogperson 8mo agoI simply dont care how good or bad the cars are. I will never put a penny in Elon's hand. He is a despicable nazi and a terrible person. I hope he goes bankrupt.
- therealdkz 8mo ago[dead]
- t14000 8mo agoDo you believe Mr Musk though?
- boondongle 8mo agoI just hate that what's actually going on with this company is so buried between Musk's bs, and people hate Musk so much that they spew bs as well. Seems to be just "pick your liar" with this company. X going away probably isn't surprising given sales dynamics. More people would tend to opt for the cross-over or sedan. The model S is a little more shocking since it was always niche, but honestly Tesla doesn't have the trim to be priced like that and I suspect in order to get from where they're at to BMW/Audi etc., just isn't where they want to invest their money. This definitely feels like an "oh no, people stopped buying" pivot but the moves themselves make sense.
- TheCyanCatz 8mo agoIs it just me or does Tesla design the doors so when you look at the car from the front with both its doors open it looks like their logo.
- eastbound 8mo agoTesla’s models, S 3 X Y, meant “Sexy”, especially since the logos were written in this order in the menu bar of their website, which is also their order of creation. What are they going to do with “3Y… ?”