Comment by sampton
Comment by sampton 4 days 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.
Comment by sampton 4 days 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.
I don't know if it's genius or madness, but all of Tesla's cars look the same. When I see a Tesla, I can't tell if it's a 3, S, X, or Y unless I get close. The most distinct one is the X with its fancy doors.
So when I hear they're cancelling the S and X I can't even picture which cars we're talking about.
How can legacy auto refresh models every two years and Tesla cannot?
Pretty sure the Mercedes S-Class is also not selling a ton of units.
268K of 5 top end Mercedes models were sold in 2025 (and like 1/3 of them were sold in Maybach or AMG version!). Where is Tesla S and X combined sales were only 32K in 2024 and 18K in 2025.
You wouldn't mistake Mercedes S-Class for E-class and E-class for C-class. Even BMW 7 vs. 5 vs. 3 look more distinct than Tesla S vs. 3 and X vs. Y. The Mercedes and BMW do the good job of market differentiation while in my view Tesla failed here, and thus cheaper 3 and Y cannibalized sales of S and X. Thus, paradoxically, given that Tesla started in luxury segment, Tesla hasn't recently been capturing that high margin of the luxury segment (which is doing very well overall - just look at those Maybach and AMG numbers)
The problem is just there is no concept of a car company where they only sell their standard mass market vehicles. Somewhat more expensive higher margin vehicles are in the lineup for almost all the other companies. Its kind of strange to suggest its not worth it when it is seemingly worth it for most other companies.
Maybe the wisdom of having a 'full lineup' is wrong and has to do with making dealers happy.
On the other hand, having 99% of your sales be 2 very similar vehicles seems questionable strategy.
It is worth it when it is done right, i.e when you do correct market differentiation (see my other comment here on Mercedes) to avoid your low end cannibalizing your higher end. This high margin really helps you, and this is why almost everybody does it. EVs are probably even better suited for it given that the platform itself is easier/cheaper to share between the low end and the high end - thus the current Teslas S/X story looks even more of a failure as by releasing 3/Y that similar to S/X (that probably helped a lot with 3/Y sales though) they forced themselves into the need for a very significant (expensive) redesign of S/X while having very low sales of it.
The big issue with S/X was that they were not luxury enough, in terms of performance they were fine. So the redesign was mostly needed in terms of interior quality, materials and so on. Not that crazy expensive and something all other car companies manage to do.
I see it differently - they needed to redesign everything except the power train. I.e. in addition to the interior, externally it should have been looking way upscale from 3/Y. Giving that their design language is already almost 2 decades old, they needed (and actually would still need it for 3/Y max 5 years down the road) to have a full redesign for S/X similar to how BMW did with 2002 7-series trickling down that design into 2004 5-series and 2006 3-series (or like Mercedes did with S-class in 1996 and trickling down that to E and C later)
Musk'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.
Musk would love to be selling several billion dollars per year of model S/X sales, the issue is they aren’t that competitive with other cars in the luxury segment thus the falling sales numbers.
Tesla’s doesn’t really have a complex strategy at this point, they are getting squeezed out of the high end by legacy automakers where their lower cost batteries don’t matter as much. They are absolutely fucked on the low end as soon as Chinese cars enter the picture.
So self driving is really the only option to sell any long term upside to keep the stock from tanking. It’s not a very convincing argument, but you play the hand your dealt.
> getting squeezed out of the high end by legacy automakers where their lower cost batteries don’t matter as much. They are absolutely fucked on the low end as soon as Chinese cars enter the picture.
The deep irony here is that after ~15 years of trying ti differentiate from the legacy American automakers, they land in a very similar competitive position. Chinese EVs are in the process of running the table outside the protectionist markets of the EU + US/Canada.
Eventually those protective barriers will fall as they protect a relatively small number of citizens by taxing the majority. It remains to be seen whether the US and European domestic producers will survive.
You may have to play the hand you have, but Musk was the dealer and he is still losing.
If they are eating into model X or S sales it obviously counts here.
Porsche, Audi, BMW, Mercedes-Benz, Genesis, and Cadillac are all competitive in different ways. Stat wise someone buying the electric G-Wagon is making a poor decision, but swagger is a selling point which very much costs Tesla sales.
Cadillac’s approach of a huge dumb battery powering a huge heavy vehicle may not be ideal for the average use case, but customers are going to prioritize different things. One SUV just can’t be the best solution to every lifestyle.
> Without some big jumps in battery tech, EVs are going to be difficult to sell without subsidies.
The actual sales figures show otherwise, but sure, there's still a lot of uncertainty with regards to batteries / range, I can imagine even moreso in the US. Traveled to Austria a while ago in an EV (~1000 kilometers), we had to stop 3x on the way, but the battery was good for another 2.5 hours of driving after a coffee. I keep hearing that "solid state batteries are around the corner" and they will solve all problems with capacity and safety / fire risk, apparently. I'll just sit and wait patiently, it'll take years before their production capacity is on par with current battery tech.
The whole battery thing is a massive misunderstanding of how EVs work vs gas vehicles.
For an EV with a range of 250 miles (400km) you can drive 400mi (645km) with one (1) thirty minute stop.
That's pretty much, drive 3 hours, stop for 30 minute lunch, drive 3 hours.
The confusion stems from the fact that gas cars don't fill up themselves before you depart, and they don't fill up themselves when you arrive. There are rather large differences between gas and electric cars, but people still treat EVs like gas cars, and demand EVs be more like gas cars.
Isn't it more like 4 hours?
The EPA tests at 55MPH, and driving faster than that will yield a lower range, so each 200 mile leg should take closer to 4 hours.
And yet Chinese EV's are flying out of their factories, well, a few are - most are self driving out to the shipping yards.
This despite the 2025 support by the Chinese state for the Chines EV industry now being almost nothing.
By contrast, defenders of China could point out that the data show that subsidies as a percentage of total sales have declined substantially, from over 40% in the early years to only 11.5% in 2023, which reflects a pattern in line with heavier support for infant industries, then a gradual reduction as they mature.
In addition, they could note that the average support per vehicle has fallen from $13,860 in 2018 to just under $4,600 in 2023, which is less than the $7,500 credit that goes to buyers of qualifying vehicles as part of the U.S.’s Inflation Reduction Act.
but the arc of less subsidies is clear.
You should also factor in lax human rights enforcement in China (which acts like a subsidy essentially in effect and is not factored in these calculations):
https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2024/10/human-rights-...
BYD is at the bottom of the list (worst for human rights). Tesla is second at the top (better for human rights).
This is a retarded list of self reported paper commitments, not actual practice, i.e. no actual supply chain assessment was done, not that you can trust a propaganda shitrag like amnesty. Tesla simply "promises" in their PR to be better for human rights. Hint 50%+ of Tesla exports come from Tesla Shanghai which uses same supply raw material supply chain as rest of PRC auto, functionally they're the same.
Meanwhile how do you factoring in PRC manufacturing is simply more modern with more labour saving automation, i.e. they simply have less people to "abuse". PRC simply be peak human rights by eliminating the most humans from process.
> He wants to sell millions of cheaper cars, not thousands of cars for wealthy people.
Why hasn't the cheap car been designed yet then?
The Model 3 is pretty cheap for an EV. The average car in the US is over $50k now, so it's competitive on price.
If $50k is competitive for you, that should be a sign something's gone wrong.
In Europe we can get new cars for less than half that price, both for domestic production and also post-tariffs on Chinese imports.
> 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.
So the literal opposite of the Cybertruck, which was released less than a year ago.
Tesla got the job done, which was empower Musk, not manufacture EVs at scale. The stock is the product.
Maybe I’m just naive enough, because I love cars and progress, but I think you agree that he really showed our whole small world that EV can exist and work. Everyone laughed, no one believed it will work and here he still is rich and we have Teslas everywhere. Driving, not killing more people than other brands.
I think China would’ve gotten us to here without Tesla.
Except that the Model Y accounts for more fatalities than any other car out there.
While you're correct on the one hand, Tesla made EVs feasible and mainstream, did the investments and caused a rolling effect of worldwide investments in e.g. batteries and EVs, and government subsidies that also made investing in EVs more attractive to competitors.
Besides EVs, Tesla's long term revenue could very well be in the supercharger network, too. It's not as exciting as self driving cars, but the oil companies have been the most valuable companies / stocks worldwide without being exciting like that. I mean I don't think EV charging will be anywhere near as big as oil because it doesn't involve nearly as much infrastructure or international trade, but it's still big, especially if governments refocus on replacing ICEs with EVs.
(the focus has been let go because the subsidies were too popular and expensive)
I wonder if this coincides with Musk getting into politics? Never a good choice to alienate half your customer base. Michael Jordan famously said he never got into politics because "Republicans buy sneakers, too."
Try to impair democracy through election denial groups? Absolute power and all that jazz.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46734078
The Trump administration admits even more ways DOGE accessed sensitive personal data - https://www.npr.org/2026/01/23/nx-s1-5684185/doge-data-socia... - January 23rd, 2026
Case No. 1:25-cv-00596-ELH - https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.mdd.577...
> The unnamed employees secretly conferred with a political advocacy group about a request to match Social Security data with state voter rolls to "find evidence of voter fraud and to overturn election results in certain States," the filing said. It remains unclear whether any data actually went to this group.
“Maybe you do not care much about the future of the Republican Party. You should. Conservatives will always be with us. If conservatives become convinced that they can not win democratically, they will not abandon conservatism. The will reject democracy.” —- David Frum
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.