- Wannabe car shoppers in Europe can no longer buy a built-to-order Model S or Model X.
- The American car maker is only offering the two large EVs from its inventory.
- The move comes after Tesla discontinued the two former flagship models in right-hand drive markets, as well as China.
The Tesla Model S and Model X, once the highest standard in the electric car industry, are now little more than a footnote in the company’s story. That’s because Tesla just killed the two EVs in Europe.
The American automaker updated its European webpages, removing the ability to order new vehicles, instead leaving just the option to buy a Model S or Model X from inventory. The move comes after Tesla stopped manufacturing right-hand drive versions of the two EVs in 2023. Earlier this year, the Elon Musk-led company discontinued the Model S and Model X in China, leaving Europe and North America as the biggest markets for the two models.
Now, with Europe out of the picture, the United States and Canada are the only major markets where the aging battery-powered cars are still available. Earlier this year, Tesla updated the Model S and Model X with multi-color ambient lighting and a few other minor tweaks. Meanwhile, the prices went up, and brand enthusiasts were not happy.
As with any vehicle refresh, it’s meant to entice potential customers with new features, so that sales figures go up. But it’s hard to imagine how that will happen, now that Tesla has abandoned Europe–and by the looks of it, the Model S and Model X altogether. Without any meaningful updates to the pair of flagship EVs, Tesla has effectively given up on its original show-stoppers.
Customers know it, too, as the two cars’ sales figures went from headline-makers to footnotes. For the past few years, the Model S and Model X have been bundled together with the Cybertruck and Semi in the “Other Models” category in the company’s production and delivery reports. In the first half of the year, Tesla delivered just 23,275 “Other Models,” while the Model 3 and Model Y had nearly 700,000 deliveries globally.
By the looks of it, the Model S and Model X are nearing the end of the road, and it’s probably just a matter of time until Tesla pulls the plug altogether. With the recent launch of the three-row Model Y in China, the much more expensive Model X is hard to explain to a typical car buyer, while the equally expensive Model S is sadly little more than a niche product nowadays.
