The refresh would need large investment. And it seems that S/X weren't selling that well to warrant such an investment. Just looking around - SV, a key market for Tesla - everybody buys 3 and Y, not S and X. In some sense it seems that 3/Y cannibalized S/X.
I don't know if it's genius or madness, but all of Tesla's cars look the same. When I see a Tesla, I can't tell if it's a 3, S, X, or Y unless I get close. The most distinct one is the X with its fancy doors.
So when I hear they're cancelling the S and X I can't even picture which cars we're talking about.
While that's true, S/X were considered luxury vehicles, 3/Y mainstream and they far, FAR outsold the S/X. In most cases, volume trumps individual prices.
Of course, that doesn't mean they had to discontinue those lines.
268K of 5 top end Mercedes models were sold in 2025 (and like 1/3 of them were sold in Maybach or AMG version!). Where is Tesla S and X combined sales were only 32K in 2024 and 18K in 2025.
You wouldn't mistake Mercedes S-Class for E-class and E-class for C-class. Even BMW 7 vs. 5 vs. 3 look more distinct than Tesla S vs. 3 and X vs. Y. The Mercedes and BMW do the good job of market differentiation while in my view Tesla failed here, and thus cheaper 3 and Y cannibalized sales of S and X. Thus, paradoxically, given that Tesla started in luxury segment, Tesla hasn't recently been capturing that high margin of the luxury segment (which is doing very well overall - just look at those Maybach and AMG numbers)
The problem is just there is no concept of a car company where they only sell their standard mass market vehicles. Somewhat more expensive higher margin vehicles are in the lineup for almost all the other companies. Its kind of strange to suggest its not worth it when it is seemingly worth it for most other companies.
Maybe the wisdom of having a 'full lineup' is wrong and has to do with making dealers happy.
On the other hand, having 99% of your sales be 2 very similar vehicles seems questionable strategy.
It is worth it when it is done right, i.e when you do correct market differentiation (see my other comment here on Mercedes) to avoid your low end cannibalizing your higher end. This high margin really helps you, and this is why almost everybody does it. EVs are probably even better suited for it given that the platform itself is easier/cheaper to share between the low end and the high end - thus the current Teslas S/X story looks even more of a failure as by releasing 3/Y that similar to S/X (that probably helped a lot with 3/Y sales though) they forced themselves into the need for a very significant (expensive) redesign of S/X while having very low sales of it.
The big issue with S/X was that they were not luxury enough, in terms of performance they were fine. So the redesign was mostly needed in terms of interior quality, materials and so on. Not that crazy expensive and something all other car companies manage to do.
I see it differently - they needed to redesign everything except the power train. I.e. in addition to the interior, externally it should have been looking way upscale from 3/Y. Giving that their design language is already almost 2 decades old, they needed (and actually would still need it for 3/Y max 5 years down the road) to have a full redesign for S/X similar to how BMW did with 2002 7-series trickling down that design into 2004 5-series and 2006 3-series (or like Mercedes did with S-class in 1996 and trickling down that to E and C later)
Musk would love to be selling several billion dollars per year of model S/X sales, the issue is they aren’t that competitive with other cars in the luxury segment thus the falling sales numbers.
Tesla’s doesn’t really have a complex strategy at this point, they are getting squeezed out of the high end by legacy automakers where their lower cost batteries don’t matter as much. They are absolutely fucked on the low end as soon as Chinese cars enter the picture.
So self driving is really the only option to sell any long term upside to keep the stock from tanking. It’s not a very convincing argument, but you play the hand your dealt.
> getting squeezed out of the high end by legacy automakers where their lower cost batteries don’t matter as much. They are absolutely fucked on the low end as soon as Chinese cars enter the picture.
The deep irony here is that after ~15 years of trying ti differentiate from the legacy American automakers, they land in a very similar competitive position. Chinese EVs are in the process of running the table outside the protectionist markets of the EU + US/Canada.
Eventually those protective barriers will fall as they protect a relatively small number of citizens by taxing the majority. It remains to be seen whether the US and European domestic producers will survive.
If they are eating into model X or S sales it obviously counts here.
Porsche, Audi, BMW, Mercedes-Benz, Genesis, and Cadillac are all competitive in different ways. Stat wise someone buying the electric G-Wagon is making a poor decision, but swagger is a selling point which very much costs Tesla sales.
Cadillac’s approach of a huge dumb battery powering a huge heavy vehicle may not be ideal for the average use case, but customers are going to prioritize different things. One SUV just can’t be the best solution to every lifestyle.
They're very cool in theory. My impression from the EngineeringExplained guy's experience isn't great. And Lucid does something similar to Tesla where too much (IMO) is controlled through the touchscreen.
A significant fraction of his issues were both him and his wife using their phones as key’s. He obviously it should still work, but it’s something of an edge case.
> Without some big jumps in battery tech, EVs are going to be difficult to sell without subsidies.
The actual sales figures show otherwise, but sure, there's still a lot of uncertainty with regards to batteries / range, I can imagine even moreso in the US. Traveled to Austria a while ago in an EV (~1000 kilometers), we had to stop 3x on the way, but the battery was good for another 2.5 hours of driving after a coffee. I keep hearing that "solid state batteries are around the corner" and they will solve all problems with capacity and safety / fire risk, apparently. I'll just sit and wait patiently, it'll take years before their production capacity is on par with current battery tech.
The confusion stems from the fact that gas cars don't fill up themselves before you depart, and they don't fill up themselves when you arrive. There are rather large differences between gas and electric cars, but people still treat EVs like gas cars, and demand EVs be more like gas cars.
You’re still giving the EV more range than it would have. You’re not supposed to drop below 20% or charge above 80% so following that an EV with 300 miles total range would only have 180 while in a gas car you can comfortably nearly empty the tank without issue.
And yet Chinese EV's are flying out of their factories, well, a few are - most are self driving out to the shipping yards.
This despite the 2025 support by the Chinese state for the Chines EV industry now being almost nothing.
By contrast, defenders of China could point out that the data show that subsidies as a percentage of total sales have declined substantially, from over 40% in the early years to only 11.5% in 2023, which reflects a pattern in line with heavier support for infant industries, then a gradual reduction as they mature.
In addition, they could note that the average support per vehicle has fallen from $13,860 in 2018 to just under $4,600 in 2023, which is less than the $7,500 credit that goes to buyers of qualifying vehicles as part of the U.S.’s Inflation Reduction Act.
You should also factor in lax human rights enforcement in China (which acts like a subsidy essentially in effect and is not factored in these calculations):
I should point out that is not my work, and dates from 2023. If you follow the link to the work quoted you might be able to contact the authors and pass them your thoughts.
This is a retarded list of self reported paper commitments, not actual practice, i.e. no actual supply chain assessment was done, not that you can trust a propaganda shitrag like amnesty. Tesla simply "promises" in their PR to be better for human rights. Hint 50%+ of Tesla exports come from Tesla Shanghai which uses same supply raw material supply chain as rest of PRC auto, functionally they're the same.
Meanwhile how do you factoring in PRC manufacturing is simply more modern with more labour saving automation, i.e. they simply have less people to "abuse". PRC simply be peak human rights by eliminating the most humans from process.
You'd expect subsidies to drop as supply chains mature and economies of scale kick in. What about subsidies to inputs like electricity, aluminum, batteries, etc?
How come the US has a higher rate of struggling with groceries (12.2% US vs 8.5% EU), healthcare (44% US vs. 18.6% for costs) EU, education costs, etc.?
> they would also buy more expensive cars.
Price != quality. European cars have better safety standards, as well as being cheaper to own and run. American cars… the vibe I got from them on trips was the expectation for them to serve as an additional air-conditioned entertainment room that just happened to be on wheels, whereas the European ones are mostly a mode of transport unless you're specifically into luxury brands.
If you're implying the US car market is hamstrung by manufacturer collusion, stupid regulations, and a legal environment that caters to dealers at the expense of customers, then... I agree.
Maybe I’m just naive enough, because I love cars and progress, but I think you agree that he really showed our whole small world that EV can exist and work. Everyone laughed, no one believed it will work and here he still is rich and we have Teslas everywhere. Driving, not killing more people than other brands.
I don't even think it is correct. Teslas as a whole have twice the fatality rate [1] per billion miles as the industry overall and the model Y has a rate 4x the industry average, but that can't overwhelm the fact that there are too few Teslas on the road to make that 2x or 4x turn into more total fatalities.
A quote from the original study [1], in which Porsche 911 is the 4th on the list
“The models on this list likely reflect a combination of driver behavior and driving conditions, leading to increased crashes and fatalities.”
I would like to remind you that Tesla's least powered vehicle has around 300HP and needs ~7s to go from 0 to 100km/h. Musk is a moron but Teslas are still good and safe vehicles.
While you're correct on the one hand, Tesla made EVs feasible and mainstream, did the investments and caused a rolling effect of worldwide investments in e.g. batteries and EVs, and government subsidies that also made investing in EVs more attractive to competitors.
Besides EVs, Tesla's long term revenue could very well be in the supercharger network, too. It's not as exciting as self driving cars, but the oil companies have been the most valuable companies / stocks worldwide without being exciting like that. I mean I don't think EV charging will be anywhere near as big as oil because it doesn't involve nearly as much infrastructure or international trade, but it's still big, especially if governments refocus on replacing ICEs with EVs.
(the focus has been let go because the subsidies were too popular and expensive)
This kind of maybe made sense for a while their revenue was growing at a very fast pace but now that its stagnant/falling they are no different to any other car company.
I wonder if this coincides with Musk getting into politics? Never a good choice to alienate half your customer base. Michael Jordan famously said he never got into politics because "Republicans buy sneakers, too."
The stock is priced on expectations of how many humanoid robots they might sell over the next decade.
Those expectations in turn treat humanoid robotics as if Tesla is the only game in town, when Tesla's Optimus is not yet available for purchase and other companies already ship.
> The unnamed employees secretly conferred with a political advocacy group about a request to match Social Security data with state voter rolls to "find evidence of voter fraud and to overturn election results in certain States," the filing said. It remains unclear whether any data actually went to this group.
“Maybe you do not care much about the future of the Republican Party. You should. Conservatives will always be with us. If conservatives become convinced that they can not win democratically, they will not abandon conservatism. The will reject democracy.” —- David Frum
What you responded to was a quote of a request that claimed that was what they were looking for. Whether it was a good-faith request or they used the data for only that, etc is the real question.
And if they did find something, it would obviously have been in court a long time ago.
>Also I was told there is no voter fraud. Is that just because nobody’s looking?
I was told you haven't raped anyone, is that because we haven't looked into it?
Unless there's evidence that something happened when decisions need to be made we assume it didn't.
It's so sad an engineer like you believe there was widespread fraud in the 2020 election even after all the investigations. It speaks volumes to your abilities in all aspects of life.