For more than a decade, the Model S and Model X were Tesla’s statement pieces – the cars that turned the company from a Silicon Valley curiosity into a symbol of the electric future. Now, Tesla is quietly writing their epilogue. Elon Musk has confirmed that production of both models will end in the second quarter of 2026, and the factory space they occupy in Fremont, California, will be cleared to build something very different: humanoid robots called Optimus.

There was no long goodbye, no limited “final edition” trim, no nostalgic ad campaign. The news arrived almost offhandedly on an earnings call, slipped between charts and guidance. Musk framed it as a practical decision with a philosophical backbone. The Model S and X, he said, have earned an “honorable discharge,” but Tesla is “moving into a future that is based on autonomy.” If you still want one of these cars, he added, now is the time to order.

On paper, the move makes a kind of cold sense. The Model S, launched in 2012, and the Model X, introduced in 2015, are aging luxury platforms in a market that’s become brutally competitive. Their sales have been sliding for years as Tesla’s energy shifted to the cheaper, higher‑volume Model 3 and Model Y. By 2025, Tesla grouped them into the “other models” bucket alongside the Cybertruck, and that bucket shrank by around 40 percent year over year, with just over fifty thousand units sold. One analysis estimated that S and X combined accounted for only about 3 percent of Tesla’s global deliveries last year. At that point, they were no longer the business, just its origin story.

You can feel that shift in the way Tesla itself talked about the cars. Price increases, minor refreshes, and vague promises that the company would “show the lineup some love” started to feel less like a roadmap and more like a farewell tour. Even Tesla‑watching outlets pointed out that these cars increasingly looked like afterthoughts in a company obsessed with scale and software. When the final decision came, it wasn’t because the S and X suddenly got worse. It was because, inside Tesla’s spreadsheets, they stopped justifying their floor space.

That floor space is now the most coveted real estate in Musk’s empire. The Fremont lines that once birthed flagship EVs will be retooled as an Optimus robot factory, with Tesla and Musk floating some wildly ambitious numbers: up to one million humanoid robots per year on the same footprint that used to support roughly 100,000 electric vehicles. Tesla insists these robots will need a completely new supply chain, sharing essentially nothing with its cars, which only underscores how radical this pivot is. This isn’t simply a new product; it’s a bet that robots, not cars, will define the company’s future.

Musk has been seeding this story for a while. Optimus was pitched initially as a kind of science‑fiction side quest — a humanoid robot to handle boring or dangerous tasks inside Tesla’s own factories. Over time, that pitch expanded. On recent calls and at global stages like Davos, Musk has described a world of “ubiquitous robotics” and near‑free AI, claiming this combination could drive an “explosion in the global economy” and even help eliminate poverty. Inside Tesla’s investor slides, the robot sits next to self‑driving robotaxis and new battery projects as pillars of a post‑car identity.

The timeline is aggressive, as always. Tesla has said it plans to reveal a third‑generation Optimus robot in the first quarter of 2026, specifically designed for mass production. The first production line is supposed to spin up before the end of that year, with the goal of selling Optimus to external customers starting around 2027. Meanwhile, Musk has talked about staffing up and doubling capital expenditure in 2026 to more than 20 billion dollars, with most of that money flowing not into new car lines but into Optimus, robotaxis, the Semi truck, and in‑house battery and lithium operations.

Pull back for a second, though, and the timing tells its own story. Tesla is not making this pivot from a position of invincibility. The company just reported its first annual sales decline on record, with revenues dropping in three of the last four quarters and profits down sharply — about 61 percent in the most recent period. At the same time, its core EV business faces pressure from Chinese manufacturers, legacy automakers finally getting serious about electric platforms, and a more cautious consumer mood around pricey EVs. In that context, Optimus isn’t just a moonshot; it’s a narrative. It’s the promise that Tesla isn’t a slowing carmaker, it’s an AI and robotics company temporarily stuck in traffic.

For owners and fans, though, this is emotional. The Model S was the car that convinced a lot of people that an EV could be aspirational rather than compromised — fast, sleek, and genuinely cool. It broke Consumer Reports scoring systems, reset expectations for range and software‑driven updates, and made traditional luxury sedans look suddenly old. The Model X, with its dramatic falcon‑wing doors and family‑hauling credentials, was weirder and more divisive but just as important in changing the image of electric cars from eco‑appliances to tech products. Killing both at once closes the book on the phase of Tesla where cars were the core product and cultural object.

Tesla is promising that owners won’t be orphaned. The company has said it will continue to support the Model S and X “for as long as people have the vehicles,” which likely means ongoing service, parts, and software support. But if you’ve watched how older tech products age once their replacements arrive, you know how this usually goes. Over time, updates slow, features debut on newer platforms first, and the practical and psychological distance grows. At some point, your once‑cutting‑edge EV becomes the equivalent of a beloved but slightly creaky first‑gen smartphone — still functional, but no longer at the center of the story.

There’s also a broader question here about what Tesla wants to be for regular buyers. On one hand, analysts are quick to point out that the end of the S and X won’t hit deliveries much, since the Model 3 and Y make up roughly 97 percent of Tesla’s volume now. On the other hand, those high‑end cars played a role beyond unit counts: they carried brand cachet, pulled in early adopters with the means to overpay for the future, and helped Tesla punch above its weight in pop culture. Without them, Tesla’s lineup leans heavily toward mainstream crossovers and sedans while the company’s leadership talks more about robots wandering factory floors than families buying cars.​

Is this just another bold Musk pivot that will eventually feel obvious in hindsight, like the early pushes into EVs and over‑the‑air updates, or is it a sign that Tesla is chasing the next big thing before fully stabilizing the last big thing? The track record cuts both ways. Musk has a history of over‑promising timelines and underestimating complexity, and the humanoid robotics space is crowded with players who’ve been quietly iterating for years. A million humanoid robots a year is the kind of number that sounds visionary on a slide deck but will collide with supply chains, safety regulations, labor concerns, and basic human comfort once actual machines start showing up in warehouses and workplaces.

Still, this shift forces everyone — investors, rivals, regulators, and customers — to rethink what “Tesla” actually means. For a long time, the answer was simple: it meant cars, with some solar panels and batteries on the side. Now, the company is telling the world that cars are just one chapter, maybe even a transitional phase on the way to a broader identity built on autonomy, AI, and robotics. In that framing, the Model S and X become artifacts of an earlier era, important but no longer central.

If you walk into a Tesla showroom in a couple of years, you might still see a Model 3 or Y front and center, but somewhere behind the scenes — or maybe eventually on the sales floor — will be Optimus units instead of workers tightening bolts. The same building in Fremont that once shipped out luxury EVs could be creating humanoid robots bound for factories, warehouses, or even homes. That’s the future Tesla is spending billions of dollars to bet on.

For now, though, there’s a more human‑scale story unfolding. Somewhere in 2026, the last Model S and the last Model X will roll off their lines at Fremont. A few employees will likely stop to take photos. Maybe the car gets a signed hood or a quiet clap. Then the line goes dark, the tools get unbolted, and the process of turning a car factory into a robot factory begins. For a company that built its reputation on making driving feel like science fiction, it’s a strangely fitting twist: the cars that made Tesla famous are being retired to make room for the robots that might define what comes next.