alt.hn

4/7/2026 at 2:50:58 AM

Robots eat cars

 https://telemetry.endeff.com/p/robots-eat-cars

by JMill

4/9/2026 at 11:27:00 PM

> The Fremont factory lines that built those cars are converting to manufacture Optimus humanoid robots: one million units per year at $20,000 each, with public sales beginning in 2027.

Sure, why not? Seems just as likely as Tesla having 1 million robotaxis on the road by the end of 2026. =)

by SrslyJosh

4/9/2026 at 11:41:45 PM

I heard it will be 100 billion robotaxis on the road by the end of 2026!

by actionfromafar

4/10/2026 at 1:43:26 AM

Tesla delivered 1.5 million model 3 and y together in 2025. What part of this estimate do you take issue with?

by vessenes

4/10/2026 at 1:50:54 AM

Sorry, are all of those model 3 and Y vehicles robotaxis?

Or are you saying that because they produced 1.5 million non-robotaxi cars in 2025 that the estimate of producing 1 million robotaxis in the following year is pretty reasonable, because making them autonomous taxis is a minor feature bump...?

by mediaman

4/10/2026 at 2:20:19 AM

No, I'm saying that the original content is low-effort shitposting, and that Tesla has the ability to scale industrial production to over 1mm 'things' per year, as evidenced by production last year. I did the OP the mild courtesy of asking him to open up a useful conversation. For instance, "Is there going to be demand for 1mm robots, and if so, when?" Or "How much actual retooling is necessary in Fremont for this?" Both seem like useful and interesting things to talk about.

by vessenes

4/10/2026 at 3:56:19 AM

I think teslas issue is that they need the AI5 chip for robotaxi ops, the current chip just doesn’t cut it. So if they have batches end of 2026 and start optimizing the models, by mid 2027 volume production you might have robotaxis coming online at about 100k per month. Waymo currently has less than 10k cars on the road.

Lots of ifs here. If they can enable hardware 4 for robotaxi ops then they can have 3m+ cars ready to go. But I am skeptical of it. And given that Elon’s top priority is scaling chips and AI5, I think that is proof that he thinks it is likely necessary too.

So 1m robotaxis by end of 2026 is theoretically possible but I think unlikely, and it’s more likely in the 200k-1m by end of 2027. If they pull that off, they could still be largest by then if Waymo doesn’t rapidly scale. Fun times!

by mchusma

4/10/2026 at 8:40:03 AM

My understanding is superficial, so do knock it down, not it seems to me that tesla insists on vision-only hour self driving, which vastly increases the requirement for ML. Whereas Waymo has a lower sum technology requirement by using both lidar and vision, and have moved faster. So when you say "tesla needs the AI5 chip", i hear the rider "...to avoid a public volte face".

I suppose that bulky lidar modules are undesirable in premium consumer goods, but i don't see that downside for taxis.

What am I missing?

by psd1

4/10/2026 at 11:09:13 AM

He is saying all of this for his IPO.

Its still a hard problem and while he likes to move that fast, nothing around him wants to move that fast. No burocrazy at least.

by Scholmo

4/10/2026 at 11:07:18 AM

Bosten dynamics has the better robot which doesn't overheat and can more and they plan to rollout commercially 2028.

Musks Robot overheated last year, we have not seen a single non staged real demonstration in public and he already wants to mass produce them.

This is just lying at this point and has very little to do how fast someone can scale something if its not ready to be scaled up.

by Scholmo

4/10/2026 at 7:28:12 AM

No, but once Optimus is delivered in 2027, it will surely be able to drive your Tesla for you?

by rob74

4/10/2026 at 11:04:24 AM

Optimus was still overheating last year.

And while Musk is very good in announcing stuff, delivering he is not. boring company? Robotaxis on masses?

Did you watch his keynote last week? Man he is ignorant. It would be a million times cheaper and easier to build a powerplant, fiber and energy lines in the dessert of USA and build their big data centers before building anything in space.

But no he talks about dyson sphere, space etc. like we need any of it today (perhaps in a 100 years) and it would be more cost effective than on earth.

He is a lunatec

by Scholmo

4/10/2026 at 7:44:35 AM

Their robotaxis are not reliable but they stubbornly won’t add lidar. It’s a solved problem.

by dyauspitr

4/10/2026 at 6:50:26 AM

I read the title 2-3 times, and every time I swore it said "Robot cat ears". Wtf.

by ipsum2

4/10/2026 at 8:27:01 AM

Literally same, saw “Robot cat ears”. Somehow I not only misread the words, but flipped the order as well, multiple times.

For those who need help recovering from the crushing self induced disappointment, here’s some brainwave controlled cat ears: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CqSZg0oiYuM

by Modified3019

4/10/2026 at 7:11:48 AM

I read it multiple times, read your comment and clicked on the article and I still got it wrong.

I saw Robot ear cats and couldn’t make sense of it. But clicking in the article and seeing the title in huge whatever sizes fonts made it click.

I think it’s the small font sizes in HN causing our brains to ‘fill in the blanks’.

by SenHeng

4/10/2026 at 7:03:22 AM

Yep, same here. Its the only reason I clicked on the article TBH

by voidUpdate

4/10/2026 at 7:36:59 AM

Then you complain about the Rs in strawberry...

by throw310822

4/10/2026 at 8:15:48 AM

That's exactly why we complain about the Rs in strawberry. We can get funny-stupid human interpretations all day long. What we can't get is cold facts, and isn't that what was promised by AI (at least, before ChatGPT was released in 2022)?

Unfortunately we fed this current iteration of AI with human behaviour (not only that: human behaviour on the Internet...)

by BLKNSLVR

4/10/2026 at 11:19:14 AM

> What we can't get is cold facts, and isn't that what was promised by AI (at least, before ChatGPT was released in 2022)?

Not that I know of. An entity dealing only in cold facts is not intelligent, it's a theorem prover- extremely narrow, rigid and incapable of interpretation and insight- basically of bridging the smallest gap of knowledge. That's exactly what intelligence isn't.

by throw310822

4/10/2026 at 6:58:54 AM

Definitely read it that way at first too

by swiftcoder

4/10/2026 at 7:05:33 AM

I was disappointed there were no cat ears in the article...

by danecek099

4/9/2026 at 11:07:59 PM

> Steer-by-wire

Thinking back to case-studies around the Therac-25 [0], I would like to pre-emptively highlight the differences between:

1. Technique X is unsafe.

2. Technique X is unsafe because too much can go wrong even with the best intentions.

3. Technique X is unsafe without strong QA and interlocking safety measures, and there's too much economic pressure for the manufacturer to cut corners.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Therac-25

by Terr_

4/10/2026 at 1:04:53 AM

The obvious problem with steer-by-wire is that in the traditional design, it's not uncommon to lose power assist but not the mechanical connection to the wheels, so you can still steer the car. To completely lose steering control you'd need significant mechanical damage.

If the whole thing goes through the computer then there are lots of new ways to fail. Steering wheel position sensor goes bad on the highway? Computer gets bad data. Control wires get disconnected or damaged? No data. Completely unrelated wires get shorted and fry the computer? No steering. Anything pops the wrong fuse? No power, no computer or steering motors.

Some of those can be mitigated with redundancy but you're still vulnerable to common causes. You have three position sensors and someone dumps their beverage down the steering column, are there any left and do you have any good way to determine which one(s)? The vehicle took some minor damage allowing water to get somewhere it's not intended to, any way to guarantee you're not about to lose both sides of a redundant electrical system the next time it goes through a puddle infused with conductive road salt?

by AnthonyMouse

4/10/2026 at 10:37:45 AM

Of course, a counterpoint is what's been happening in aviation. Autopilot became a thing. Autoland became a thing. And, to keep improving planes (first military planes, then commercial aircraft), it was much easier to drop the mechanical connection to the wings.

Autopilot started as a help to pilots, and evolved to something that is a necessity and pilot control inputs are "suggestions" or "goals", not inputs like turning the wheel on a bike. To be followed in what you might refer to as "the long term" from the perspective of controlling the aircraft, but in the short term, the computer is to fly the plane in a way IT thinks is reasonable. An extreme example would be to enforce the flight envelope. But today there exist autoland-only airports (as well as huge airports that go autoland-only if things are too hard for humans, like LHR)

Most of today's passenger aircraft cannot be flown if fly-by-wire is not operational. Most of today's aircraft actually used for passenger transport cannot land without fly-by-wire.

A number of military aircraft, and rocket planes and rockets, even the ones carrying humans, and more and more passenger planes cannot be flown by humans, not just because the mechanical force humans can generate cannot move the control surfaces (which "can be fixed" with hydraulics, if you don't mind serious caveats), but because the human brain is incapable of generating sufficient control inputs at a fast enough rate, or just can't keep stable flight going.

Hilariously, this also goes for hobby quadcopters. They are flown by algorithms. Humans can't do it. Not fast enough. Humans provide direction. Algorithms, even AI algorithms that aren't even guaranteed to succeed at all (in professional/military drones), actually fly the thing.

But, yes, you're entirely correct by saying "then there are lots of new ways to fail". It also works better, cheaper, faster, safer, more comfortable, ... if it doesn't fail.

And ... robotaxis are already far safer than even a good human driver. So whatever the problems ... they don't actually make things worse.

Also you should check out geohot's business. A lot of cars already are "fly-by-wire". Their solution? They now have 2 CAN buses instead of one. One for the critical stuff. Cylinder timings. Checking the oil levels. Turning the wheels. Actuating the brakes. That sort of stuff. A second CAN bus for your bluetooth music, and displays and what have you. I hear a certain new Mercedes now has like 7 buses. We are making things safer.

We can make this work. We will make this work.

by spwa4

4/10/2026 at 2:13:07 AM

Safety is a great reason to not do something. Utility and enhanced safety are great reasons to override that reflex. A lot has happened since the Therac 25 incident in the medical world with AI, machine learning, robotic neuro surgery, all sorts of computer aided diagnostics, etc. This stuff undeniably saves lives. The incident did inspire some level of scrutiny of course. But compared to modern medical equipment, that machine is from the stone age.

Steer by wire (which the article highlights) is common on all modern airbus planes for decades. The first ones flew shortly after the Therac incident. Boeing has also started implementing that on their newer models. And of course most of the vtol planes/drones currently starting to operate and progress through certification programs also commonly use steer by wire. Several of these flew without pilots before their first manned test flights. These are computer controlled, pilot directed pretty much by default with that part being optional by design.

Beyond Tesla, there are now several other manufacturers implementing steer by wire in the car industry. Nio, Lexus, Toyota, Mercedes, and a few others each either already have cars on the road for this or are working on new ones. And while Tesla has received quite a bit of criticism on their FSD system, I don't think there have been a lot of incidents implicating the steer by wire in Cybertrucks. It seems to work and drivers seem to mostly like it once they get used to it. The car is controversial of course. But there's a lot of cool tech inside that is being copied across the industry now.

The implied warning "we should be careful with this stuff because Therac-25" is a bit of a cliche at this point. Yes, we need lots of checks and balances when using automation in safety critical systems. And that has been common for decades.

by jillesvangurp

4/10/2026 at 9:07:48 AM

All analysis should also keep in mind the "who", no matter how logically separable it is.

I put this less strongly since boeing contracted MBA cancer and yolo'd the 737-max, but that aside, the civil aviation engineering field controls risks to a fault. Commercial pilots are selected to follow checklists without deviation. I allow them the grace to implement steer-by-wire.

Ford kept selling Pintos with exploding fuel tanks, Toyota sold priuses with runaway acceleration defects, and depending on region maybe the worst twenty per cent of drivers ought to be operating nothing more dangerous than shirt buttons. No matter how good the plan is, those people shouldn't be anywhere near it.

by psd1

4/9/2026 at 11:28:10 PM

Moreover, Technique X does not actually provide any significant value.

The whole steer-by-wire in CT happened because Musk wanted a yoke as the control system. And a yoke requires progressive steering which is impractical without steer-by-wire.

by cyberax

4/9/2026 at 11:37:09 PM

> does not actually provide any significant value

If that were true, it would not explain why other manufacturers are headed the same direction. The CT is not the only steer-by-wire vehicle.

by rootusrootus

4/10/2026 at 12:09:33 AM

Vehicles include low-utility features for market positioning all the time.

Do buyers need a motorised hood ornament? A tiny vase built into the dashboard? A built-in champagne chiller? Gull wing doors? A spoiler and a 300-horsepower engine?

If it boosts sales by giving the vehicle a distinctive character, though, there's a place in the market for that tiny vase.

by michaelt

4/10/2026 at 1:00:51 AM

The motorized hood ornaments on Rolls Royce vehicles were a solution to the problem of people being injured by, or stealing the (Spirit of Ecstasy) ornaments.

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

by nickff

4/10/2026 at 1:25:41 AM

How does it being motorized prevent injury?

by soopypoos

4/10/2026 at 1:34:41 AM

> Today's Spirit of Ecstasy, from the 2003 Phantom model onward, stands at 3 inches (7.6 cm) and, for the safety of any person being accidentally hit, is mounted on a spring-loaded mechanism designed to retract instantly into the radiator shell if struck from any direction.

by sarchertech

4/10/2026 at 2:11:07 AM

I don't think that mentions it being motorized

by soopypoos

4/10/2026 at 2:23:37 AM

The motor allows you to raise it after it has been retracted.

by sarchertech

4/10/2026 at 2:31:53 AM

Then why is it spring-loaded?

by soopypoos

4/10/2026 at 5:33:07 AM

> For the safety of any person being accidentally hit

(the spring handles the retraction)

by SR2Z

4/10/2026 at 7:36:23 AM

But if a motor is needed to counter the retracting spring, doesn't that mean any impact must overcome the motor before the spring will engage?

by soopypoos

4/10/2026 at 8:09:34 AM

Presumably the motor runs once to extend it and then it locks into position (with some kind of mechanical catch that's calibrated to come loose if you hit anything), rather than being constantly running.

by lmm

4/10/2026 at 3:02:04 AM

What other manufacturers? There's Mercedes EQS and Geely. Both are trialing it in one model each as luxury gimmicks.

by cyberax

4/10/2026 at 12:29:30 AM

steer-by-wire makes safety nannies way easier, eg, the ones that jerk the wheel out of your hands when they decide you're too close to a line on the road.

by rconti

4/10/2026 at 12:52:32 AM

Other models got the yoke but not the steer by wire.

by wat10000

4/10/2026 at 7:40:27 AM

Yes. And it was a disaster without progressive steering, they quietly switched back to the round wheel.

by cyberax

4/10/2026 at 7:44:56 AM

> And a yoke requires progressive steering which is impractical without steer-by-wire.

But also look at Citroën's DIRAVI system, used on the CX, SM, and some XMs. There's no direct mechanical link between the steering wheel and the rack when the system is pressurised. When you turn the wheel a kind of dogbone link thing pushes a spool valve one way or the other allowing hydraulic fluid to push the rack along, which pushes the other end of the link back to shut the fluid off again.

So far, so similar to the Danfoss valve in a conventional power-assisted steering system, except that uses a rotary valve and a big torsion spring in the steering rack (that's why your steering wheel feels springy with the engine off).

But DIRAVI is fully powered with no mechanical link, so how do you get increasing resistance with increasing speed? Well, there's a governor on the gearbox that allows hydraulic fluid into a little cylinder that pushes a spring-loaded roller against a heart-shaped cam attached to the steering wheel shaft. This will try to spring back to the middle, and the faster you go the harder it springs back. At 70mph you can barely move the steering wheel, but it will flick a large heavy car from lane to lane with fingertip pressure.

You have to get used to this and for the first few miles you'll be zig-zagging down the road like you're tacking a dinghy, but after that you'll get used to just thinking about your right pinky finger being a gram heavier and going round a corner. I've driven some seriously high-end sports cars with legendary handling and performance and they feel pretty rough and tractory now ;-)

If the pressure fails of course then there's no powered steering (notice I say powered, not power-assisted), although in practice what tends to happen is that the "resistance" part goes first giving you very sensitive steering.

What happens once there's no pressure is that the steering wheel moves about 20° before you run the valve to its end and then the dogbone pushes directly on the drive gear for the rack. So the steering is very loose and wobbly but you can at least steer well enough to get it out of the parking space and into the workshop. You still have brakes for an hour or so if the pump belt breaks, and enough steering to get safely to the side of the road, or at least out of the fast lane.

In the 1960s they had a prototype Citroën DS controlled by a joystick using pretty much the same setup (hydraulic valve to push the rack around, heart-shaped cam to apply resistance). Apparently it was very comfortable and natural to drive but ultimately a bit to weird even for Citroën.

Not a scrap of electronics in it, unless you count the pressure switch and dashboard lightbulb.

by ErroneousBosh

4/10/2026 at 9:12:18 AM

TIL! I love old Citroëns, but i never knew about that steering design.

Have you experienced that failure mode yourself? How alarming was it? Do you think it's a reasonable trade-off for the benefits?

by psd1

4/10/2026 at 11:10:31 AM

I had the hydraulic pump belt break when I was about 30 or 40 miles from home, and of course I had a water pump belt and an alternator belt, but not the hydraulic pump belt.

The brake and regulator accumulators were both nice and new though so the "low brake pressure stop immediately" warning only came on about two or three miles from home (once there's no pressure at all, there's no brakes at all, but this is pretty difficult to achieve in practice) and I just had to cope with the twitchy steering through the difficult part - driving through town at 15-20mph in rush hour traffic anyway.

by ErroneousBosh

4/10/2026 at 7:40:51 AM

Building robots at that scale without any indication that the market wants it is weird. I wouldn’t want to say atupid because with musk there is no rational thought. However this is not cars where the concept exists and we know people spend 100k towards a car. We don’t know if people will even spend on a robot that doesn’t do shit. Figure is looking at 100-150k robot if built at scale, so u less they revised this estimate down drastically, what does a 20k robot do?

by yalogin

4/10/2026 at 7:45:37 AM

Well from this article I got the feeling the intended customer is industrial, not domestic. There's a lot of talk about how much a robot can lift versus hydraulic systems.

But I do also get the feeling that maybe Musk is just off his rocker and everyone else is copying what he does just in case he actually a genius

by taffydavid

4/10/2026 at 8:55:08 AM

Musk has a very spiky character sheet. He is, in some dimensions, extraordinarily stupid, and I believe his ego makes a lot of big decisions. But something that might fall into the genius category is this: building things speculatively, primarily for the capabilities that you anticipate developing along the way, the nature of which are not yet known. But this increases your odds of having capabilities in the future that others lack, which looks a lot like a venture capital oeuvre.

To condense that, i might use a phrase like "blind-buying future option space"

Whether Musk deserves that credit is a moot point. I haven't trusted a thing he's said for years, and studying him for revealed intent can't get past "clown on drugs" without violating occam's razor.

by psd1

4/10/2026 at 7:43:13 AM

They’re meant to clean your house, do your dishes, do your laundry, some gardening probably mowing your lawn and weeding. The possibilities are endless. It would 100% be worth at least $50,000 if it could do those things even 85% of the time.

by dyauspitr

4/9/2026 at 11:19:49 PM

Cars that nobody buys replaced by robots that nobody buys

by otikik

4/10/2026 at 12:49:41 AM

The best selling car in the world in 2025 was the Tesla Model Y, with a little over 1 million sold. ~350k total vehicles have been sold in 2026 as of April.

https://www.focus2move.com/world-car-market/, https://ir.tesla.com/press-release/tesla-first-quarter-2026-...

by delichon

4/10/2026 at 1:15:22 AM

Actually i think it was the RAV 4 and BYD sold more EVs than Tesla.

by conception

4/10/2026 at 1:36:19 AM

Tesla only selling 4 models makes for difficult comparisons with companies like Toyota that sell several cars in overlapping segments.

by dcrazy

4/10/2026 at 2:11:21 AM

The limit to EVs makes it fine (if excl. PHEVs). If BYD/Toyota have more models that is fine for the comparison. That is the point.

by mememememememo

4/10/2026 at 7:06:14 AM

No, it does not make the comparison unbiased, because other companies, like BYD, may sell in a month as much EV cars as Tesla sells in a quarter, but they are distributed over diverse models, so one Tesla model may indeed sell more than any other model, without this reflecting the EV market share.

E.g. for BYD the 2026 target is over 1.5 million exported EV cars, with more than that produced for the internal Chinese market. During 2025, BYD exported more than 1 million EV cars, besides the production for the Chinese market.

by adrian_b

4/10/2026 at 5:28:30 AM

The whole story about Tesla until 2025 was that they had the #1 selling model across any category: BEVs, PHEVs, and ICEs included. So it’s absolutely correct to note when that model’s sales no longer exceed those of a PHEV or ICE model, and it’s always in the context of how competitors choose to segment their offerings.

The core truth is that the popularity of buying a new Tesla has slipped significantly relative to competitors.

by dcrazy

4/10/2026 at 1:42:49 AM

Only 4 models and still slipped from #1.

by conception

4/10/2026 at 1:37:53 AM

The Fremont plant doesn’t make Ys, only Xs and Ss. And no one is buying the latter two.

by mikestew

4/10/2026 at 2:07:54 AM

Yeah but the OP offhand comment is a political soundbite that is technically half true and half prediction but misleading.

by mememememememo

4/10/2026 at 1:28:00 AM

Unbelievable. Really shows how much of a bubble the internet is - Elon was the internets most hated man in 2025 yet Tesla sold like hotcakes

by brcmthrowaway

4/9/2026 at 11:40:56 PM

Who is this "nobody" that bought more than half a million Teslas last year?

by rootusrootus

4/9/2026 at 11:48:35 PM

Who bought half a million Model S and Model X?

by MK_Dev

4/9/2026 at 11:35:44 PM

One million robots to be manufactured in a year - one million robots which will likely be obsolete within five years (if that, I wouldn't be surprised if they're dead on arrival).

I don't know the figures for Earth's resources and their sustainability, so this may be a naive take, but I'm always left with the impression that these organisations want to speedrun the depletion of the planet.

by abcde666777

4/10/2026 at 9:28:52 AM

You're anthropomorphising humanity.

Humans are sapient; industrialists and politicians have intent. But the incentive structure is an evolved system, and that's what selects these people. The result is that humanity, collectively, is amoebic. We are probably doomed to expand until we have a population crash or until another species arises to keep us in check.

by psd1

4/10/2026 at 12:03:32 AM

More customers for the related Space exploration company.

by lmz

4/10/2026 at 12:08:10 AM

Assuming they don't starve to death before insert-space-company can get them to the next Goldilocks planet.

by paulryanrogers

4/10/2026 at 1:00:47 AM

The next step is just selling tickets to that flight in advance as a preorder. One could call it roadster preorders because of the difficult road ahead

by c0balt

4/10/2026 at 7:02:57 AM

> Yesterday, Tesla confirmed that Model S and Model X production is over

Did the the 3 and the Y completely cannibalise sales of S and X, or what's going on here?

by swiftcoder

4/10/2026 at 12:07:56 AM

This article is written with a little bit of a journalist’s misunderstanding of a topic.

They seem to have done research but have strung together unrelated subjects due to their lack of expertise in the subjects.

As a result it reads more like a summary or recap of vaguely related stories.

For example, Tesla’s pivot to robots has nothing to do with their advanced nature of their wiring harnesses, but it’s spoken in the same breath as if to imply that a Tesla Cybertruck (which is a Model Y with paneling literally glued on top) is more similar to a humanoid robot than a Mustang Mach-E.

In reality, what has happened is that the Model S and X have been discontinued and they’re the only products the Fremont, CA plant produces. Tesla has literally nothing else they can make in that plant. They either make Optimus robots or shut the plant down.

Optimus robot production is a face saving move. Tesla barely needs a fraction of that factory to build robots…it’s a much lower-volume and physically smaller product.

I should note that none of that has anything to do with Tesla being great at robotics and seeing it as a better business than automobiles. It has everything to do with competitors catching up and Tesla having insufficient development capability to iterate on those vehicles.

Who in the buyer demographic for a Model S wouldn’t take a Porsche Taycan, AUD A6 Sportback, or Lucid Air over that vehicle?

Who in the buyer demographic for the Model X won’t take a Kia EV9, Lucid Gravity, or Volvo EX-90?

Maybe if you aren’t paying attention to the car industry you’ll disagree with me but the problem here is the Model S and X are positively ancient with about zero dollars spent on keeping them updated and they’ve become completely irrelevant to the market as a result.

by dangus

4/10/2026 at 1:28:07 AM

> Maybe if you aren’t paying attention to the car industry you’ll disagree with me but the problem here is the Model S and X are positively ancient with about zero dollars spent on keeping them updated and they’ve become completely irrelevant to the market as a result.

In practice they essentially got replaced with the Model 3 and Y, which didn't exist when the models being discontinued first came out.

It's because of the decline in battery prices. When the Model S came out, an electric car with that range had to be that price. Now it's overpriced for what it is so they'd either need to design one which is significantly more premium while still selling into an inherently lower volume market segment, or lower the price to reflect the current battery costs and then have it be too close to the Model 3.

What they really need to do is continue to move down, i.e. release a subcompact with less range than the Model 3 but on the cheap.

Or build a truck people actually want.

by AnthonyMouse

4/10/2026 at 1:06:24 AM

> Who in the buyer demographic for a Model S wouldn’t take a Porsche Taycan, AUD A6 Sportback, or Lucid Air over that vehicle?

I guess me, though I’d probably opt for the Y instead. I have a friend who drives a Taycan, one of the sportier variants with 4 wheel steering and blistering acceleration, and it’s nice, but it’s clear that they’re still crap at computers and interfaces, and I just really don’t want to go back to traditional car industry software interfaces and feature sets after our Tesla. I doubly don’t want to deal with a dealership ever again. Also, love their mobile service which comes to our garage and fixed a flat on two different occasions while I was working at home, super convenient. Roadside assistance was great when we got a flat in the middle of nowhere with no shops open anywhere nearby, they coordinated getting a tow truck out to us to tow it to a Costco like 40 miles away, gratis. Also, it’s just been a great car for us, extremely practical, great for long road trips, fun to drive, the autopilot works well and makes long drives much more pleasant, especially traffic. I don’t know why people confidently declare them to be bad cars - our experience hasn’t been flawless, but as a total package, it’s been the best car ownership experience I’ve had, including Acura, Toyota, Subaru, BMW, Nissans. I guess some combination of not liking Elon, and the issues from the scale-up period when they were making model 3s in tents, though those are long gone.

by ericd

4/10/2026 at 3:31:51 AM

> though I’d probably opt for the Y instead

This is exactly what I'm talking about. You are not actually in the market for the class of vehicle the Model S or X competed with in the first place.

I'm not actually saying they are bad cars. What I am saying is that they now lack a buyer persona, which is why they're being discontinued.

When the S and X first came out, $90,000 was the price of entry for any electric car of that caliber. Anyone who wanted an electric car with that kind of range and charging network had just those two options.

But the reality is, the vast majority of people who want Teslas will choose the 3 or Y because, duh, obviously! You have to squint real hard at the door handles to even visibly tell the difference between the X and Y.

What I'm really getting at here is that the majority of buyers in the luxury segment, the kind of people blowing $90,000 plus on a vehicle, those are the people for which the S and X are not competitive. They don't give a shit about how good the software is on the iPad that was slapped on the Tesla dashboard. They probably just want CarPlay and Android Auto anyway. They are looking for hand stitched everything, paint to sample and semi-custom interior colors, and either overstated or understated luxury: they want to look like they belong at the country club (Range Rover, Volvo) or they want to look like they belong at the club (BMW, Porsche, Mercedes, Audi, etc).

For the Model S, it existed in a struggling segment of full-size sedans where you either have to be sporty as in driving enthusiast sporty or luxurious as in massaging seats. The Model S was a Toyota Crown with the leather package that went fast in a straight line.

The Model X is even more lost on demographics. It's an SUV with a bad 3rd row and wonky doors. More critically, it fails to hit any of the demographics you might want to hit: families don't want it because it doesn't have the minivan-like utility of vehicles like the Lucid Gravity, Kia EV9, or any of the gas competitors like the Telluride - or minivans themselves! For people who want a luxury SUV, it doesn't satisfy either type of club folk. You'll get a more refined build and luxurious experience in something like a Volvo EX-90. You'll stand out more in a BMW iX. And finally, the most successful segment of luxury SUV right now is the performance offroader: The Model X can't scratch the itch that the Rivian R1S, Sequoia TRD Pro, Ford Bronco Raptor, Lexus GX, Mercedes G Wagon, and a laundry list of other options I can't even think of right now because there are so many.

As a sidenote, when you describe mobile service to fix a flat tire and roadside assistance, you are literally describing AAA. This is not something Tesla invented. Roadside assistance is included with my car insurance. People who buy Porsches definitely get themselves a similarly good experience. These are not dealerships that are generally unpleasant, they aren't exactly your local Hyundai franchise.

by dangus

4/10/2026 at 2:19:41 AM

> Who in the buyer demographic for a Model S wouldn’t take a Porsche Taycan, AUD A6 Sportback, or Lucid Air over that vehicle?

> Who in the buyer demographic for the Model X won’t take a Kia EV9, Lucid Gravity, or Volvo EX-90?

The S and X are plenty competitive here for many buyers. Did any of those cars outsell the S in 2025 in the US? I would not trust a Kia or Volvo EV.

by goosejuice

4/10/2026 at 2:37:04 AM

From what I can see doing some quick searches the EV9 sold 22,017 in 2024 just in the US, while Tesla's global deliveries of "other models" (S, X, and Cybertruck combined, which includes over 10,000 Cybertrucks) totaled 85,133. This, critically for this comparison, includes China.

The X is not competitive with proper 3-row SUVs as the 3rd row is not usable enough, and it was cannibalized by the Y which is not an upmarket luxury SUV as luxurious as EV SUVs that are in the Model X's price range.

Similar story goes for the Model S: they're discontinuing their upper luxury full-size sedan and no longer compete in that market at all.

Since Tesla doesn't split the numbers out it's hard to say but I would say anecdotally, seeing a Model S on the road is most common with older model years as most of those buyers clearly switched over to the Model 3 or Y instead.

The type of buyer who is actually looking for a $90,000 luxury vehicle, that's the type of person I am saying the X and S are not competitive with, which is why they're being discontinued.

Someone spending that much in 2016 on an S or X was getting a vehicle that was bleeding edge technology you couldn't get anywhere else.

Someone spending that much in 2026 will choose the extra luxury features, build quality, and brand prestige of something like a Porsche, Audi, BMW, Mercedes, or Lucid.

Sources:

https://insideevs.com/news/746147/kia-ev-sales-record-2024-u...

https://ir.tesla.com/press-release/tesla-fourth-quarter-2024...

by dangus

4/10/2026 at 4:54:19 AM

> From what I can see doing some quick searches the EV9 sold 22,017 in 2024 just in the US, while Tesla's global deliveries of "other models" (S, X, and Cybertruck combined, which includes over 10,000 Cybertrucks) totaled 85,133. This, critically for this comparison, includes China.

Cars in the US. As in the Taycan, A6 e-tron, and Air. Maybe the Air had more sales in '25.

> The type of buyer who is actually looking for a $90,000 luxury vehicle, that's the type of person I am saying the X and S are not competitive with

> Someone spending that much in 2026 will choose the extra luxury features, build quality, and brand prestige of something like a Porsche, Audi, BMW, Mercedes, or Lucid.

This is a silly internet trope that doesn't align with reality. Many factors go into a car purchase. ADAS, appearances, software, reliability, performance, efficiency, charging network, trends, etc. The affordability of a car doesn't inform the preferences of the buyer.

But yes in 2026 they don't really have a choice unless they buy used.

> Which is why they're being discontinued.

Or they're being discontinued because they no longer serve a purpose for Tesla.

by goosejuice

4/10/2026 at 1:08:16 AM

> Tesla Cybertruck (which is a Model Y with paneling literally glued on top)

Doesn't seem true?

by someothherguyy

4/10/2026 at 7:25:00 AM

The author also asks:

“The question for your portfolio: who becomes the Corning, the Qualcomm, the TI of this stack?”

and it feels like a reading comprehension exercise, as the answer is right there in their article, even if they miss what the hard part about humanoid robotics is - hint, it’s not the actuators.

The answer is Nvidia. They’ve got the full stack, ready to license to everyone and anyone who wants to jump into autonomous vehicles or robotics - and as the article points out, they already are.

by madaxe_again

4/10/2026 at 1:43:05 AM

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by Ethanalker

4/10/2026 at 2:18:37 AM

[dead]

by monero-xmr