Tesla bid farewell to the Model S and Model X at the Signature Edition Delivery Event held at the Fremont factory on the evening of 20 May 2026. The 350-unit final production run — 250 Model S and 100 Model X, all in exclusive Garnet Red with gold accents — was handed over to invitation-only customers in a ceremony led by Elon Musk, design chief Franz von Holzhausen and powertrain VP Lars Moravy. The event had been rescheduled from 12 May after Musk's China trip with President Trump, as TeslAnt covered in the May reschedule announcement.
The 18-year journey on stage
Franz and Musk walked the room through the original Model S programme, recalling that the first prototypes were sketched by a small design team working "out of a tent in the back of a SpaceX factory". The S debuted in 2012 with the now-iconic 17-inch touchscreen and pioneered over-the-air software updates — features that are standard across the industry today but were radical at the time.
Tesla used the evening to list the production-car firsts the Model S and Model X delivered:
| Achievement | Vehicle |
|---|---|
| First production EV past 400 miles of range | Model S |
| First production car to break 60 mph in under 2 seconds | Model S Plaid |
| First production sedan to clear the quarter-mile under 9.5 seconds (9.23 s) | Model S Plaid |
| First vehicle whose roof broke NHTSA test equipment | Model S |
| First production SUV not to roll over in regulatory testing | Model X |
Lars Moravy framed the present-day cars as the best engineering Tesla has ever shipped: the current Model S and X share only 3% of components with the 2012 original, using around 40% fewer parts overall.
What the Fremont line does next
The more consequential announcement was what happens to the production line. Tesla confirmed the Fremont S/X line will be repositioned as an Optimus humanoid robot facility, with the company targeting capacity to build roughly one million robots a year. The factory itself remains active — TeslAnt covered the end of S/X production on 9 May — but its output now switches to robotaxi-class vehicles and humanoid hardware.
Musk also confirmed that Cybercab production has officially started at Giga Texas, with full-volume ramp targeted "next week". Cybercab is the dedicated two-seat robotaxi platform Tesla unveiled in 2024; volume production marks the transition from prototype to fleet vehicle for the autonomous-ride programme.
What this means for European owners
The Signature Edition itself was a US-only collector's drop (invite-only, $159,420+) — no allocation reached Europe. The substantive European impact is on the service and parts side: with no new Model S or Model X coming off the Fremont line, the EU service network will be supporting an existing fleet that no longer grows. Tesla has not announced changes to parts availability or warranty terms for European S/X owners, and Lars Moravy emphasised that the company will continue to support these cars as it does the rest of the fleet.
For buyers considering a flagship Tesla in Europe, the practical message is that the Model S Plaid and Model X Plaid remain available from existing inventory only — there is no longer a path to order a freshly built unit.
Update: 2026-05-29
On 26 May 2026, Tesla's engineering and design executives spelled out the reasoning behind retiring the Model S and Model X. Powertrain VP Lars Moravy explained that the cars' platform — architected in the late 2000s — had reached its engineering limits, and that comprehensively re-tooling the Fremont line would have cost hundreds of millions of dollars. Rather than spend that to modernise two low-volume flagships, Tesla chose to convert the floorspace into a pilot factory for Optimus, as reported by Not a Tesla App. Executives added that the decision was actually taken around a year and a half ago. Notably, they also hinted the nameplates could eventually return, leaving the door open to a future redesign rather than a permanent end.