Musk said his company is planning to convert space in their Fremont, Calif. factory that is currently used to build Model S and X vehicles into an Optimus robot factory.
"I think it's time to bring the Model S and X to an end, with an honorable discharge," Musk said on a live call with investors. "Because we're really moving into a future that is based on autonomy."
Musk added: "If you're interested in buying a Model S and X, now would be the time to order it. Because we expect to wind down S and X production next quarter and basically stop production of Model S and X next quarter."
Why is Tesla killing the Model S and Model X?
Tesla launched the Model S in 2013 and it debuted the Model X in 2015.
The Model S in particular did well commercially for a time, but both vehicles have been surpassed in recent years by Tesla's Model 3 and Model Y vehicles.
Musk told investors on the January 28 call that it was "slightly sad, but it is time to bring the S/X program to an end."
"It's part of our overall shift to an autonomous future," he said. "The only vehicles that we'll make will be autonomous vehicles, with the exception of the next generation Roadster."
How did the Model S and Model X sell?
Tesla sold 9,199 Model S vehicles in 2025, according to the website Goodcarbadcar.net. The company sold 80,702 Model X vehicles in 2025, according to the website.
Here's how the vehicles fared in the past five years:
Why has the price of bitcoin plummeted? Experts explain
The price of bitcoin plummeted about 10% over the past week as investors stampeded out of the world's most popular cryptocurrency.
Ethereum, the second-largest cryptocurrency, plunged even further, shedding nearly one-fifth of its value over the last week. Solana, another popular crypto coin, saw its price cut in half over that period.
Experts who spoke to ABC News attributed the decline in crypto prices to looming geopolitical and economic uncertainty, which prompted a momentum-driven selloff as crypto holders raced to the exits. The initial drop likely forced some leveraged buyers to sell off their positions, intensifying the downward pressure, they added.
"There are concerns about risk right now. The price of crypto tends to drop when investors look to take risk off the table," Bryan Armour, the director of passive strategies research at financial firm Morningstar.
"That may have precipitated the decline, and then it was like a snowball rolling downhill," Armour added.
The labor market has slowed in recent months, while inflation has hovered above the Federal Reserve's target rate of 2%.
Meanwhile, geopolitical conflict looms amid negotiations over Greenland, U.S.-backed leadership in Venezuela, the ongoing war between Russia and Ukraine, as well as escalating U.S. threats against Iran over the past few weeks.
In recent weeks, Trump has threatened tariffs against Canada, South Korea and eight European countries, invoking the tool as means of exerting pressure over a range of foreign-policy issues.
"Everything that's been happening the last few weeks is definitely adding a lot of nervousness in the market," Christian Catalini, founder of the MIT Cryptoeconomics Lab, told ABC News. "Anything that makes investors risk averse of course affects the price of bitcoin."
The recent drop in the price of bitcoin extends a prolonged selloff. The signature crypto coin stands about 40% below a peak attained in October 2025, Jim Reid, a research strategist at Deutsche Bank, noted in a memo to clients on Monday. Over that same period, the S&P 500 climbed 5% and the price of gold jumped 17%.
Bitcoin has fallen in each of the last four months, achieving that feat for the first time since the pandemic, Reid said.
To be sure, some analysts said the recent drop in bitcoin had hardly surprised them, considering the stratospheric heights achieved by the cryptocurrency last fall.
The price of bitcoin surged more than 40% in late-2024 after the election of President Donald Trump, who voiced support for cryptocurrency. Bitcoin declined over the ensuing months but soared again in October 2025.
"There's a natural limit to how high it can go up," Steve Sosnick, chief strategist at Interactive Brokers, told ABC News.
Bitcoin has proven highly volatile since its launch about 15 years ago.
As recently as 2022, bitcoin suffered a downturn that cut its value by more than 60%. A similar drop happened in each of the prior two years, when the pandemic helped trigger waves of buying and selling.
Despite its ups and downs, bitcoin has sustained an upward long-term trajectory. Over the past five years, the price has soared 96%, outpacing an 80% gain in the S&P 500 over that period. The price of bitcoin ticked up on Monday, recovering some of its losses over previous days.
Tesla is ending production of the Model S sedan and Model X SUV, CEO Elon Musk announced Wednesday during the company’s quarterly earnings call.
The company will make the final versions of both electric vehicles next quarter, he said, adding that his company will offer support for existing Model S and Model X owners “for as long as people have the vehicles.”
“It’s time to basically bring the Model S and X programs to an end with an honorable discharge, because we’re really moving into a future that is based on autonomy,” he said. “So if you’re interested in buying a Model S and X, now would be the time to order it.”
The Model S and Model X are both built at the company’s Fremont, California factory. Once production ends, Tesla will build Optimus robots in the same factory space, according to Musk. Production of Tesla’s Cybertruck, which is made at the company’s factory outside of Austin, will continue.
Tesla launched the Model S in 2012, and it’s regarded as the first car that made electric vehicles widely appealing. The Model X was Tesla’s second major electric vehicle program.
Tesla always intended for its more affordable models — the Model 3 sedan and Model Y SUV — to greatly outsell their predecessors.
But sales of both models have flatlined in recent years, despite interior and exterior refreshes along the way. Tesla has faced increased competition in the luxury EV space from legacy automakers, as well as upstarts like Rivian and Lucid Motors.
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“So that is slightly sad, but it’s… it is time to bring the S and X programs to an end,” Musk said.
Tesla’s first ground-up design
The Model S was not Tesla’s first car — that title goes to the original Roadster. But the Model S was the first car Tesla created from the ground up.
That helped it ditch a lot of the tradeoffs of the Roadster, and paved the way for the Model S to become one of the first true mass-market electric vehicles.
Tesla launched the sedan in 2012 with a base price of $57,400. It had a floor-mounted battery that helped make it roomier and far more dynamic to drive than the few other all-electric vehicles that were available at the time.
Tesla also offered the Model S with multiple battery sizes, allowing customers to pay up for more EV range.
The car was instantly popular, with Tesla collecting more than 10,000 reservations for it by the time the first deliveries started in June of that year. By 2013, it had become MotorTrend’s car of the year, beating out the best gas cars from around the world.
“At its core, the Tesla Model S is simply a damned good car you happen to plug in to refuel,” MotorTrend wrote.
Tesla iterated on the Model S in the years that followed. It changed up battery options — at one point even offering larger battery packs with range that was software-limited, in a bid to get customers to adopt a sort of “buy now pay later” attitude.
The Model S was also the first Tesla to get “Ludicrous Mode,” which made it possible to go from 0 to 60 m.p.h in just 2.8 seconds. It was an exhilarating feature that also became one of Tesla’s sharpest word-of-mouth marketing tools.
Tesla kept improving the Model S, giving it industry-leading range that still beats most other EVs and an overall exterior and interior refresh in 2021. But by that point the company’s success had skyrocketed on the backs of the much cheaper Model 3 and Model Y.
The Fabergé SUV
The Model X was not so straightforward.
First teased before the release of the Model S in 2012, the Model X SUV didn’t hit the streets until 2015. When it did, it arrived with overly complex “Falcon Wing” rear doors that folded up.
These made it extremely easy to get in and out of the Model X. But the doors — along with the rest of the SUV — proved to be very hard to build at scale with any reliable quality over the years. Musk eventually called it the “Fabergé of cars.” It was a nod to the luxury stylings and features, but also to the Model X’s brittle nature.
The Model X still sold fairly well alongside the S, and it also received a big refresh in 2021. But production problems plagued the new version, too, and Musk admitted in early 2022 that Tesla made a mistake by halting production before the redesigned Model X was ready to be made at scale.
Keith Laing
