Tesla ending Models S and X production

https://www.cnbc.com/2026/01/28/tesla-ending-model-s-x-production.html

by keyboardJones • 6 months ago

566 1122 6 months ago

cnbc.com

shawn_w• 6 months ago

No more S3XY lineup of models? I'm surprised Musk was okay with breaking that up.

avar3• 6 months ago

3YC is the new S3XY.

RA2lover• 6 months ago

YC3.

plun9• 6 months ago

C3CSY

NoPicklez9• 6 months ago

Why 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.

mrcwinn4• 6 months ago

You are, of course, exactly right but you will nevertheless be downvoted for the same reasons you allude to.

michelsedgh• 6 months ago

the voting rings at HN are hard at work :))

browningstreet2• 6 months ago

As a car company the expectation is that they develop new car models for consumers. They don’t seem to be doing that either.

NoPicklez9• 6 months ago

They 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.

tensor3• 6 months ago

I'm not surprised at the X, but the S has always been the flagship model with all the best features and the top performance. The 3 is a fine mid-sized car but it's very strange to get rid of your flagship model. Those always cater to a small audience anyways.

NoPicklez9• 6 months ago

I guess from my perspective you can't buy the S or the X in Australia, all I see everywhere are the 3 and the Y. So for me its not flagship but I do know that the S was the original popular Tesla and has all of the bells and whistles.

jerlam• 6 months ago

Yes, flagship models aren't intended to be good sellers. They often are where new features are tested out on customers willing to overpay to be early adopters. Tesla did test out the new steering yoke and removing the control stalks in the S: both features were met with tepid reception and partially rolled back. This is also bad for the 3 and Y, since there will be low confidence in any changes before they are released.

groundzeros20158• 6 months ago

What if they have planned product lines we don’t know about.

breve5• 6 months ago

Why is it seen initially so negatively?

Because Tesla is being measured against the benchmarks they set for themselves. It's not a good look with cancelled models, declining sales, and a lot of self-inflicted brand damage.

Musk used to claim Tesla will sell 20 million vehicles per year:

https://www.reuters.com/business/autos-transportation/tesla-...

The new goal is to have sold 20 million in total by 2035. That target represents a further decline in sales. And, given that Tesla over-hypes everything, maybe they won't achieve it:

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/09/05/business/elon-musk-tesla-...

cosmicgadget7• 6 months ago

Toyota sells a lot of Camrys and Corollas. It is nice that they also make (made?) Supras and 86s.

Also we can have a conversation without tossing the "everyone hates Tesla!" poison down the well immediately.

NoPicklez9• 6 months ago

The difference there is that Supra's and 86's are performance cars, whereas Camry's and Corollas arent. You can't compare a Hatchback to an 86.

The Model S is comparable performance to the Model 3 performance.

My point is that the latest models 3 & Y are more affordable alternatives to the S & X and more widely available globally.

addaon• 6 months ago

Why is it seen initially so negatively?

They went from being able to profitably produce a luxury car, to not being able to profitably produce a luxury car, to not being able to produce a luxury car at all. All while becoming uncompetitive in the econobox market, and losing huge chunks of it even before their real competitors arrive in market…

jeltz6• 6 months ago

Yeah, in Europe Tesla is not losing to BYD. They are losing to VW and BMV before the Chinese manufacturers have entered the competition for real.

MBCook6• 6 months ago

But they’re making a robot! It will totally save the company!

On top of all the problems you have identified, as well as more, they’re clearly now just aiming for fantasy land.

SilverElfin3• 6 months ago

Having a halo product can be inspiring. A lot of BMW buyers may get a boring old 3 series but they like that the low volume M cars exist, for example.

seanmcdirmid2• 6 months ago

Just buy an i4, even the eDrive is pretty zippy 0-60 in 5.4 seconds (the M50 can do it in 3.1 seconds). I’m not sure what the M car EV will look like beyond a motor for every wheel, but I can’t really see a point to it.

electriclove2• 6 months ago

Maybe they will finally release the Roadster to serve this purpose

MetaWhirledPeas2• 6 months ago

If Tesla wanted to be BMW they could just do all the BMW things. But they are aspiring for more, so they flip the script quite often. I'm not arguing for or against their decisions; just saying that because BMW does it is not a good argument for them.

nunez7• 6 months ago

Ford got a lot of heat for shifting all of their NA production to Mustangs and F-series trucks too a few years ago.

MBCook6• 6 months ago

Ford didn’t say it was so they could make a robot butler instead.

Slothrop995• 6 months ago

Ford dropped sedans, they still have plenty of SUVs and other trucks you can buy.

electriclove2• 6 months ago

Will they increase specs on the 3 and the Y after the S and X are sunset?

fortran77• 6 months ago

But the 3 isn’t comparable. It’s cheap, looks cheap and feels cheap.

rossjudson5• 6 months ago

Someone who owns a BMW 5 series isn't going to switch down to a new model of the 3 series. The X makes the 3 and Y feel like go karts (that are slow). The S is a missile. Fun, but not for me.

The other way of looking at this: The X is the only Tesla model with door handles that aren't stupid.

protastus2• 6 months ago

Because it looks like Elon recognized Tesla's inability to compete against BYD and gave up making cars. This is negative.

Since he couldn't leave it at that, he announced a pivot to a product that doesn't exist. This is also negative.

NoPicklez9• 6 months ago

How did he give up? The model Y and the model 3 were refreshed last year. With the model 3 now pushing 750km of range.

Ford got rid of plenty of popular models including all hatchbacks and many sedans.

EnPissant2• 6 months ago

Because it's Elon Musk.

10 years ago people here would be describing this as a good decision.

SilverElfin3• 6 months ago

Feels 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• 6 months ago

We 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• 6 months ago

The 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• 6 months ago

I 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• 6 months ago

Certainly longer than that. I actually thought Tesla as an energy company made sense — sadly just an excuse to buy and shelve solarcity.

baron816• 6 months 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• 6 months ago

Elon Musk says something absolutely insane on the weekly. Almost none of it actually happens.

mrcwinn4• 6 months ago

That’s just nonsense, of course. Almost everything he says happens. It rarely happens on time.

wombatpm• 6 months ago

If the can walk and randomly fire teargas and bullets into crowds of protesters they could replace half of ICE right now.

sawjet2• 6 months ago

This would only replace a small fraction of ICE, and only in states that don't cooperate with federal law enforcement officers.

internet_points• 6 months ago

but first they have to demo it to the higher ups https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TYsulVXpgYg

jmyeet3• 6 months ago

It 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...

lotsofpulp• 6 months ago

While 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/1F5IQOynIawoXiJPV...

harshaw• 6 months ago

I 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• 6 months ago

EVs are becoming commoditized. Tesla doesn’t have the scale ( or experience ) to play that angle.

Ancalagon2• 6 months ago

literally what are the gigafactories for then?

mrcwinn4• 6 months ago

You should probably keep reading.

Elon for years has said Tesla is not a car company. He’s also said the “factory is the product.” Tesla also has energy divisions and investments, as well as xAI investments now.

Logically given that Model S and X are something like less than 5% of deliveries (and have been for years), if they’re right about Optimus, that capacity will generate far greater revenue.

tempestn2• 6 months ago

Optimus is complete vapourware. The quoted 1M units a year would be utterly unbelievable from any company, let alone Tesla with their history of over-promising.

cosmicgadget7• 6 months ago

Do they have enough people to remotely operate that many Optimuses?

MBCook6• 6 months ago

if they’re right about Optimus, that capacity will generate far greater revenue.

How many Cyber Trucks were they supposed to sell?

Yeah. And that was a car. A thing that is at least a category people buy.

tchalla• 6 months 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. The Model 3 now starts at about $37,000, and the Model Y is around $40,000. Tesla debuted more affordable versions of the vehicles late last year.

I’m confused as to what’s not clear from the article for you?

Neywiny• 6 months ago

Agreed. I also thought it was a very dumb move until I saw that. That said, 3% but it costs 2.5x as much, maybe people option them higher idk, that could be a 10% revenue hit. But maybe that's worth it for them

vannevar7• 6 months ago

The problem with being a car company is that they'd have to compete with China. It's possible, but they'd have to make additional capital investments to keep up. They've just wasted a ton of money on a failed Musk vanity project (Cybertruck) and squandered a ton of goodwill in their home market via the DOGE fiasco. Cash flow is not what it once was, and if they're going to make a big capital investment, they're probably right in looking at robots. But that strategy puts them back where they were 20 years ago, just getting started in EVs, and their cash flow will depend on cars for many years to come.

jeltz6• 6 months ago

Right now they struggle to compete with European car manufacturers, there is no way they can compete with China.

SR2Z5• 6 months ago

It doesn't help that Musk supported a guy who turned around and gutted the incentives that were helping Tesla turn a profit.

hrunt• 6 months ago

If the problem with being a car company is that they'd have to compete with China, then I have some bad news about being a robot company. China is already farther ahead in both technology and volume of humanoid robots.[0][1][2][3]

[0] https://www.cnbc.com/2026/01/28/cnbc-china-connection-newsle...

[1]https://www.unitree.com/g1

[2] https://interestingengineering.com/ai-robotics/limx-humanoid...

[3] https://www.bgr.com/2083491/china-agibot-humanoid-robot-us-c...

burnt-resistor• 6 months ago

Tesla "competed" by corruptly getting BYD banned from the US and hurting US consumers.

laughing_man7• 6 months ago

He generated a lot of goodwill with "that DOGE fiasco", too. It just depends on where you fall politically.

bamboozled3• 6 months ago

The problem with being a car company is that they'd have to compete with China.

As if China cannot produce kick ass robots ? What special sauce does Musk have here that a country with a massive pool of highly trained and educated engineers and decades of manufacturing expertise don't have?

doctorpangloss• 6 months ago

it's very difficult to have a conversation about this, because it would appear that sincere answers to your question will get downvoted. one POV is that, if you accept the bear case from Internet commenters that these guys are incompetent or stupid - blah blah blah, Cybetruck - the existence of their autonomous taxi product is extremely bullish. they managed to pull off something similar to Waymo despite being so much worse at it, yes? I'm not sure they will even need a diverse product line of premium cars, if they can sell an autonomous 3 for the price of a small house. on the flip side, the bear case there is, if they could figure it out, so will a lot of other car companies. and yet, Cruise ceased operations, and Tesla will seemingly pay a manageable amount of blood money for Autopilot and move on.

nobody really can predict the future, so unsurprisingly, "reading various articles about this doesn't make it more clear." but people on the Internet keep getting worked up about it. to me, people do not comprehend the meaning of "high risk, high reward."

tyre2• 6 months ago

imo their competition for autonomous vehicles doesn’t come from car companies, but from tech companies.

Amazon has a lucrative incentive to automate its supply chain up to and including last mile delivery. Waymo has proven out the tech and could easily partner with Uber or Lyft for the rider experience and reach.

If you’re FedEx, for example, would you rather buy from Amazon or from Tesla? Who is more likely to be a sane and trustworthy partner?

mosdl• 6 months ago

Their autonomous taxi program is a joke right now, especially compared to Waymo. Way fewer cities/rides, and they haven't even deployed their cybertaxi thing.

tensor3• 6 months ago

When Tesla started producing cars, everyone wanted what they proposed. Now, no one wants the cybertruck. No one is really asking for humanoid robots. Their self driving is vastly inferior to waymo when it comes to taxies, I can't see them winning that market. Their batteries and solar panels, like their cars, seem to be more or less abandoned.

So, it's pretty easy to see why people are confused and upset. Tesla is discontinuing all the things people like about Tesla, and selling vapourware that no one really wants anyways, instead. It's also not "a difficult conversation."

What seems more likely is that Musk, in his extreme shift to the right, has abandoned the original goal of Tesla: producing sustainable electric vehicles. He's become more and more delusional, with failing like the Boring machine and the Cybertruck starting to pile up. He's alienated his existing customer base by both getting into politics and dropping any pretext of trying to help the environment.

From my point of view, Tesla is a failed company with a leader who has gone off the rails, and a board that refuses to reign him in. Revenues are falling off a cliff outside of US governmental money, and it's betting the whole ship on only two ideas: self driving, which is so far no where close to being where it needs to be, despite the progress, and on yet another fairy tale that is humanoid robots.

SR2Z5• 6 months ago

Just a reminder that Tesla has still not offered driverless robotaxi rides to the public.

At this point, it's entirely because Musk refuses to add LIDAR. If he did they could probably be competing with Waymo in a year.

bdangubic6• 6 months ago

they managed to pull off something similar to Waymo despite being so much worse at it, yes?

similar?! what exactly is your definition of similar? tesla and waymo are so far apart that it is difficult to accept any argument that tries to make this comparison. they cannot co-exist in the same sentence unless to explain one’s success against the other’s failures

SloppyDrive• 6 months ago

Its not that strange; normally manufactures are focused on volume and brand. So you have the 3 and Y in numbers where they can compete in the mass market price range; and CT and FSD for brand notoriety.

S and Y are not special enough to do anything for the brand, they dont qualify as halo products anymore. Probably still wouldnt be that interesting even if refreshed.

CT is still interesting, it looks different and has some tech inside that seems worthwhile to iterate on.

And unlike traditional brands, tesla has FSD, Optimus, and Musk to do enough to keep the brand itself healthy.

My guess would be they are deciding what they can learn by iterating the CT, and might decide to drop it in a year or two when the roadster takes the halo role.

They will keep trying to improve on volume for 3 and Y.

rchaud• 6 months ago

Automotive stocks are subject to the rules of gravity, aka "boring", while tech stocks are not. Automakers operate on low margins and high volume, and must compete on price, reliability or luxury brand status. Most automakers have multiple brands to sell to all market segments.

Tesla's value proposition was that it was going to be an iPod in a world of identikit MP3 players, and charge a premium for it. One brand to rule them all, no pesky dealerships, with futuristic EV tech and a touchscreen dash that made gas-powered, tactile button-laden cars obsolete.

That was twenty years ago. Tesla went from leading the pack to struggling to achieve scale, with its limelight-seeking leader increasingly holding it back. The leader wants headlines for pioneering "cool shit" and pushing hype to pump the stock price. Buyers on the other hand want affordable and timely repairs (impossible with their resistance to third party body shops and unit cost of replacement parts). As a mature company, it is completely un-equipped to compete with the incumbents whose leaders, not by coincidence, are all largely unknown to the public.

SilverElfin3• 6 months ago

Check out videos of Chinese car company factories. They are far more automated and futuristic than Tesla’s. Most of the new ones have almost no humans in them at all. They have great supply chains and partners for everything that is an input into these factories, and they’re often just up the street from the car factories. The costs are rock bottom and the competition between car companies in China is absolutely bananas.

fmlpp• 6 months ago

Tesla and musk were living off of monstrous subsidies to the tune of 20B or more

rossjudson5• 6 months ago

Sure. And selling the most popular car on the planet is a failure?

Didn't the US government put ~$80b into rescuing GM etc, years ago?

Subsidies bootstrapped the EV industry. Stupid policies mean walking away from the investment, ceding the market to foreign competitors, and doubling down on legacy ICE crap the rest of the world no longer wants...and Americans will be less and less able to afford.

nunez7• 6 months ago

Apparently Tesla dropped 4680 battery production for the CT by 99%, so the CT isn't long for this world either.

But that's okay! They have the Cybercab that will 100% drive itself For Real This Time, $99/mo Autopilot/FSD subscriptions and robots that will theoretically wash your dishes in an age where most people have an adversarial relationship with anything AI, so.

droopyEyelids• 6 months ago

I'm not disagreeing with your overall take, but Tesla and other EV manufacturers have released the same model of vehicle with different battery technologies at different times. Only saying that dropping 4680 production isn't conclusive proof itself.

seanmcdirmid2• 6 months ago

The X and S were always very low volume niche products unlike the much more mainstream Y and 3. I wouldn’t read much into it.

rossjudson5• 6 months ago

I would. Someone in the market for a presumably profitable BMW 5 or 7 series isn't going to stay with BMW and drive a 3 series.

Yearly sales of model X have been comparable to the 5 series, at least until last year when musk's political activities took the shine off the brand.

High end cars are more profitable. There are millions of 3 and Y owners with positive experiences who would stay with the brand if it had something to move up to.

My 23 MX is the best car I've ever owned. I wouldn't buy the current iterations of 3 and Y.

Most refresh X owners think it's pretty great (not perfect). There are no alternatives at the moment, mostly because other manufacturers are terrible at software development...and that's not good for software defined vehicles.

It's sad to see Tesla walk away from the luxury segment so they can focus on robots, go karts, and robots pretending to drive go karts.

Slothrop995• 6 months ago

S you can understand, because sedans are dead. But every other US auto company is making big profits with large SUVs, so I don't get dropping X.

Agree with other posters who say whatever you think of Musk, Tesla styling has gotten very stale.

foxglacier• 6 months ago

About a decade ago, Musk said he wanted to kickstart the electric car industry, make electric cars cool by showing they can be high performance and promising not to enforce Tesla's patents against competitors. Remember how electric cars used to be perceived? The Simpsons put it as "people will think you're gay". I'd say he completely succeeded in that goal and the whole "make piles of money for investors" is just because investors decided to try doing that.

adastra2213• 6 months ago

The meme stock run up made Tesla more valuable than the rest of the auto industry combined. They HAVE to find something bigger.

I don’t think they have. Humanoid robots are a bad joke. But that’s why they are pivoting.

CamperBob22• 6 months ago

Humanoid robots make sense in only one context I can think of, and I definitely wouldn't put it past Musk to enter that market. It will be a big one. He may just be waiting for material science to catch up with his product vision. Much like Steve Jobs waited by the river until capacitive multitouch came floating by, and then pounced on it.

Meantime, as others have pointed out, the Model S and X are not selling enough to justify keeping the factory running. I don't see them going into Optimus production immediately, since as you suggest it's a solution looking for a problem.

annexrichmond• 6 months ago

How do you suppose Cybertruck is a failure? I see just as many of them as Rivians, while releasing over 5 years later.

_ea1k4• 6 months ago

It was estimated at >200k/year, but in reality is well under 50k/year. I'd say that is a failure compared to their guidance.

Slothrop995• 6 months ago

Ignoring who makes it, this kind of gimmickmobile usually sells well for about a year, and then everyone who wants one has one. It was never going to be a tentpole.

NewJazz2• 6 months ago

Rivian is not making money on those trucks either... I wouldn't count that as a win.

qingcharles4• 6 months ago

I regularly see Rivians. I've never once seen a Cybertruck in real life. (Midwest USA)

haspok3• 6 months ago

They are so proud of the Cybertruck sales that they don't eevn dare to disclose sales figures. That's the sign of a market success.

stetrain2• 6 months ago

They built production capacity for 125,000-250,000 units per year. They are selling around 20,000 units per year.

It was supposed to cost $39k at the low end and have 500 miles of range at the high end. This drove the hype and high reservation numbers.

In reality it costs $79k and offers up to 325 miles of range. Doubling the price is going to significantly limit the reach of the product.

Natfan• 6 months ago

it isn't road legal in many countries outside of the united states

panopticon• 6 months ago

Rivian isn't exactly selling well either.

Perhaps more interesting is the F-150 Lightning outsold the Cybertruck in 2025 and Ford still canceled it as a failure.

_ea1k4• 6 months ago

They are almost exclusively focused on autonomous cars, humanoid robots, and energy (batteries now, maybe more solar manufacturing later).

As much as I dislike it, I can't disagree with the business case here. They already have >300k monthly subscribers at about $100/month. That business will grow rapidly from here as well as the robotaxi business itself.

Within 2 years, this business will look radically different just because of these two changes.

NewJazz2• 6 months ago

Lol keep dreaming. Those 300k monthly subscribers could churn. Robotaxi isn't two years away. Not even close.

sidcool5• 6 months ago

The two flagship as best selling cars in the world. S and X were low volume cars to get started.

reenorap• 6 months ago

Dropping 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• 6 months ago

Including 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• 6 months ago

It's not like they aren't going to support any new purchases.

smileysteve• 6 months ago

S 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.

ebbi2• 6 months ago

Carmakers discontinue models all the time. The support network is still around, and parts will still be produced for a while.

tapoxi• 6 months ago

Yeah but most companies have a few dozen models, Tesla has 4.

tcdent• 6 months ago

Nobody 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.

malfist2• 6 months ago

Where exactly are those cheaper cars? Still waiting for a 30k model 3 like promised.

willio582• 6 months ago

Elon got distracted and decided we want humanoid robots.

avar3• 6 months ago

You 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-...

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.

cmxch• 6 months ago

Buy it used?

tensor3• 6 months ago

Nowhere in that plan was "only produce cheap cars." Unless you're aim is to be the budget brand, it's bizarre behaviour not to have a top end flagship model.

inerte• 6 months ago

Yes. It's interesting to see a consequence of this strategy, which is at least some part of your model 3/Y customers bought it because "it is a Tesla", and being Tesla is premium. If you get rid of the premium, you lose that aura. But maybe the impact is small.

mattas• 6 months ago

Which phase of the plan talks about repurposing the cheap car factory to make humanoid robots?

mrcwinn4• 6 months ago

I’m a little sad (nostalgic?) about this decision. Model S is a truly historic vehicle.

vannevar7• 6 months ago

The 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• 6 months ago

Yeah 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.

bdangubic6• 6 months ago

they have a large buyer - all of the silly people investing money in the company

testing223217• 6 months ago

IF they work (and that is a massive, massive if), every factory on earth will replace every human with them.

It’s inevitable, the only question is how many years until it happens: 2, 5, 10, 50?

Place your bets!

laughing_man7• 6 months ago

I suspect it's going dormant for a couple years and then he'll say "Hey, this robot thing isn't working out, so we're closing the facility." He doesn't have any desire to stay in California.

_ea1k4• 6 months ago

S and X were a small fraction of Fremont already. The plant can do >500k units per year, but S/X were closer to 20k.

It sounds like this would be giving ~5% of the factory space to Optimus production, which seems reasonable.

tempestn2• 6 months ago

Agreed, let alone 1M units a year!

tombert4• 6 months ago

My dad found it extremely amusing that Elon said "we just have to solve the 'AI problem' and we'll have robots doing shopping for us", or something like that. I can't remember the exact verbiage, but that was the gist.

The word "just" is doing a lot of work there. Going by that logic: We "just" need to figure out cold fusion to have effectively infinite energy. We "just" need to develop warp drives to travel across the galaxy. We "just" need to figure out the chemo problem to cure cancer.

sampton• 6 months ago

I can't remember when was the last S/X refresh. It's nuts they just let it go stale and shut the factory down.

toomuchtodo5• 6 months ago

Tesla got the job done, which was empower Musk, not manufacture EVs at scale. The stock is the product.

laughing_man7• 6 months ago

Musk's goal all along was to get away from boutique production. He wants to sell millions of cheaper cars, not thousands of cars for wealthy people.

Not sure it's going to work out. Without some big jumps in battery tech, EVs are going to be difficult to sell without subsidies.

trhway6• 6 months ago

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.

riffraff2• 6 months ago

Do you expect the demand for Tesla's robotaxis to be high? I don't see it.

lacker• 6 months ago

If they actually worked right now, the demand would be high. Demand is certainly high for Waymos. Even if they worked worse than a Waymo I think the demand would still be very high. But it's hard to tell if (or when) it will work well enough to actually be a real product.

JasonBorne• 6 months ago

Of course it will be high. Transit is a huge market. They would just need a small share of Uber, lyft, regular taxis, public transit.

trhway6• 6 months ago

demand for any robotaxis will be high. Just look at the number of Uber drivers whom the robotaxis will replace. Plus leased robotaxis or personal/reserved ones - whatever shape it'd take replacing at least some percentage of personal cars.

There is only a "small" issue - to make those robotaxis, i.e. the self-driving system for them. Almost 20 years in, Google/Waymo is way ahead of everybody and is still not there yet (i believe we will get there anyday now - which maybe next year or in 10 years - especially giving all the avalanche of investment in AI. Though i'd have expected that 4+ years in we'd see a lot of autonomous platforms/weapons in Ukraine, yet it hasn't happen too yet)

Cthulhu_5• 6 months ago

I don't see the demand for their robots to be high either tbh, but they're betting on them. It's not going to work.

groundzeros20158• 6 months ago

Why would cybertruck be cancelled?

trgn3• 6 months ago

it's one of their models i would like for them to succeed the most. americans love trucks (especially where i live), and the impact of electric truck replacing ice ones on the gestalt of the neighborhood is significant, no noise, no fumes. people tend to drive their electric cars/trucks more gently too. my neighbor bought one, and it's night and day.

and oddly enough, while i kneejerk hated it at first, the design has grown on me, something genuinely different, playful. much rather see a parked cybertruck than yet another oversized bloated "regular" truck.

AlexandrB6• 6 months ago

Because it's selling terribly: https://www.businessinsider.com/cybertruck-sales-decline-tes...

geoffeg• 6 months ago

Lower than expected sales https://www.cbsnews.com/news/tesla-cybertruck-sales-elon-mus...

palmotea2• 6 months ago

Why would cybertruck be cancelled?

IIRC, the fully-electric F150 Lighting was canceled due to poor sales, and its sales were better than the Cybertruck's.

dzonga• 6 months ago

Tesla 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

willio582• 6 months ago

The 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.

SideburnsOfDoom3• 6 months ago

The 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• 6 months ago

it’s not a difficult strategy to come up with, tbh. tech companies do this sort of thing all the time.

sergiotapia• 6 months ago

Is 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.

xnx3• 6 months ago

I'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• 6 months ago

By the same logic it costs less to keep the 3 in production.

bhouston2• 6 months ago

Tesla 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_borland2• 6 months ago

That 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.

jeltz6• 6 months ago

Tesla'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.

MBCook6• 6 months ago

Didn’t they just announce their profits dropped like 45% year over a year?

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.

gcr2• 6 months ago

The current administration is “rejecting the idea of electric cars out of stubbornness or politics.” See: Trump moving to withhold funding for EV chargers, terminating EV mandates and government support, etc. I don’t know what Musk is thinking by supporting this administration so steadfastly as they work hard to undermine his own efforts and initiatives.

direwolf203• 6 months ago

BYD makes electric cars. Not sure if Trump will let you import them.

jmyeet3• 6 months ago

The only thing keeping Tesla afloat currently is tariffs and restrictions on far cheaper and far better foreign alternatives. That's not a solid foundation. It's certainly not a trillion dollar company.

The dam is breaking. We have Canada lowering tariffs and agreeing to allow the import of Chinese EVs (limited, at least to start with) and the US administration goes off on Canada for doing it because they know what it means: crumbling American influence.

South America, Africa and Asia are likely forever lost to Tesla. And European sales are tumbling.

The supercharger network will maintain some inertia for some time but only for so long.

You can see this in Tesla announcements about attempts to diversify. AI robots? I'll believe it when I see it. Robotaxis? Well you're reliant on FSD for that and you have stiff competition in Waymo and who knows what China is cooking up there.

The GP was correct: it's a meme stock. It's no longer an investment in a business. It's an investment in Elon and, more generally, an investment in the administration. There's no fundamental way to predict how that goes and on what time scale. If you want to gamble, gamble. But gamgling is what it is. And, just like Twitter, I guarantee you the people at the top won't be left holding the bag.

jojobas2• 6 months ago

Tesla's valuation is not related to their production of cars or robots.

adastra2213• 6 months ago

Electric cars, maybe. Tesla is valued much larger than the rest of the auto industry combined though.

Humanoid robots? Ain’t nobody made the business case for that. It is pure vibes.

julianeon• 6 months ago

This was true when Tesla was primarily in the market of making electric cars. It is not true if their business is humanoid robots: that's squarely meme stock territory.

themafia• 6 months ago

These are very much things of the future.

I thought it was hyperloop. I thought it was suboribital taxis. I thought it was underground taxis. I thought it was self-driving semi trucks. Or was it solar roofs? Or powerwall? Wait weren't we supposed to be on the moon again right now?

He's a bullshitter. Yea, he picks good targets, but he is entirely full of shit. The market just does not reflect this. He should have been golden parachuted onto a yacht years ago.

ulfw5• 6 months ago

They are making no robots.

What robots are they making?

Where can you buy one? What does it do?

pm902• 6 months ago

tesla is not making robots.

coffeebeqn• 6 months ago

They are making things but the case for them being worth an order or magnitude more than a normal EV company is getting weaker by the day

sixQuarks2• 6 months ago

The Elon hate is really creating a blind spot for many people here.

You can’t just compare Tesla to a meme stock when the founder’s side gig is launching and landing orbital rockets - a feat that even the most technologically advanced nation states have failed to accomplish.

Come on people, use a little critical thinking skills.

anonymars• 6 months ago

Critical thinking might ask how the valuation of company A has any relationship to the activity of a completely separate company B (planning for its own IPO)

But I will concede the founder's other side gigs would appear to have significantly affected its sales

linkregister4• 6 months ago

Multiple things can be true:

1. SpaceX was an exceptionally well-executed good idea, and continues to be a leader in innovation.

2. Tesla brought EVs to the mass consumer market and proved the profitability of EVs.

3. Elon Musk was essential to the success of SpaceX and Tesla.

4. Tesla now has fierce competition in the category it defined: EVs.

5. Tesla has undergone revenue and profit reduction.

6. While it experiences promise in alternate product lines, Tesla is not a market leader in robotics (Unitree, Boston Dynamics) or self-driving cars (Baidu, Waymo). Tesla reported profit growth in residential solar and residential power storage, but the revenues from these verticals are dwarfed by other segments.

7. The trend over the past decades is Elon Musk being successful at innovating in underserved parts of the market.

8. Elon Musk is not currently pursuing any underserved parts of the market.

karel-3d2• 6 months ago

But Tesla and SpaceX are different companies

CamperBob22• 6 months ago

GME is a joke that got out of hand. TSLA is a cult that went too far.

shevy-java2• 6 months ago

You cannot bet against them

I am not sure. I think buyers or potential buyers shifted their assessment of Tesla in the last, say, 1-2 years a lot.

epolanski8• 6 months ago

Did they? It keeps going up despite no reasons for it.

sschueller• 6 months ago

You can on the betting market bet against Tesla reaching their ever moving goal posts. Those same meme stock holders are so sure that FSD will come by March that they are taking the bets.

Grimblewald• 6 months ago

All fun and games until people game the system. Polymarket for example will frequently just bend/ignore the truth to make specific unlikely/not real outcomes happen.

AndreyK1984• 6 months ago

I was exactly going to shot Tesla. Is Tesla more like Elon meme ?

raincole3• 6 months ago

There is no such thing as "meme stock." It's literally just how stock market is since forever. But every generation thinks they are so special that they have to coin new terms for the oldest things.

wasfgwp5• 6 months ago

Historically bubbles like this hardly ever lasted this long, though

adammarples• 6 months ago

That doesn't mean there's no such thing as a meme stock, that means there have always been meme stocks and we now have a consice name for it

ghtbircshotbe• 6 months ago

Game stop used its irrationally high stock price to raise money. Tesla instead has been giving away stock to make Musk richer.

formvoltron• 6 months ago

Tesla's secret weapon will be the dyson sphere. Probably complete within 2.. 3 years maximum.

eco• 6 months ago

Elon'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.

bdangubic6• 6 months ago

he’s done it time and time again and I don’t see him failing this time either.

aunty_helen• 6 months ago

The 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…

peterisza• 6 months ago

so you own the stock then. right?

cosmicgadget7• 6 months 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.

jeltz6• 6 months ago

Is 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.

cosmicgadget7• 6 months ago

Well, at least Sweden and the US. Kind of amazing.

decimalenough• 6 months ago

It'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-rug...

In many countries, "carpet salesman" is equivalent to "used car salesman" as the least trustworthy occupation imaginable.

Tadpole9181• 6 months ago

"Buy the software-dependent product we're not going to support going forward!"

chihuahua2• 6 months ago

Also, good luck if you ever need replacement parts.

diabllicseagull• 6 months ago

classic "closing-store" sale, I wouldn't be surprised if the closing phase never ended.

thorio• 6 months ago

For what it's worth: he has been saying for years, that they were only making the S and X for nostalgic reasons.

nunez7• 6 months ago

This 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• 6 months ago

This is sad in that I was serious about finally getting one in two to three years

Couldn't have said it better

rconti4• 6 months ago

Wait, 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....

nunez7• 6 months ago

Bigger 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.

baggachipz• 6 months ago

We're all going to need to buy some R2's if we want the R3X to become a thing. I have my reservation!

niek_pas2• 6 months ago

This is slightly off topic but what kind of living situation requires three cars? Polyamorous family?

senordevnyc3• 6 months ago

I have multiple friends who have 6+ cars. To be fair, they're pretty well-off (mid six figure income), but one for example:

- Husband Tesla daily driver - Wife Bronco daily driver - Truck to pull their boat - Campervan for outdoor adventures - Older car for teenager to drive - 90s convertible for summer fun

quesera• 6 months ago

Any of a dozen common situations, but probably the most common is having children who reach driving age.

insane_dreamer2• 6 months ago

X sure, but the S? it was the best in the lineup

why not kill the cybertruck instead?

aglavine• 6 months ago

Roadster will replace S

driverdan• 6 months ago

The same vaporware Roadster that was supposed to come out years ago and that Tesla has not shared any updates on?

rhplus• 6 months ago

The 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• 6 months ago

So is the new roadster just not happening?

csa• 6 months ago

Tesla designer I know said that it’s not something that anyone is currently working on.

As such, my guess is “not any time soon”.

testing223217• 6 months ago

On 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)

kccoder3• 6 months ago

He didn't specify the year.

akmarinov2• 6 months ago

It’ll be out and immediately cancelled

vtail6• 6 months 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_Einzige2• 6 months ago

Dropbox 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.

vtail6• 6 months ago

Hard to tell whether you are serious or sarcastic, but assuming it's the former: my contrarian position on CC vs SaaS is that in the quest to kill shitty businesses people will discover that creating a high-value SaaS is very non-trivial. CC would kill a whole category of low effort SaaS while at the same time substantially raising the quality bar for SaaS that people are willing to pay money for.

webdevver• 6 months ago

i think there's a danger here of underestimating how varied mankinds 'mindware' is at large.

for us lot who were 'born in it, molded by it' (tech), it can be very hard to internalize that there are a lot of people out there who legimiately cannot for the life of them wrap their head around a computer, or the internet, other than "wifi logo = i can video call my grandkids".

you could say services like dropbox are outreach/charity organisations that onboard the masses onto 10x productivity curves (whether they like it or not!)

and to be honest, ive become guilty of drag n dropping tarballs to/from my gdrive account when im too dumb to figure out the ssh proxy tunnel incantation (or beg an llm for one for the 1000th time.) so really, everyone wins.

im not sure claude code will change all that much for the non-technical segment. from their point of view, you changed one terminal window for another. so what? its still a black box (literally).

rossjudson5• 6 months ago

What's with the "outdated" adjective? There's nothing in the US market even remotely close to the X. Every other EV is a slapdash pile of hoobajoobs and knobs that can't even drive itself.

Source: 45000 miles in a bit over two years, loved every minute of it. Makes our other high priced German car a disappointing machine to be avoided if possible.

vtail6• 6 months ago

You might be more informed that I am. We only have 3 and Y in the family. I based my statement on th fact that S/X were last refreshed 5 years ago; so they would need to be refreshed fairly soon.

abstractbg• 6 months ago

Okay, I'll bite. For the record, I own Tesla stock and I am generally bullish about AI.

I'll try to provide some counter-points specifically regarding the rate of progress.

3. It's much easier to catch up in capability (ex. LLMs) than it is to achieve a new capability (ex. replace humans laborers with humanoid robots). You can hire someone from a competitor, secrets eventually leak out, the search space is narrowed etc.

4(c). To me, what's most important is whether or not truly autonomous humanoid robots happens in 3 years, 5 years, 10 years, etc. rather than in our lifetime.

These timelines will be tied to AI development timelines which largely outside the control of any one player like Tesla. I believe the world is bottlenecked on compute and that the current compute is not sufficient for physical AI.

It's extremely easy to be too early (ex. many of the self driving car companies of the past decade), and so for Tesla, there is a risk of over-investing in manufacturing robots before the core technology is ready.

vtail6• 6 months ago

Thanks, these are fair arguments!

Re: both 3 and 4(c) - agree that compute (or maybe even power for that compute) is likely to be a bottleneck in the next 3-5 years. However, I think Tesla/xAI are better positioned than many competitors as Tesla is a manufacturing company first and foremost; and this expertise (which is shared freely between Musk's companies) can help it to build it's own data centers, power generation (e.g., solar), or - in the most bullish case - even fab capacity.

danny_codes3• 6 months ago

Tesla isn’t a market leader in any of these things. It’s a decent shop, but not a leader in any of these things you’ve mentioned.

vtail6• 6 months ago

I would argue that it is a leader in vision-only FSD, which is useful for both self-driving and robots.

Mawr• 6 months ago

1. Your argument is that cutting off a rotting limb is good. Obviously it is, but I'd rather not have a rotting limb in the first place. I want a healthy, revenue-generating limb.

2. Waymo has been offering a driverless taxi service for some time now, and Tesla is not. That's a hard fact. Meanwhile your arguments are beliefs and personal anecdotes.

When, or rather if, Tesla starts offering their service, they will be behind Waymo by approximately however long ago Waymo started theirs, so at least a few years.

Unless you have some "serious, tech-based counterarguments"?

3. It's also obvious that when we have AGI, fusion, etc., they will completely transform our societies. I promise I will deliver you those by the end of this year. Send money now. If my timeline slips by a little—maybe a few decades—well, it was just a best-effort estimate and I did deliver in the end!

4. No, the bear case is that there's no real reason to believe Tesla would be the company that captures the market vs any other company. Their solar, tunnelling, and now car business models have failed/are failing, so they must win on self-driving/robots.

Self-driving is looking really bad, they're badly losing to Waymo.

They have shown nothing in terms of robots. If anything, dressing people up as robots and showing that is a rather negative signal. Oh, and robots are at least a 10x harder problem than self-driving.

gsharm• 6 months ago

Thanks for saying this. For new, impressionable minds here who read most of the comments here and think this it's all devs - it isn't. A lot of us value Musk and incredibly awesome tech like FSD and aren't consumed by political partisanship. That tells you more about the commenter than Musk.

Some of these same commenters were trying to make you believe not long ago that FSD wasn't going to be competitive with Waymo because it dropped LIDAR. If you bring that up now they'll just change goalposts. There's no point even arguing with someone unable to approach an argument in good faith.

jaimex23• 6 months ago

Makes sense and it sounds like Optimus is getting ready for prime time.

Are they betting Robotaxi will replace all cars in the future?

bamboozled3• 6 months ago

How does it "make sense" to you, really? Can you provide more rationale ?

jaimex23• 6 months ago

If 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.

steve_adams_86• 6 months ago

I'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.

jaimex23• 6 months ago

If they're making that move they must have confidence in the progress.

Gud• 6 months ago

Probably one of the dumbest decisions taken by a CEO?

vtail6• 6 months ago

Shutting 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

shevy-java2• 6 months ago

I 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.

_ea1k4• 6 months ago

It 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• 6 months ago

Really sad. I loved my Model S. Amazing car.

CalChris• 6 months ago

One of Oxide+Friends predictions was "6 year: Tesla is out of the consumer car business".

https://oxide-and-friends.transistor.fm/episodes/predictions...

ted_dunning5• 6 months ago

Even Tesla pessimists would probably agree with that. The question is whether they will be in any other business by then.

aetherspawn• 6 months ago

If 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.

Fischgericht3• 6 months ago

Sitting 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.

bayindirh2• 6 months ago

The 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.

uejfiweun2• 6 months ago

I 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"?

bayindirh2• 6 months ago

Worth 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.

tzs• 6 months ago

In terms of actually selling cars Tesla is around #15 by annual unit sales and around #11 by annual sales in dollars.

Toyota sells more cars in a year then Tesla has sold ever.

rswail4• 6 months ago

So 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.

CursedSilicon2• 6 months ago

Careful 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• 6 months ago

I 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• 6 months ago

I'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."

rswail4• 6 months ago

The 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.

ben_w14• 6 months ago

If Tesla's FSD existed in isolation, it would be a fantastic breakthrough that signposted the future.

If.

It doesn't exist in isolation. The competition isn't just from the American firms, but also European and Chinese, and it isn't really possible to overlook Musk himself given both his long history of Musk over-promising and under-delivering, deflecting blame.

Even the current release isn't what Musk was talking hopefully about a decade ago, e.g.:

  Our goal is, and I feel pretty good about this goal, that we'll be able to do a demonstration drive of full autonomy all the way from LA to New York, from home in LA to let's say dropping you off in Times Square in New York, and then having the car go park itself, by the end of next year. Without the need for a single touch, including the charger.

- Oct 2016, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_predictions_for_autono...

Likewise, based on a video I saw recently from someone reproducing Tesla's 2016 "Paint It Black" drive, Tesla's AI is only now around the performance level that they faked in 2016.

Don't get me wrong, that level was impressive… just, the world isn't isolated developments.

ulfw5• 6 months ago

Tesla's Full Self-Driving (FSD) is officially classified as a Level 2 advanced driver-assistance system (ADAS). Despite its advanced capabilities, it requires the human driver to remain fully attentive, monitor the environment, and be ready to take control immediately.

So it's literally nothing special compared to other manufacturers. I am happy to argue that's it's a better Level 2 than most others, sure. But it's still just that. No magic, no bullshitty "by 2017 the car will drive itself from New York to Los Angeles". No it hasn't and no it won't.

lnsru2• 6 months ago

The gamble with Cybertruck failed. It’s common sense, that such a vehicle will fail. The successful cars are made for masses and not for niche buyers. Common sense product could be something smaller than Model 3 for Europe and this car would eat Chinese for lunch. Expensive experiment failed, it’s time for consequences. Does Tesla have resources for another car experiment? Will it stay a car company?.. Or it will be now a manufacturer of robot soldiers?..

rswail4• 6 months ago

BYD already have the Atto 1 (sub AUD30K here) as do other EV manufacturers (eg Nissan Leaf).

Tesla could stop spending money on bullshit like the Cybertruck and spend it on vehicles that people actually need/want.

avhception• 6 months ago

... but they aren't canceling the Cybertruck?

Re: Robots bla bla: yeah, of course. FSD bla bla. Meh.

shalmanese2• 6 months ago

Common sense product could be something smaller than Model 3 for Europe and this car would eat Chinese for lunch.

Yeah, that would be the Model 2, which Musk cancelled, then denied he cancelled, then has made no effort to review whatsoever so it exists in a limbo state of zero people working on it but it not being officially cancelled. Either way, it didn't come out in 2025 as planned.

https://www.cbtnews.com/tesla-execs-raise-red-flags-after-mu...

For a normal company, this would be disastrous. For a meme stock, this makes total sense since anyone claiming the Model 2 is dead can be shouted at by fans saying Musk himself disputed it was dead.

raincole3• 6 months ago

The successful cars are made for masses and not for niche buyers.

When Tesla got started, full EVs were extremely niche. They were known for their short range and nothing else. Tesla defeated common sense. This is what supports their anti-common-sense stock price.

arethuza• 6 months ago

Why would a small Tesla "eat Chinese for lunch" - the brand is tainted (to put it mildly) and the Teslas I've been in didn't seem to have great design or build quality?

alfiedotwtf• 6 months ago

could be something smaller than Model 3 for Europe

Lol... not with those tariffs. In fact, I'd be willing to bet we see higher growth of Tata than Telsa in Europe over the next 10 years.

panick21_9• 6 months ago

Cybertruck was supposed to be for the masses. The just weren't able to hit the price point required because of overly optimistic engineering assessments. I think the whole stainless steel construction concept didn't work as first designed.

And of course, Cybertruck design might not have been mass compatible buy being ugly. But that is subjective, if it was cheap and functional and without the political connotations it might have been different.

But it was certainty a risky bet.

jfyi5• 6 months ago

To be fair, robot soldiers are the only robotics and ai problems that need to be solved to pretty much eliminate labor problems across the board.

I suspect China is going to beat him to the punch on this one too.

torginus3• 6 months ago

It didn't fail imo - it was intended a low-volume product for next-gen Tesla tech - Ethernet based fieldbus, 48V systems, area controllers etc. The philosophy is the same like other high-end cars - you field test your latest experimental tech first in a car with lower sales but high margins - if your fancy stuff has a 1% failure rate, in a 100k production run, that's 1000 vehicles - high but manageable.

If you sell millions and its your main product, your company is over. This is the same playbook German manufacturers followed since forever. I bet the next gen Model 3 and robotaxi will get the cybertruck tech.

InsideOutSanta2• 6 months ago

smaller than Model 3 for Europe

A few years ago, perhaps. But the brand has become tainted to the point where the exact people who would buy such a car are now avoiding Teslas. Instead, European manufacturers are filling that niche with cars like the Renault 5.

assimpleaspossi3• 6 months ago

>The gamble with Cybertruck failed.

Has it? I really don't know but I see these every day in my major city and there was a closed mall parking lot filled with cybertrucks the local dealer used to park there which were quickly turned over.

cucumber37328422• 6 months ago

The Cybertruck was very clearly designed to be a low production model to figure out teething issues in manufacturing and design. Think Plymouth Prowler. Like seriously, nobody makes a body out of heavy gauge sheet metal with simple shapes if they're planning on volume, it doesn't pencil out vs more die complexity and thinner material. But the future growth to justify that never seems to have materialized....

butler14• 6 months ago

Cybertruck was /the/ sign that things with Elon had... changed, IMO!

epolanski8• 6 months ago

Common sense product could be something smaller than Model 3 for Europe and this car would eat Chinese for lunch

The Chinese EVs selling in Europe are mostly bigger cars.

And the only reason they don't sell more is because we tariff the hell out of them.

rob743• 6 months ago

It will be a manufacturer of vaporware if you look at how much they announced over the last years and how much of that has actually materialized...

But yeah, I guess Tesla lives by its CEO (and his grand promises that keep the stock price up) and dies by its CEO (who alienated Tesla buyers by, amongst other things, throwing his lot in with a regressive fossil fuel supporting administration and by personally supervising the dismantling of agencies such as USAID).

thinkingtoilet• 6 months ago

Any discussion of Tesla without mentioning Musk's actions is missing the most important piece. I heard someone on this site use the term "mind share", as in before Musk decided to alienate his main customer base, Tesla had the biggest "mind share" of any company in the world. I looked forward to buying a Tesla one day. Now, with Musk licking Trumps boots and actively doing very real damage with his work in DOGE and other things, I will literally never buy anything from that company ever again. It doesn't matter what Chinese car companies are doing. It matters that he stands for everything I don't so I will not give him my money.

jasondigitized4• 6 months ago

Eat BYD for lunch?

xnx3• 6 months ago

A Cybertruck-styled minivan would've been so badass. Like an updated version of the Toyota Van Wagon.

GuB-42• 6 months ago

That the Cybertruck would fail wasn't common sense. It failed because it sucked. I was supposed to be tough but it crumbled apart, and it didn't meet the European safety standards. Its design while controversial, had personality, problem is that it is the personality of Elon Musk, it was great when he was popular, but that popularity dropped sharply during the last years.

Niche buyers are fine, Ferrari makes a lot of money doing just that, and cars made for the masses are not always successful

Also, I am not a big fan of small EVs, and I live in Europe and I like small cars. Problem with small EVs is the range. Batteries are big, heavy, and expensive. It is fine in bigger, higher-end cars like what Tesla makes, but on a smaller, budget-friendly car, you have to make compromises, and consumers may demand a price too low to make good profit. So it is not guaranteed to be a market worth taking, especially if you have to compete on price against the Chinese.

darksaints• 6 months ago

Forgot that the cybertruck was a sales flop and quality joke, and that the Tesla Semi is now the elephant in the room.

qingcharles4• 6 months ago

But... the Roadster!

andix• 6 months ago

The Tesla Semi was groundbreaking when they revealed it nearly 10 years ago. But now there are dozens of electric truck models, and they get delivered in substantial quantities for over a year now. At least in Europe.

haspok3• 6 months ago

That's all good, don't worry, the stock is doing quite well, near its record high. A man jumping around in spandex is all they need.

piva004• 6 months ago

It's actually bizarre how seemingly nothing impacts $TSLA: profits down 46%, revenue down 3%, cutting successful product lines that used to sell quite a bit, a massively failed product in the Cybertruck, FSD promises still unfulfilled, and on top of all that US$ 2 billion siphoned away to another unrelated company.

With all of that, the stock closed upwards on the after market hours. Perhaps only Musk's death could cause it to tank, would have never expected to see a cult of personality being run on the top of S&P 500 market caps, what a strange world...

BenFranklin100• 6 months ago

That about sums it up.

FL33TW00D4• 6 months ago

How can you say camera only navigation won’t work with such finality when humans manage just fine every day! You literally have an existence proof of it working.

kleton• 6 months ago

It would be possible to build an ornithopter, evidenced by the existence of avians, but it turned out the easiest ways to make flying machines were otherwise.

dgxyz• 6 months ago

I fall on my butt all the time.

tjpnz• 6 months ago

Because I want better?

rswail4• 6 months ago

Because FSD driving not navigation is going to be held (rightly) to a much higher standard than human driving.

Humans are fallible and we have other sensors, like hearing, or touch (through feedback on the steering wheel) that are also involved in driving.

We already have other sensors that are not vision that work with us when driving like ABS and electronic stability.

The other reason it's dumb is that adding LIDAR and proper sensor fusion makes things better and the cost of LIDAR is rapidly dropping as its installed across new fleets in CN and elsewhere.

backscratches2• 6 months ago

Yeah and we should replace the wheels with legs. every other company disagrees with musk, putting alternate sensors on even low end cars.

plomme• 6 months ago

Both the vision and cognition hardware in humans are vastly superior, and don't get me started on the software.

I never understood why they would choose to fight with "one hand behind your back". More sensors = more better

SPICLK2• 6 months ago

Technology can't compete with how easy it is to make more human-based navigation devices ;-)

vjvjvjvjghv• 6 months ago

The safety record of humans is not so great. They tend to fail in snow, ice, fog, rain and at night. We should be aiming a little higher.

I don’t think it makes sense to limit yourself while you are still figuring out what really works. You should go with a maximum of sensors and once it works, you can see what can be left out.

WA• 6 months ago

Eyes have higher dynamic range and eyes don't freeze below 0°C. You can also put on sunglasses for even more weather-related adjustments.

sonofhans3• 6 months ago

This is commonly said but trivially falsifiable — a blind human crosses the street better than a Tesla.

Eyesight isn’t the thing. Humans have a persistent mental model of the world, and of the physics that drive it. Our eyes only check in every now and then to keep our model up to date.

Our ears and sense of touch do a lot of work in walking and driving, too. Trying to narrow it all down to vision is silly.

hobofan• 6 months ago

~1.2 million global deaths per year due to motor vehicle accidents say otherwise.

poulpy1233• 6 months ago

Because we can't install lidars on our heads

lateforwork3• 6 months ago

Humans have cameras (eyes) + AGI. Cars have to compensate with LiDARs and other sensors that humans don't.

p_j_w• 6 months ago

We don’t drive with just our eyes, we also drive with our brains.

ako2• 6 months ago

Even though tesla has only 2 models, i would still consider it for a new car, if not for Elon Musk. I have an Y, and it does everything i want it to do. Drives nicely, lots of (cargo) space, no friction charging when driving in Europe. Just plug it in a supercharger and it loads fast. No hassle with subscriptions and cards. Very reliable.

With the 3 and the Y they're already catering for a large part of the market demand, but a smaller model, and a stationwagon might help get it up to 80%+ of all demand.

backscratches2• 6 months ago

Up until recently teslas were regularly ranked around the world as the least reliable car brand. https://www.topspeed.com/germany-declares-tesla-model-y-is-l... and https://electrek.co/2025/12/11/tesla-ranks-dead-last-used-ca...

brightball7• 6 months ago

That’s my thought as well. The X isn’t much bigger than the Y and the price point is much higher. Same with the S and 3.

The markets the have been missing to this point are the big passenger / cargo carriers like a minivan or full size SUV.

dizhn2• 6 months ago

BYD is eating Tesla for lunch

For some reason my Youtube echo chamber is trying to convince me that BYD makes so many cars but cannot sell them. It's really bizarre. Other things it's trying to convince me of "Don't get an electric car. Period", "Ukraine won. Done deal", "Trump is devastated" about something else every day. Yes I do want the latter two to be true and it's playing on that but I don't get the BYD thing.

yorwba2• 6 months ago

BYD is selling a lot of cars, but they're also making a lot more cars than they can sell at sticker price in China, as does every other Chinese car company. This oversupply leads to all kinds of distortions, like dealerships registering cars as "sold" to make their sales targets and then selling those brand-new cars as "used" at a discount. https://www.reuters.com/business/autos-transportation/local-...

Maybe your YouTube echo chamber additionally thinks that this will cause BYD to collapse, but I doubt that. There are about a hundred Chinese EV manufacturers in worse financial shape, who're likely to go bankrupt first, which should reduce oversupply enough for BYD to survive.

maelito• 6 months ago

Also in Europe, an old state company called Renault is beating Tesla with the R5.

3D304974202• 6 months ago

I just saw an R5 on the street in the bright green. Super cool looking car. There are a whole bunch of promising small EVs coming out in the EU. Hyundai Inster, VW ID.1, Kia EV2, etc.

brightball7• 6 months ago

Wasn’t Renault an F1 competitor for many years?

conradfr2• 6 months ago

And it's not even cheap (actually its success kind of baffles me but great I guess).

hnlmorg2• 6 months ago

the only thing keeping Tesla where it is is the bullshit dispersal field that surrounds Musk.

I'm not 100% what you mean by "dispersal field", but outside of America, Elon's image in recent years has done more harm to Tesla than good.

Slartie• 6 months ago

I think he meant "keeping TSLA where it is".

Tesla's sales have suffered, yes, and Elon's image is a significant contributor to that, besides all the reasons directly related to the cars themselves.

But Tesla's stock price is still stuck in irrational heights, not even remotely justifiable by the company's performance.

It just seems that people reconsider purchasing a physical object way quicker than they reconsider a stock investment. Maybe because the stock investment, especially in TSLA, is considered more like a gamble - "as long as others also think that this stock will skyrocket, even just because they think that others like me think it will skyrocket - as long as that's the case, I'm good with buying shares".

a2tech• 6 months ago

Tesla is a meme stock. Its being buoyed up by retail investors (Elon Musk fanbois) and, its been said, by Saudis and others who were trying to curry favor with him (possibly to try and get Trumps ear or other greasy bullshit). The stock is completely divorced from reality, which also attracts further investment--as long as its disconnected from the fundamentals of being a company that has to make a profit, you can argue its worth 100 million billion dollars or a googel, both are just as valid.

bluescrn• 6 months ago

Yet he's still doing less damage than others chasing the AI bubble, as competition is growing in the EV market.

Meanwhile, RIP Windows, Google Search, and maybe the entire games industry, maybe even then end of affordable home computing and being forced to rent computing power from 'the cloud'.

jfyi5• 6 months ago

Google search? They already have an AI assistant at the top of every search result.

Google is winning the AI race. They did with self driving and they are doing it with LLMs. They are sitting back quietly not making noise and then massively rocking the status quo regularly.

I suspect they are going to do similar in the field of quantum computing.

mathw• 6 months ago

Less damage... with his CSAM-making bot. Yeah. Less damage.

jjav• 6 months ago

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.

So if I hear what you're saying, the stock will be up another 50% this year!

brightball7• 6 months ago

I assume the S and X are being cancelled because 3 and Y are cannibalizing them with a very close product for a much better price point. Both have premium trim options. There’s very little difference in interior space. Aside from the doors on the X there’s just not much differentiation.

FeloniousHam3• 6 months ago

I own the Y and drove the S as a loaner. The S is a noticeably better car. Also has 1000hp.

torginus3• 6 months ago

I have an opinion on EVs that basically the only models that make sense are the ones shaped like the 3 and Y.

I feel like EVs are a checkbox product - you either make things 'good enough' for the customer - range, driving dynamics, power, charge speed, smart features, autonomous stuff or don't.

To get range right you need a big battery and low drag and efficiency - the only way you can make the first 2 things in the same vehicle is to create an aerodynamic shape.

This is a packaging problem, you need to make the car low, and long - so you stretch it out, so the battery can be thinner and no longer pushes up the rest of the vehicle. You also have a lot of place in the front for crash structures, and aero shaping. Finally since your car is big (D segment), you can charge more money as per conventions of the market.

If you make a C or B segment car, you either reduce the battery size to save money, which makes it impractical for general use or pack in all that stuff into a smaller volume, and you get a car thats more expensive to make than a Model 3, while having worse drag and range, while the market expects you to charge less for it.

These small cars only make sense with a small battery, but you wouldn't want one for yourself as a second car - hence the robotaxi.

So no, your hypothetical Model 2 would not be cheaper if you didn't compromise it in some major way, which they dont wanna do.

Upwards differentiation is also hard for Tesla - base models are already powerful enough, have all the smart features, they wont compromise on autonomous stuff etc.

This is not only my opinion but the market's - S and X sold like 2 orders of magnitude less cars than the 3 and Y.

ben_w14• 6 months ago

I think the S and X (and Roadster) sold less because they were expensive early models trying to create a "premium" halo-effect (if so, they succeeded).

For range, how much range is sufficient? This may be one area where the EU and US need fundamentally different vehicles, as per the saying "in America 100 years is a long time, in Europe 100 miles is a long way". Certainly the EU market supports B-segment with 44kWh @ 320 km / 199 miles: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Citroën_C3#Europe_(2024)

SecretDreams• 6 months ago

This is not only my opinion but the market's - S and X sold like 2 orders of magnitude less cars than the 3 and Y.

They sold less because they're far more expensive and have to compete against much more well put together products. Meanwhile, their platforms are 10 years old and there are now other offerings in an overall niche field.

You're right about aero to an extent, but aero is only felt on long highway drives and it can be mitigated somewhat with a couple more cells. Some consumers will choose style for a cost premium. Others will choose something more expensive simply because they don't want to support Musk.

vcanales• 6 months ago

On top of that, the factory is getting converted to make robots...

epolanski8• 6 months ago

"How I feel about Tesla? I wouldn't buy it and I wouldn't short it". Charles Munger.

groundzeros20158• 6 months ago

He’s been dead for more than a year. Is this his 2018 take?

ForHackernews• 6 months ago

SpaceX is going to go public so he doesn't need Tesla any more.

londons_explore3• 6 months ago

camera only navigation without sensor fusion with LIDAR will fail

I'm not so sure on this one. I think we'll see it this year. It will have embarrassing bugs (ie. running over cats which are hiding under the car) and we'll see lots of issues to begin with (ie. the car stops in the middle of a freeway because a camera got splattered with mud).

But I think they'll achieve the goal of something that can be deployed fairly widespread without public outrage causing it to be banned without lidar.

brk4• 6 months ago

It's been "coming this year" for almost a decade now. The bugs you describe are not embarrassing, they are critical issues that prevent it from being called FSD.

vimda• 6 months ago

How are those "bugs" not immediately disqualifying? "Move fast and break things" is not an acceptable strategy for controlling 2 tonne bricks hurtling down the freeway

ACCount375• 6 months ago

This LIDAR wank annoys me.

If you can train a policy that drives well on cameras, you can get self-driving. If you can't, you're fucked, and no amount of extra sensors will save you.

Self-driving isn't a sensor problem. It always was, is, and always will be an AI problem.

No amount of LIDAR engineering will ever get you a LIDAR that outputs ground truth steering commands. The best you'll ever get is noisy depth estimate speckles that you'll have to massage with, guess what, AI, to get them to do anything of use.

Sensor suite choice is an aside. Camera only 360 coverage? Good enough to move on. The rest of the problem lies with AI.

lateforwork3• 6 months ago

Even the best AI can't drive without good sensors. Cameras have to guess distance and they fail when there is insufficient contrast, direct sunlight and so on. LiDARs don't have to guess distance.

top_sigrid• 6 months ago

If you can train a policy that drives well on cameras, you can get self-driving. If you can't, you're fucked, and no amount of extra sensors will save you.

Source: trust me, bro? This statement has no factual basis. Calling the most common approach of all other self-driving developers except Tesla a wank also is no argument but hate only.

ActorNightly3• 6 months ago

You are correct, but the problem is nobody at Tesla or any other self driving company for that matter knows what they are doing when it comes to AI

If you are doing end to end driving policy (i.e the wrong way of doing it), having lidar is important as a correction factor to the cameras.

mrexcess• 6 months ago

Self-driving isn't a sensor problem. It always was, is, and always will be an AI problem.

AI + cameras have relevant limitations that LIDAR augmented suites don't. You can paint a photorealistic roadway onto a brick wall and AI + cameras will try to drive right through it, dubbed the "Wile E. Coyote" problem.

jasondigitized4• 6 months ago

Just don't drive up north in the snow and your good.

sbaildon• 6 months ago

The linked article is clear as to why the S and X don’t need to be in Tesla’s product line

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

bearjaws• 6 months ago

Why are they still making the cybertruck then?

I see way more Model S and X than Cybertruck.

korp• 6 months ago

Sounds like you get your news from Reddit.

ouchhhlib• 6 months ago

775 bn

wbu

https://www.forbes.com/profile/elon-musk/

Nevermark• 6 months ago

Elon 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• 6 months ago

I 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• 6 months ago

That 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.

flakeoil4• 6 months ago

Their electronics, batteries, motors, etc., are world class.

This was maybe true 5-10 years ago, but not today.

WorldMaker6• 6 months ago

You 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• 6 months ago

They don't make their own battery cells they are an integrator of third party cells.

apparent3• 6 months ago

Interesting 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.

protastus2• 6 months ago

The metric for the Cybertruck is the impact to Elon's ego. Nothing about this project is rational.

apparent3• 6 months ago

The 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.

numpad02• 6 months ago

Painted 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_case4• 6 months ago

Part 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.

apparent3• 6 months ago

Wondered 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?

mdavid6263• 6 months ago

So many Tesla/Musk haters around here.

flakeoil4• 6 months ago

People are just being rational and pragmatic.

sidcool5• 6 months ago

How so?

groundzeros20158• 6 months ago

People are losing money and a product they liked because they imagine disliking it hurts an individual they don’t like.

This is a lose/lose enemy centered mindset, and a weird personification of a corporation.

mdavid6263• 6 months ago

It’s always funny to me that hating is fine if the person justifies it by some reason, but it’s generally not accepted, when that person doesn’t care about the reason.

“Stop the hate”, but of course only if it’s not me hating. Because that hate is valid and justified.

misiti37803• 6 months ago

lots of jealous nerds in this forum ...

anon_anon12• 6 months ago

I can imagine Musk selling these very models with AI slapped onto them and call it revolutionary

nusl• 6 months ago

FSD will launch next year, of course. Just like every year.

dabinat• 6 months ago

Before 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.

WorldMaker6• 6 months ago

The 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.

Ekaros2• 6 months ago

I 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• 6 months ago

Any other car company would create an S / X MkII.

cesarvarela2• 6 months ago

Yup, and most are dying and getting bought by Chinese capital.

sgjohnson2• 6 months ago

Tesla 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”.

Traster• 6 months ago

I 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.

epolanski8• 6 months ago

Bingo.

breve5• 6 months ago

Why is making humanoid robots a moat? Other companies have been making robots for longer, humanoid and otherwise, and doing it better.

Has Optimus signed up for any sports yet: https://edition.cnn.com/2026/01/02/china/china-humanoid-robo...

Is Optimus close to what Boston Dynamics is doing with Atlas: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YIhzUnvi7Fw

sgjohnson2• 6 months 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.

But it's make-believe. Tesla is a car manufacturer. They haven't shipped anything else other than cars. And they even suck at making cars these days. Tesla Semi? All but dead. The new roadster? Also dead. Full Self Driving? Doesn't exist. Robotaxis? Even if they got them to work, at this point the brand is too toxic for widespread adoption of those.

They could have persisted at being a disruptive car manufacturer and still held a several hundred billion dollar valuation. Now they are a very mediocre car manufacturer, with their only actual success being conning everyone into believing that they are a bleeding-edge tech company so their $1.5Bn valuation seems justified.

JumpinJack_Cash• 6 months 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.

You can pursue everything with words, even you can pursue Sydney Sweeney but then you have to show the receipts.

The receipts of Tesla (Factories, lines of production, expertise of people hired, 25 years of history...) are one of car company.

But of course, it's all narrative so people will keep outbidding each other to own a piece of this company.

The financialization of hope, that's what it is.

freakynit• 6 months ago

Everything tends toward commodification in a hyper-competitive, hyper-connected world. The only variable is time... and this "time" keeps shrinking.

As commodification accelerates, consolidation follows. In the current landscape, where private capital and state power are deeply entangled under the banner of national security, this consolidation no longer stays economic. It becomes geopolitical.

The end result... it translates to not just corporate monopolies, but geo-monopolies... enforced not by markets alone, but by coercion, conflict, and control over resources.

sosomoxie3• 6 months ago

Pure logic would dictate that Tesla has a market cap of around $5B. It's actually fraudulent that it's not, and for some reason the SEC allows Musk to lie on every earnings call without repercussion.

jordanb4• 6 months ago

Tesla's original "secret plan" (published on their website) was to become a commodity car manufacturer faster than electric cars became a commodity. Such that the other manufacturers would find them selling obsolete vehicles and Tesla just becomes the new General Motors.

This was the justification for their stock price for quite a few years: "It's logical that Tesla is worth more than all other automakers combined because it will soon be the only automaker."

Then in 2022 Elon basically admitted that they couldn't win on production and had to continue to win on technology and they'd do that with self driving. [https://www.businessinsider.com/elon-musk-tesla-worth-basica...]

But now Tesla is way behind on self driving (which was oversold by the whole industry tbh). So what's their new plan? Now they're no longer a car company and will make robots!

jcranmer• 6 months ago

Brand value is definitely a moat. Not the deepest of moats, but it is a moat nonetheless.

It's pure logic that Tesla has to pursue bets that would justify billion dollar valuations and being a car company isn't that.

Tesla is valued as if it is a tech company with a car business as a side gig. Its balance sheet is a car business, and I'm not even sure it spends enough on tech to have tech qualify as a side gig. And the other tech avenues it has been pursuing (autonomous vehicles, humanoid robots) are areas that other people have been doing for better and longer. Hell, Honda had autonomous (not tele-operated) humanoid robots working 20 years ago.

To be honest, at this point, I mostly consider the other bets that Tesla is pursing are just passion projects to keep the stock price artificially high. Were Tesla more realistically valued, it would lose probably 90% or more of its value, and Musk would be a much poorer man.

outside12342• 6 months ago

Tesla's moat is constantly moving to the next thing and claiming it has a moat before moving on to the next thing.

Elon's business model is moving from one government subsidized thing to the next (see SpaceX now bribing for tax dollars to go to Mars).

arbor_day• 6 months ago

It's not that EVs are a commodity. Competition and speculative production capacity buildouts combined with lower than expected consumer demand made the market less profitable.

neogodless• 6 months ago

Electric vehicles turned into a commodity

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commodity

a resource, that specifically has full or substantial fungibility: that is, the market treats instances of the good as equivalent or nearly so with no regard to who produced them

Uhh.. not sure where you live or what your local / regional market is like. I'm in the United States, where what car you drive is a really big decision. Many people share on social media what car they bought, and tell people around them about the new car they bought. I've yet to witness a situation where someone said "I bought an electric car" and the response was something like "Why are you telling me you bought toilet paper?" (Even toilet paper has brand names and advertising.)

That isn't to say that the car market hasn't shifted over time.

Cars began as "engine to move wheels plus a few other things" and evolved so that the engine seemed less of the central reason why you bought a specific vehicle. An electric powertrain does take things a bit further, in that most EV buyers know very little about the motors, though they certainly know a thing or two about the battery.

Batteries are generally a commodity at smaller scales, but in a car, they matter significantly. Still, brand matters, too. Ask Lucid or Rivian or Porsche how they sell their electric cars for $70K - $160K. How is it that a commodity available to purchase for ~$30K can be sold for $130K additional? (That's not how commodities work.)

No, electric cars are not a commodity. It's just a difficult market with a lot of players, and a broad market with constantly evolving tastes. Ask Toyota why they have half a dozen different SUV models. Or why the Ford F-150 comes in 200 configurations. (That's not how commodities work!)

Just because the gasoline-burning engine was replaced with electric motors and batteries, the car didn't turn into a commodity overnight. I'm open to counterarguments and persuasion to the contrary.

Fischgericht3• 6 months ago

If you do not want to run a car company, maybe do not... run a car company? Get an ice cream truck.

It absolutely makes no sense to convert a car manufacturer into an AI company. Or a robotics company after you have build CAR FACTORIES around the planet.

If you as a CEO don't like the business you are running for your shareholders, it is time to get a new CEO that does. There still are managers that really like running car companies.

I don't get the feeling that BYD management is bored about the EV business...

theshrike793• 6 months ago

The competition was this:

Tesla had a very good computer, they were learning how to put a car around it.

Traditional manufacturers (German mostly) had good or very good cars, but they sucked at the computer stuff.

---

And unknown to all, the Chinese learned how to make good cars with good computers built in as those two were trying to achiever their respective goals.

AtlasBarfed• 6 months ago

Yeah there's no margin in being a luxury car builder

And of course you're just going to pretend what the mission statement was.

CRConrad2• 6 months 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.

jacquesm• 6 months ago

Tesla benefited from tax payer subsidies.

ben_w14• 6 months ago

An important question is therefore: why didn't anyone else?

andruby• 6 months ago

That's true for a lot of (most?) car manufacturers?

I fully agree that TSLA is madly overpriced as a car company, and too hyped as any other type of company.

WarmWash8• 6 months ago

Trust me, I hate Tesla and Elon as much as the next naysayer

But just to keep the story straight

Tesla received ~$3 billion in subsidies.

When Elon exercised his Tesla options in 2021, he paid $11 billion in taxes on it.

By all accounts those subsidies were an incredibly good use of taxpayer money, and similar subsidies should keep being handed out, even if the byproduct is another big troll on twitter.

alex11382• 6 months ago

That valuation is sure interesting considering the people killed in crashes from Tesla's self-driving thing

Edit: I love making legitimate points and instantly accruing downvotes from 'Valley VC types. Look yourself in the mirror.

jlongr2• 6 months ago

Oh their self-driving thing...Full* "Self" Driving (supervised)(see notes)(not liable for anything)

gwbas1c3• 6 months ago

And to add insult to injury, even GM Super Cruise is widely renowned as better and safer than Tesla’s current “FSD”.

My Huyndai's Autopilot equivalent (I don't even know what they call it) is better than the enhanced Autopilot in the Model 3 that I traded in. It actually changes lanes when I put on the blinker, instead of only changing lanes 70% of the time, and the other time just sitting with the blinker on and a clear lane.

not_ai• 6 months ago

I did not know this and explains why I see so many teslas with their blinkers on and not maneuvering despite having ample room and time. Ultimately this behavior makes them unsafe for their occupants as well as others around them.

Cars only work because we can predict driver behavior, if they break that prediction that’s when bad things are likely to happen…

Lately I’ve started to ignore Tesla blinker.

philistine3• 6 months ago

Most probably because it has a radar that the Tesla lacks. That means your car has two sources of truth and can very efficiently and quickly make an informed decision about whether or not there's anything in the way.

noboostforyou• 6 months ago

Kia Telluride here but I assume it's the same underlying system as Hyundai - I can attest that it's very good (and doesn't cost anything extra like Tesla charges lol) which makes sense considering they have the majority stake in Boston Dynamics since a few years ago.

gkfasdfasdf3• 6 months ago

Tesla FSD will change lanes when you use the blinker. It will also accelerate and remain engaged if you press the pedal, e.g. if you want to coax it forward at an intersection.

compootr• 6 months ago

I bought an IONIQ 6 with Hyundai Driver assist II, and it's not what the reviews cut it out to be.

On stretches of pretty straight highway and in traffic, it fares very well, only requiring minor interaction, but on larger curves, it completely disengages with no tone or warning, just a light on the dashboard that turns off.

I'm fully aware you're supposed to drive a car by paying attention to the road, but if the whole point of this feature is to make driving more chill, randomly disengaging makes me distrustful of it

vladms• 6 months ago

If Tesla was valued fairly

I think it's a wrong mental model to think of stock market value as "fair" or "unfair" (or maybe it's just me thinking of "unfair" when I see the word "fair").

My impression is that if Tesla would be valued based on quantifiable things it would be much much lower (production costs, competition, revenues, potential, etc.). Of course, you shouldn't value something only based on quantifiable things, but in Tesla the "wishful thinking" part seems to be much larger than for others.

radlad2• 6 months ago

I assume OP meant something closer to "fair market value" than "fair vs. unfair." Tesla is not priced according to its underlying assets or technical analysis (e.g. P/E ratio), but solely based on hype/sentiment.

Interestingly, retail investors and company insiders collectively own more of Tesla than institutional investors.

asah• 6 months ago

SpaceX will acquire Tesla and save the shareholders, just like Tesla acquired SolarCity.

extraduder_ire• 6 months ago

Can they afford to do that? I would assume it would be the other way around unless the valuation of either/both changes drastically.

XAI acquiring twitter is probably a better recent example than solarcity.

outside12342• 6 months ago

We are in a time when people are in cults. Trump is a cult. Elon is a cult. Tesla is a cult.

Cults do not operate on logic, but almost always result in a mass casualty event of some sort.

notabee• 6 months ago

It's baked into the foundations of the U.S. While perhaps not a cult as we describe it today, even the first puritans that settled here were considered extremists not welcome in their home countries. For such a young country, we have always had a burgeoning industry in upstart cults, grifts, and religions (but I repeat myself).

jmyeet3• 6 months ago

Tesla will become a case study on how to completely waste the first-mover advantage.

It's a study in many things.

Tesla only exists because of the transfer of wealth from the government. DOE loans, EV tax credits and other incentives are the difference between existing and not existing.

That's not necessarily bad. The problem is the government really gets nothing for their money. Look at how China incubates their businesses.

As an example, imagine where we'd be if the government had insisted on standardized charging infrastructure instead of Tesla's originally proprietary Supercharger network.

If Tesla was valued fairly, it would probably be at the tune of $5B.

I could see it as high as $100B but not $1.5T. Not even close.

And I, too, would never bet against it. Nothing fundamental is behind Tesla's valuation. It's just gambling.

gkfasdfasdf3• 6 months ago

And to add insult to injury, even GM Super Cruise is widely renowned as better and safer than Tesla’s current “FSD”.

Do you have any sources for that claim? I can attest that current iteration of FSD is very, very good, and very likely is a safer driver than I am. At least one major insurance company agrees [0]. I don't have any experience with Super Cruise though.

[0] https://www.lemonade.com/fsd

root_axis4• 6 months ago

Do you have any sources for that claim? I can attest that current iteration of FSD is very, very good, and very likely is a safer driver than I am.

That's a damning statement about your driving skills, and probably not true or you'd have had your license revoked by now. I've had FSD for five years, and even today it regularly makes dangerous mistakes. For example, left turns and roundabouts are the equivalent of Russian roulette, but just last week my FSD started driving through a red light because it interpreted a green left-arrow as a sign that it could proceed forward.

If you need to do 50 miles on the interstate it's pretty solid though.

sjsdaiuasgdia• 6 months ago

At least one major insurance company agrees

You mean the insurance company that has only existed for 10 years and I never heard of before this Tesla tie-in marketing gimmick?

enragedcacti2• 6 months ago

Lemonade doesn't support your claim that FSD is a safer driver than you are. It just says that, most charitably, they believe FSD and a human operator are safer than just a human operator (The co-founder said exactly this to Reuters [0]). Further, the program has only been around for a week and their marketing copy specifically cites "Tesla's data" as the source for the 50% reduction rather than any sort of independent analysis.

https://www.reuters.com/business/autos-transportation/lemona...

xnx3• 6 months ago

At least one major insurance company agrees

Lemonade has <1% market share

dstroot2• 6 months ago

And Elon canceled the S and X models but not the Cybertruck? C’mon…

hnburnsy2• 6 months ago

I wonder if they reconfigure it and tone down the look to something more traditional.

Multiplayer• 6 months ago

GM Supercruise on my 2024 Silverado RST is a joke compared to Tesla FSD. It's not even remotely comparable. Supercruise only works on freeways/highways, does not understand ANY navigation. It's a better cruise control, that's about it. I own 2 Tesla model S of different vintages and FSD is a completely different animal. My 2017 model s can navigate from my house to, well, anywhere, with no intervention. I have been very disappointed in how long it took Tesla to get here based on the promises they made 10(!) years ago, but they are there now. Even a year ago FSD used to scare me frequently and cause me to disengage but that never happens now.

pants2• 6 months ago

The only thing remotely comparable in the US is probably a Comma 4 with a forked OpenPilot build on a well-supported vehicle

memish2• 6 months ago

1. Tesla has $40B in cash and is profitable. To say it's worth $5B is beyond absurd.

2. The market determines what is a fair value, not rando haters on the internet. Even professional Wall Street consensus is that it's fair value at approximately $1.2T market cap.

rkagerer• 6 months ago

$40B in cash/equivalents, minus some $13-20B in debt (depending what source you pick).

esseph• 6 months ago

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.

Cult. It's a cult.

There's a contingent of tech bros that think they're "smart" because they latched on to Tesla and have been riding its nuts through Elon's political stunts without a care in the world. Tesla failing would mean to them that they failed. They can't fail, they're too smart. If they just HODL for a little longer, then he'll get something magical out and validate their decision making. Sunk cost running wild.

misiti37803• 6 months ago

I was with you until you compared super cruise to FSD. not even comparable

insane_dreamer2• 6 months ago

I think these days you have to look at Tesla stock more like crypto -- you're betting on the hype and hope to ride the wave and exit before it crashes.

stinkbeetle• 6 months ago

Tesla will become a case study on how to completely waste the first-mover advantage.

I doubt that because Tesla was not a first mover, established automotive companies were.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nissan_R%27nessa#Nissan_Altra

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ford_Ranger_EV

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Honda_EV_Plus

Etc.

The innovation/imitation/commoditization cycle is not really new or limited to Tesla, it applies to everything from robot vacuum cleaners to CPUs. Whether Tesla survives or not probably depends a lot more on boring things like economic and trade policies of large countries.

The much more interesting thing to study would be how ice auto manufacturers not only completely wasted their first mover advantages, but also their long established brand value, supply chains and distribution and sales networks when it came to EVs.

It was not many years ago, industry "experts" were still going on about how Tesla could never hope to build cars at scale, that their "build quality" would sink them, etc. Whereas many people have rightly identified this commoditization and threats from Chinese manufacturers as being one of the biggest risks to Tesla from the beginning. Surely it's more interesting to study the things that were not obvious or well predicted?

NoPicklez9• 6 months ago

How would GM Super Cruise be renowned as better when it is only compatible with highways? You can't use it around town or in the city.

Sure, it might be considered safer because it only allows itself to work when its on a controlled highway in a straight line.

bmitc2• 6 months ago

Tesla will become a case study on how to completely waste the first-mover advantage.

Did they ever have a first mover advantage? They had first mover hype, but did they really have an advantage?

Companies like Kia and Hyundai had an advantage. They already had logistics, design, R&D, manufacturing, supply chains, etc. all figured out from decades of building and improving cars. Tesla had NONE of that. All Kia and Hyundai had to do to get into EVs was add another few models to their lineup with some iteration on all their existing processes. And immediately, these models became hot sellers.

Tesla had to literally reinvent (but to themselves invent) what it takes to design, build, and sell a car.

This writing has been on the wall for years. Tesla has less than a handful of models and can't even iterate on them in any substantial way. Other car makers make dozens of models and rev them every year and do a design refresh every five to ten years. Tesla never had any advantage or key selling point outside of hype.

vagab0nd• 6 months ago

I 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.

cmoski• 6 months 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• 6 months ago

I 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• 6 months ago

So essentially down to making one car huh.

podgorniy2• 6 months ago

I guess self-driving will be done by the humanoid robots now

podgorniy2• 6 months ago

Electric 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• 6 months ago

Tesla must be in serious trouble given recent erratic moves

yazantapuz• 6 months ago

Relevant 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• 6 months 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• 6 months ago

Elon Musk is already doing that kind of parenting, so I can see how he likes it.

DalasNoin• 6 months ago

These 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• 6 months ago

Hard to believe, but it's almost 10 years since they announced the new Roadster

RCitronsBroker• 6 months ago

someone is stuffing their channels, huh? first the fsd fiasco, now this

cs702• 6 months ago

Five 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• 6 months ago

As 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• 6 months ago

I 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• 6 months ago

Pretty 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• 6 months ago

He'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

sidcool5• 6 months ago

Is Tesla really failing? They have $40 billion cash at hand. More than some legacy automobile market cap.

snek_case4• 6 months ago

They'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.

throwaway1324483• 6 months ago

Not 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_case4• 6 months 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.

wmeredith• 6 months ago

See past your opinion about it's leader.

This is like asking Mrs. Lincoln what she thought about the play. The scope of the (financial and physical) damage by Musk's government meddling is breathtaking, is ongoing, and will echo for generations.

thelastgallon• 6 months ago

Coming 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• 6 months ago

There 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• 6 months 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?

palmotea2• 6 months 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• 6 months ago

They are one of several memetic devices which keep Tesla’s stock price in orbit, untethered from reality.

testing223217• 6 months ago

If 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?

WarmWash8• 6 months 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.

blinding-streak• 6 months ago

They are a financial engineering product with limited real world utility, in an attempt to keep the company solvent.

root_axis4• 6 months ago

If a use case emerges it will have to be industrial or commercial. The power and maintenance constraints for a robot like that make it pretty impractical for home use.

yalogin• 6 months ago

Looks 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.

nkotov• 6 months ago

I 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• 6 months ago

I 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• 6 months ago

I 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.

t14000• 6 months ago

Do you believe Mr Musk though?

boondongle• 6 months ago

I 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• 6 months ago

Is 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• 6 months ago

Tesla’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… ?”

rajnathani• 6 months 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.

Tesla ending Models S and X production

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