Tesla has been held accountable to investors. His 2025 numbers have been bad. Pretty bad, in fact. So much so that it has confirmed the almost immediate cessation of the Tesla Model S and Model X, the cars that helped popularize the brand but whose sales are already minimal. It will make robots instead.
It is confirmation of a much deeper problem.
Bye. Elon Musk confirmed it a few days ago. Tesla will stop manufacturing its most expensive vehicles. The Freemont factory, where the company produces the Tesla Model S and Model will start producing humanoid robots Optimus.
Without just a very sentimental message, as usually happens in the motor industrythe CEO of Tesla has practically treated these models as mere employees. The farewell is similar to that given to the classic worker who ends up at the exit door with a cardboard box in his hands to carry a photo of his children, three pens and the stapler that the company refused to buy. I can almost see the sleeve of the sweater sticking out and the shirt half removed from the pants.
Deeper. Stopping production of its most expensive electric cars, no matter how few they sold, points to Tesla having a deeper problem: it wanted to reconvert the automobile industry. And, over the years, the automobile industry seems to be beating the company.
To understand what we are talking about, we must take into account different variables: how Tesla carved out a niche for itself in the market, how it revolutionized automobile production and how that same revolution has put a back on the backpack that is becoming more complicated to handle every day. And, of course, how it is facing the same problems as every other automaker.
His emergence. Building a car brand from scratch is complicated. Almost impossible, as many Chinese companies are experiencing firsthand. Tesla was born in 2003 and It wasn’t until 2020 when it was profitable each and every quarter of the same year. It was thanks to the sale of emissions credits and bitcoins. It wouldn’t be until later when it became profitable on its own selling electric cars.
In those 17 years, the company was sustained with the help of investors, partnerships with companies like Toyota and aid from the United States Government. And if they managed to keep losing money for almost two decades, it was because they promised a differential technology, something that only they could deliver at that time. A groundbreaking vehicle for what was on the market.
Aspirational. Tesla became an aspirational company. He Tesla Roadster (the only one that has existed so far) walked all over Hollywood and later the Tesla Model S and Model X they became neck-turning vehicles of worship. I still remember the first time I saw a Tesla store in Amsterdam and how that huge vertical screen in the sedan It attracted the attention of all of us who were there sightseeing.
Both cars were confirmation that a company could put an electric car on the street with an autonomy that allowed travel, with a striking aesthetic at that time and unbridled power compared to combustion cars. It was a desirable brand, a status symbol.
Millions of copies. The Tesla Model 3 and Model Y They were the next step. The key to making Tesla a profitable company on its own was to sell millions of copies. To put an “affordable” electric car on the road or, at least, much cheaper than the competition with equal benefits, Tesla showed off its Gigapress.
This machine allows you to create huge body parts, much larger than competing machines. This allows Tesla to produce faster and at a lower cost. But it has a problem: it needs millions and millions of copies to make it profitable and take advantage of it.
Each profound change in the part to be produced forces very long development times and excessively extended technical stops. Furthermore, it is not easy to create that first original piece. Disadvantages that have forced the design of Tesla cars to remain practically unchanged.
Too seen. Being a slave to design is a problem in the automobile industry. Tesla thought it could sell the same car for years or decades, but time is telling it that customers like to see new things. When someone spends tens of thousands of euros on a car, they like it to look fresh and new.
The purchase of a car is still marked by irrational and passionate concepts above all logic. A car, no matter how much it is sold like that, is not a mobile phone. It’s not a black turtleneck either. These are products that, with a perfected and standardized design, differ little from each other without being fashionable. But above all, they are products with a rapid renewal rate. The car, if all goes well, will be in our house for more than a decade, which is why we like to buy the latest things within our budget.
Millions of copies of the Tesla Model 3, Model Y, Model S and Model with hardly any renovations they have diluted its novel image. Their cars have an aesthetic designed not to go out of style quickly but the customer needs to put new things in their mouths every so often. That is why generations in the automobile industry last between six and eight years, with a more or less profound renewal in the middle of the commercial life to boost sales again.
And the competition tightens. Tesla thought he could turn the automobile into another consumer good. Elon Musk even promised sales of 20 million units per year. An outrage if we take into account that it is doubling the production of Toyota, the largest manufacturer in the world.
This would be possible (and with many doubts) if its competitive advantage was so overwhelming that it left its cars in a position years ahead of the competition. But if we have seen anything since 2020, it is that this competition has gradually reduced distances to put cars with similar characteristics on the market, cars that are less disruptive on the inside (also to be evaluated by a customer) and smaller and cheaper cars.
In exchange, The only thing Tesla has done is make its cars cheaper. to always offer the best autonomy/price ratio. But their models are stagnant. Its design is practically the same and there are no new features. The customer hasn’t had much to put in their mouth that tastes fresh. Tesla perfectly masters the rational story but he has forgotten the emotional one.
Same problems. In short, Tesla came to bend the arm of the automobile industry and it has been found that over the years, with the company’s leap to mainstreamthe industry has ended up telling Tesla that there are variables when buying a car that go far beyond costs and consumption.
The company made a name for itself by presenting attractive cars with groundbreaking technology, but over the years it has encountered the same problems as any other automaker: renewing the product to continue selling and some state dependency to sell electric cars. And the withdrawal of the subsidy for the purchase of these cars (something Elon Musk supported) It has also impacted their sales.
Are we facing Tesla’s ceiling? It is something that time will tell us and for which we have no answer. The truth is that in this flight towards the purely rational and the search for maximum financial profitability at all times, the company has killed its only two aspirational cars. And the third one is not sold. A strategy, that of killing the differentiating product with low sales but capable of generating a feeling of belonging to a brand and the desire to buy it, which frog has come out on many other occasions.
Furthermore, this particular way of producing cars seems to have prevented Tesla from finding a formula to lower the cost of the only two models that are still alive. Offering a smaller vehicle can be key in a Europe eager for this type of electric. The competition is already offering them and Tesla risks being left behind.
Photo | Stephen Mease
In Xataka | Tesla can’t wait for us to take our hands off the wheel. We have tried it and we have opinions
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