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No more Model S/X production

You beat me to it. It’s a very positive news for Lucid, if they can capitalize this opportunity
 
Wow, though I could tell with my long-in-the-tooth Model S and X that it was time to move on. Honestly with their declining sales I have predicted in 5 years Tesla won't sell any cars. They will make robots, try to run robotaxis, and, maybe, license their FSD.

Lucid's space to own now!
 
Wow! I am surprised. As a former Model X owner, this is a sad day. Having said that, I kind of get it. Robotics, autonomous driving, AI —— that’s where money is. Car business is low margins cutthroat.

This is good news for Rivian and Lucid here In US. And the Europeans. Volvo EX60, BMW iX3, and MB GLC electric are fantastic on brand new platforms.

RIP
 
thyname said:
Robotics, autonomous driving, AI —— that’s where money is.
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That’s where the hype and investment is. It is not clear, at all, that that will be where the money is.

Tesla has moved into its full-hype stage, which will go exactly one of two ways:
1) Everyone has an Optimus in their home, Tesla licenses FSD to every manufacturer because nobody can catch up, and/or xAI somehow overtakes every other large model, or,

2) The hype train eventually stops and people don’t have an Optimus in their home and other ADAS does catch up, and xAI becomes “yet another model” which is the far more likely scenario, so they’ll have to try and differentiate via services, which is what OpenAI is trying to do now.

My bet is on 2.
 
End of an era for sure. My in-laws had one of the first model X’s in Miami. Impressive back in the day if not finicky.

Good opportunity for Lucid. Tesla literally has no premium luxury option anymore (some would argue they never did).
 
Tesla abandoned those models years ago. Good news for Lucid though 🙂
 
borski said:
That’s where the hype and investment is. It is not clear, at all, that that will be where the money is.

Tesla has moved into its full-hype stage, which will go exactly one of two ways:
1) Everyone has an Optimus in their home, Tesla licenses FSD to every manufacturer because nobody can catch up, and/or xAI somehow overtakes every other large model, or,

2) The hype train eventually stops and people don’t have an Optimus in their home and other ADAS does catch up, and xAI becomes “yet another model” which is the far more likely scenario, so they’ll have to try and differentiate via services, which is what OpenAI is trying to do now.

My bet is on 2.
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My bet is on 2 also. Although, I’m sure this one would appreciate an Optimus to take him on an additional daily walk or 2 or 3 😂

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I always liked Model S. But they pretty much stopped making it better a decade ago. I see tons of older ones around where I live, and I think I’d still prefer one of the older models over the latest ones.

The X has always been ugly as sin. Never understood the appeal of that car at all. To each their own.

This market is tiny. Makes total sense for Tesla to abandon it. Though their claim they need to “make room” is silly. If they were selling in any volume, they’d find the room.

Funny that these two models encompass Lucid’s entire line up to date. So Lucid no longer competes with Tesla directly.

Midsize will change that, of course. But it’s worth noting Tesla never bothered to improve either of these models to compete with Lucid (or other entrants). They got beat. Then they walked away.

Optimus is vaporware. Robotaxi has about as much chance of success as anyone else. And Tesla just reported its first year-over—year decline in revenue.

I’m sure the stock will be fine tomorrow.
 
Miami_Lucid_Man said:
End of an era for sure. My in-laws had one of the first model X’s in Miami. Impressive back in the day if not finicky.

Good opportunity for Lucid. Tesla literally has no premium luxury option anymore (some would argue they never did).
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Supposed to be the Cybertruck, although that one is not long either, although Musk did say it had utility as a short-range delivery vehicle (think autonomous furniture delivery). A bit ridiculous since it's maintenance & repair is terrible for a business.
 
Musk is a visionary with eyes on Mars. It was obvious to me that vehicles became completely uninteresting to him years ago. He saw the BYD writing on the wall: EV's are the ultimate transportation commodity and with good FSD on the horizon, the market is headed towards a low margin/low price game and China has a distinct cost of goods sold advantage. Lucid is a luxury niche just like ICE sports cars.
 
Can’t believe his pay package got approved.

His entire play is forcing Model 3/Y drivers to buy up to FSD now. Since it was included with X (and S?) purchases, he was probably like - wait, those don’t count for my Trillion dollar pay package? Axe’em!
 
Not a surprise at all - Musk said they were still building the vehicles "for sentimental reasons" on an ER call back in 2019, and last June/July Tesla stopped selling the vehicles in Europe. When you look at the paltry changes to Model X on this last "refresh," it sure seems half-hearted. Adtually, quarter-hearted.

That Tesla is converting the old Model S&X assembly lines into Optimus assembly lines tells you all you need to know about where the company is headed.

Do note that FSD sales/subscriptions were up like 38% while cumulative sales were up only 20% - so more Tesla owners are getting on board with FSD.

Also note Tesla is up to 500 robotaxi vehicles, now some with no drivers, no safety monitors and even some with no chase cars. Waymo's fleet is about 2500 vehicles total after more than 5 years.
 
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Smorgasbord said:
Not a surprise at all - Musk said they were still building the vehicles "for sentimental reasons" on an ER call back in 2019, and last June/July Tesla stopped selling the vehicles in Europe. When you look at the paltry changes to Model X on this last "refresh," it sure seems half-hearted. Adtually, quarter-hearted.

That Tesla is converting the old Model S&X assembly lines into Optimus assembly lines tells you all you need to know about where the company is headed.

Do note that FSD sales/subscriptions were up like 38% while cumulative sales were up only 20% - so more Tesla owners are getting on board with FSD.

Also note Tesla is up to 500 robotaxi vehicles, now some with no drivers, no safety monitors and even some with no chase cars. Waymo's fleet is about 2500 vehicles total after more than 5 years.
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Numbers of vehicles is a bad way to compare. None of the "Robotaxi" vehicles in California are actually robotaxis. Tesla hasn't even bothered applying for the permits they'd need in California. They did get a testing permit, but they've never used it, presumably because they don't want to publish the data that would be required. But they are forced to publish some data from Austin, and that makes it clear that they're getting into accidents (even with human supervisors) much more frequently that is acceptable. They're at a point where individual drives are usually uneventful, but that's a far cry from the safety level needed. The only other available dataset for FSD is the crowdsourced intervention data (which Musk in the past has acknowledged is fairly accurate), and that doesn't show anywhere close to the improvement needed for true autonomy. At this point I'd far prefer to get into a Waymo over FSD without human supervision.
 
RajD said:
Can’t believe his pay package got approved.

His entire play is forcing Model 3/Y drivers to buy up to FSD now. Since it was included with X (and S?) purchases, he was probably like - wait, those don’t count for my Trillion dollar pay package? Axe’em!
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It's baffling to me that so many Tesla investors are happy to have a CEO who has given up on growing the auto business that drives the bulk of Tesla's revenues.
 
I found it fishy that the "excuse" used to kill the S and X was that they wanted to repurpose those factory lines to build Optimus... New factories can be built (or unused factory space can be acquired) just as fast as de-tooling the current one and converting it to a robot assembly line. It's clear they lost interest in those vehicles (and the low sales were reflecting that stagnation).
 
TahoeMichael said:
It's baffling to me that so many Tesla investors are happy to have a CEO who has given up on growing the auto business that drives the bulk of Tesla's revenues.
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Think about IBM moving away from mainframes. Better than DEC stick with midis and company folding.
Think about Netflix moving away from DVD rentals. Better than Blockbuster.
Think about Nintendo moving away from playing cards to video games.

Tesla is moving from selling cars to selling transportation services. Will they be successful? Maybe, maybe not, but staying in the car making business with it's high capex and low margins and competition from China coming on strong would be a death sentence.

socktucker said:
They’re spinning the truth, they remind and dated and nobody bought them.
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It's pretty clear that Tesla stopped innovating with Model X by 2019, and with Model S after plaid. That neither car has rear wheel steering, 400kW charging, etc. is because Tesla concentrated on Models 3 & Y, which are big successes. Then they pivoted to CyberTruck, which has failed miserably for reasons we all know.

I terminated my Model X lease early because the car's build quality sucked, and Gravity was out, and I was willing to tolerate software bugs for a while. I have friends with Model Ys, and their build quality is much better, FWIW. We really like out Gravity when the bugs don't frustrate us.

This is good news for Lucid, but at some point FSD/Robotaxis are going to be real and good enough and the personally owned vehicle market will change. Tony Seba had a number of videos about this: he was as wrong as Musk on timing, but I think they're both directionally correct. That Lucid is leveraging Nvidia for autonomy is a good thing, and hopefully keeps their cars relevant for the next 5-7 years. I think Lucid will have to stay at the higher end of the market, as the low end will be most using robotaxis because for them it's just cheaper than owning, maintaining, and insuring a vehicle. I would have loved to take a robotaxi to/from work every day instead of driving, and I know other execs who used Ubers for their commutes precisely because that gave them an extra hour (½ hour each way) of time for emails instead of being at work or working after dinner at home.
 
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