Model X is on display at the Tesla showroom in Beijing, China, on February 13, 2021.
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tesla Chief Executive Officer Elon Musk announced Wednesday that the company will end production of the Model S and Model X and use its Fremont, Calif., factory to make the Optimus humanoid robot.
“Basically, it’s time to end the Model S and Model X programs with honorable discharge,” Musk said during the company’s fourth-quarter earnings conference. “If you’re interested in purchasing Models S and X, now is the time to order.”
These two models are Tesla’s oldest vehicles after the original Roadster, and the company has lowered prices in recent years as global competition for electric vehicles increases. Tesla began selling the Model S sedan in 2012 and the Model X SUV three years later.
Tesla’s far more popular models are the 3 and Y, which accounted for 97% of the company’s 1.59 million deliveries last year.
Tesla reported its first annual revenue decline on record during its earnings call Wednesday, with sales declining in three of the past four quarters. Musk is trying to shift attention from traditional electric vehicles to a future of self-driving cars and humanoid robots, in which the company currently has virtually no business.
Tesla is developing Optimus with the goal of one day selling it as a bipedal, intelligent robot that can do everything from factory work to babysitting. The company said in a release that it plans to introduce the third generation of Optimus this quarter, “the first design intended for mass production.”
Musk said on the call that Tesla will replace its S and X production lines in Fremont with “a 1 million-a-year Optimus line.”
“Because this is a completely new supply chain,” Musk said, “Optimus has nothing that is in the existing supply chain.”
Tesla will increase staffing at its Fremont facility and “significantly increase production,” Musk added.
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