Tesla is ending production of the Model S sedan and Model X SUV, CEO Elon Musk announced Wednesday during the company’s quarterly earnings call.
The company will build the final version of the electric vehicle in the next quarter, he said, adding that the company will offer support to existing Model S and Model X owners “as long as people have the vehicle.”
“It’s time to basically bring the Model S and X program to the end with a respectable discharge, because we are really moving into a future based on autonomy,” he said. “So if you’re interested in buying a Model S and X, now would be the time to order.”
The Model S and Model X are both built at the Fremont, California factory. Once production is complete, Tesla will build the Optimus robot in the same factory space, according to Musk.
Tesla opened Model S in 2012, and it is considered to be the first car that made electric vehicles a lot of attention. The Model X is Tesla’s second electric vehicle program.
Tesla always intended for more affordable models – the Model 3 sedan and the Model Y SUV – to sell more than their predecessors.
But sales of both models have been flatlined in recent years, despite interior and exterior refreshes along the way. Tesla has faced increasing competition in the luxury EV space from legacy automakers, as well as upstarts like Rivian and Lucid Motors.
Techcrunch event
San Francisco
|
13-15 October 2026
“So it’s a bit sad, but now… it’s time to end the S and X programs,” Musk said.
Tesla’s first ground-up design
The Model S wasn’t Tesla’s first car – that title went to the original Roadster. But the Model S was Tesla’s first car built from scratch.
That helped eliminate many of the tradeoffs from the Roadster, and paved the way for the Model S to become one of the true mass-market electric vehicles.
Tesla launched the sedan in 2012 with a base price of $57,400. It has a floor-mounted battery that helps make it roomier and far more dynamic to drive than some other all-electric vehicles available at the time.
Tesla also offers the Model S with multiple battery sizes, allowing customers to pay more for EVs.
The car was instantly popular, with Tesla amassing more than 10,000 reservations when the first deliveries began in June of that year. In 2013, it became MotorTrend car of the yearbeat the best gas cars from around the world.
“At its core, the Tesla Model S is just a great car you drive to fill up,” MotorTrend wrote.
Tesla iterated on the Model S in later years. It changed the battery options – at one point even offered larger battery packs with some software-limited, in a bid to get customers to use a sort of “buy now pay later” attitude.
So does the Model S first Tesla to get “Ludicrous Mode,” which is able to go from 0 to 60 mph in just 2.8 seconds. It’s a fun feature that’s also one of Tesla’s sharpest word-of-mouth marketing tools.
Tesla continues to improve the Model S, giving some industry-leading that still beats most other EVs and overall exterior and interior refresh in 2021. But at that time the success of the company has skyrocketed behind the lower model 3 and Model Y.
Fabergé SUV
Model X is not so easy.
First teased before the release of the Model S in 2012, the Model X SUV did not hit the streets until 2015. At that time, it came with an overly complex “Falcon Wing” rear door that folds up.
This made it extremely easy to get in and out of the Model X. But the door – along with the rest of the SUV – proved very hard to build in size with any reliable quality over the years. Musk finally called it’s the “Fabergé car.” It is a nod to luxury stylings and features, but also to the fragile nature of the Model X.
The Model X is still selling well alongside the S, and it’s also getting a big refresh in 2021. But production problems have also plagued the new version, and Musk admitted in early 2022 that Tesla made a mistake by ending production before the redesigned Model X. ready to be made to scale.
For a long time
Come to think of it, the retirement of the Model S and Model X is a long time coming.
Musk himself said in 2019 that Tesla still makes these “niche” vehicles more for “sentimental reasons than anything else.”
“They are very important to our future,” Musk said at the time.
At the time, Tesla was still selling tens of thousands of Model S and Model X SUVs every quarter. But the company’s latest new model is on the horizon: the Cybertruck.
Revealed in 2019, Tesla has big plans for the Cybertruck. The company says it will sell the basic version for $40,000, and make 250,000 per year. Delays caused by the covid pandemic, along with a complex new design, meant that the vehicle reached the market sooner than anticipated.
Once on the road, the Cybertruck turns into a bomb. A supposed backlog of 2 million orders never materialized, and also not the $40,000 base price. Tesla has struggled to sell just a few thousand each quarter since then.
The Cybertruck’s failure may have given cover to the Model S and Model X. Not only did the two legacy EVs help quite balancing the terrible popularity of his garish truck, Tesla also bucketed three vehicles as “other models” when reporting quarterly sales figures, making it hard to say just how badly the Cybertruck was doing.
But Tesla is now a company aiming to achieve autonomy in cars, and in robots, according to Musk. That was eventually done on the Model S and Model X.
He may have had “small importance for the future (Tesla) seven years ago. But he will be very important for the early years of the company, and the construction of Musk as a wealthy businessman in modern society.