Tesla CEO Elon Musk says the company has nearly cleared out the last of its flagship cars.
Only “a few hundred” Model S sedans and Model X SUVs remain in inventory, Musk said in a Wednesday post on X.
The low inventory hasn’t been independently confirmed, but the news isn’t a surprise. Musk said during Tesla’s fourth-quarter earnings call in January that the company was giving the then-$94,990 sedan and then-$99,990 SUV an “honorable discharge.” He said last week that production had stopped.
Only a few hundred Tesla Model S & X cars left in inventory. Order now if you want one.
It signals the next phase in a major shift at Tesla. This year, the electric automaker is expanding its efforts beyond consumer vehicles and into autonomous cars and humanoid robots.
During the January discontinuation announcement, Musk said that Tesla’s Fremont factory — long home to Model S and Model X production — would be repurposed to build its Optimus robots.
The company also said it started producing its self-driving Cybercabs from its Austin Gigafactory in February.
That left the Model S and Model X as relics of an earlier Tesla era — albeit important ones. The Model S, launched in 2012, was Tesla’s first clean-sheet vehicle and helped turn the company into a legitimate luxury and sports brand. The Model X followed in 2015, marking Tesla’s entry into the booming SUV market.
Both were eventually eclipsed by the cheaper, higher-volume Model 3 sedan and Model Y SUV — vehicles that pushed Tesla into sustained profitability.
Musk has acknowledged the emotional tradeoff of killing the Model S and Model X. During the January call, the CEO said discontinuing both cars was “slightly sad” but important for the company’s “overall shift to an autonomous future.”
The discontinuation of the Model X and Model S may have prompted more shoppers to hit the ” Buy “button on Tesla’s website. The automaker doesn’t break out sales for individual models, bundling the Model S, Model X, and Cybertruck together in its reports — but that category saw a bump at the start of 2026, with 16,130 deliveries in the first quarter, up from 11,642 in the final quarter of 2025.
Sawyer Merrit, a popular EV enthusiast on X, noted that both cars have seen price hikes on Tesla’s website since the discontinuation announcement.
NEWS: Tesla has raised the price on all remaining new (and demo) Model S and Model X vehicles left in inventory by $15,000.
New starting prices: • Model S AWD: $109,990 • Model S Plaid: $124,900 • Model X AWD: $114,900 • Model X Plaid: $129,900 pic.twitter.com/qBEhsYAfXr
Overall, Tesla said deliveries rose 6% in the first quarter. Still, the company is working through a 50,000-unit inventory glut, analysts said earlier this month.
The new business model isn’t a complete turn away from new vehicle models. Musk has teased an unveiling of the long-awaited two-door Roadster sports car. He is expected to show off the new model by the end of the month.
Tesla didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment from Business Insider.
A “decoy” Tesla distracted a scrum of photographers trying to get a good shot of Elon Musk as he entered a San Francisco courthouse on Wednesday, two cameramen on the scene told Business Insider.
“100% a decoy. 100%,” said David Morris, a frustrated yet impressed Bloomberg News photographer. “They had us. It was done very well, actually.”
The Tesla CEO was expected to arrive at the San Francisco federal courthouse on Wednesday to testify in a trial over a lawsuit brought by former Twitter shareholders. They alleged the billionaire violated securities laws in 2022 by driving down the share price of Twitter before he bought it and renamed it X. Musk has said he complied with the law in his communications about the social media company.
According to two photographers on a stakeout outside the courthouse, a Tesla pulled up on the curb, and security guards stepped out to surround it.
As soon as the group of news photographers coalesced around the Tesla — anticipating Musk would step out — an SUV that had been parked a short distance away pulled up right in front of the courthouse door, the photographer said. Musk and his security team ran out of the car and up the courthouse steps, they said.
“He was like probably at least a hundred feet away from us,” Morris said. “And then we noticed that. And it was like three seconds — out of the car, in the door.”
Elon Musk, center, arrives for a Twitter shareholder trial at the US District Court for the Northern District of California, Wednesday, March 4, 2026, in San Francisco.
AP Photo/Godofredo A. Vásquez
The photographers ultimately got only a handful of pictures of Musk, on the steps entering the courthouse and going through the metal detectors.
“There was security standing in front of him to try to make it so it was hard to get a good photo,” Josh Edelson, a freelance photographer working for Getty Images, told Business Insider.
Musk didn’t make it easy, Edelson said.
“He didn’t look at us. He kept his head looking to the side, so he didn’t look very good,” he said. “It was just a profile shot. It was very obviously a position where he wanted to make it hard for us.”
The entire scene was captured by NBC journalist Scott Budman, who posted a video on X.
Watch: Elon Musk sends A DECOY TESLA AND GUARDS to try and fool the press as he enters the SF courtroom today for the Twitter buyout trial. (Keep going .. we found him). pic.twitter.com/dV0c3sIxty
Tesla’s sales in Europe are plummeting — and now Elon Musk has a warning for employees at the company’s German megafactory ahead of crucial union elections.
In an interview with Giga Berlin senior director Andre Thierig posted on X on Thursday, Musk said Tesla would “ideally” expand its only European gigafactory and start production of its battery cells, Cybercab robotaxi, and Optimus robot at the site.
Asked if he had any advice for the team at Giga Berlin to work toward that vision, Musk said any expansion was contingent on Tesla being free from interference from “outside organizations.”
“Things certainly get harder if there are outside organizations who are pushing Tesla in the wrong direction,” said Musk.
“It’s difficult to say that then we would expand, if we had outside organizations who were making things very difficult. We’re not going to shut down the factory, but we wouldn’t expand it either,” said the Tesla CEO.
The billionaire’s comments come ahead of a crucial vote at Tesla’s German factory next week, with powerful German union IG Metall pushing to gain control of the site’s work council — an elected body of employees required by local laws that negotiates pay deals and working hours with management.
German publication Handelsblatt first reported Musk’s comments, which it said were screened for employees on Wednesday.
Tesla clashes with union
The run-up to the election has been marked by fierce disputes between the union and Tesla’s executives. Earlier this month, Tesla filed a criminal complaint against an IG Metall representative, accusing them of secretly recording an internal meeting.
IG Metall, which has frequently clashed with Tesla over working conditions at Giga Berlin over the past few years, denied the allegation and responded with its own complaint accusing Thierig of defamation. The union said Thursday that both sides had agreed on a truce ahead of the works council elections.
The debate over Giga Berlin’s future comes as Tesla’s sales in Europe have collapsed. The US automaker saw registrations of its EVs fall nearly 38% in the EU last year, as it was hit by backlash over Musk’s political interventions and backing of German far-right party AfD.
In January, Tesla’s European sales dropped to just 8,000 units, according to data from the European Automobile Manufacturers Association, less than half the number sold by Chinese rival BYD.
Musk also said in the interview that Tesla expects to receive approval to sell Full-Self-Driving driver assist technology in the Netherlands on March 20.
This story originally ran in Welt and appears on Business Insider through the Axel Springer Global Reporters Network.
“All we’ve got left now,” the Russian soldier said, “are radios, cables and pigeons.”
A decision earlier this month by SpaceX to shut down access to Starlink satellite-internet terminals caused immediate chaos among Russian forces who had become increasingly reliant upon the Elon Musk-owned company’s technology to sustain their occupation of Ukraine, according to radio transmissions intercepted by a Ukrainian reconnaissance unit and shared with the Axel Springer Global Reporters Network, to which POLITICO and Business Insider belong.
The communications breakdown significantly constrained Russian military capabilities, creating new opportunities for Ukrainian forces. In the days following the shutdown, Ukraine recaptured roughly 77 square miles in the country’s southeast, according to calculations by the news agency Agence France-Presse based on data from the Washington-based Institute for the Study of War.
Analysts in Ukraine’s Bureviy Brigade eavesdrop on Russian communications from an underground listening post in northeastern Ukraine.
Viktor Lysenko/BI
SpaceX began requiring verification of Starlink terminals on Feb. 4, blocking unverified Russian units from accessing its services. Almost immediately, Ukrainian eavesdroppers heard Russian soldiers complaining about the failure of “Kosmos” and “Sinka” — apparently code names for Starlink satellite internet and the messaging service Telegram.
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“Damn it! Looks like they’ve switched off all the Starlinks,” one Russian soldier exclaimed. “The connection is gone, completely gone. The images aren’t being transmitted,” another shouted.
Dozens of the recordings were played for Axel Springer Global Reporter Network reporters in an underground listening post maintained by the Bureviy Brigade in northeastern Ukraine. Neither SpaceX nor the Russian Foreign Ministry responded to requests for comment.
“On the Russian side, we observed on the very day Starlink was shut down that artillery and mortar fire dropped drastically. Drone drops and FPV attacks also suddenly decreased,” said a Ukrainian aerial reconnaissance operator from the Bureviy Brigade who would agree to be identified only by the call sign Mustang, referring to first-person view drones. “Coordination between their units has also become more difficult since then.”
The satellite internet network has become a crucial tool on the battlefield, sustaining high-tech drone operations and replacing walkie-talkies in low-tech combat. Since Russia’s February 2022 invasion, which destroyed much of Ukraine’s traditional communications infrastructure, Western governments have provided thousands of the Starlink units to Kyiv.
At some point, it felt like the Russians had more devices than we did,” said a Ukrainian soldier identified by the call sign Mustang
Viktor Lysenko/BI
Viktor Lysenko/BI
With the portable terminals, there is no need to lay kilometers of cable that can be damaged by shelling or drone strikes. Drone footage can be transmitted in real time to command posts, artillery and mortar fire can be corrected with precision, and operational information can be shared instantly via encrypted messaging apps such as Signal or Telegram.
At the outset of the Russian invasion, Starlink access gave Ukraine’s defenders a decisive operational advantage. Those in besieged Mariupol sent signs of life in spring 2022 via the backpack-size white dishes, and army units used them to coordinate during brutal house-to-house fighting in Bakhmut in 2023.
Satellite internet became “one of, if not the most important components” of Ukraine’s way of war, according to military analyst Franz-Stefan Gady, an adviser to European governments and security agencies who regularly visits Ukrainian units. “Starlink constituted the backbone of connectivity that enabled accelerated kill chains by helping create a semi-transparent battlefield.”
The operational advantages of Starlink did not go unnoticed by Russian forces. By the third year of the war, Starlink terminals were increasingly turning up in Russian-occupied territory. One of the first documented cases surfaced in January 2024 in the Serebryansky forest. Month by month, Ukrainian reconnaissance drones spotted more of the devices.
The Ukrainian government subsequently contacted Musk’s company, urging it to block Russian access to the network. Mykhailo Fedorov, then digital minister and now defense minister, alleged Russian forces were acquiring the devices via third countries. “Ukraine will continue using Starlink, and Russian use will be restricted to the maximum extent possible,” Fedorov pledged in spring 2024.
Yet Russian use of the terminals continued to grow throughout 2025, and their use was not limited to artillery or drone units. Even Russian infantry soldiers were carrying mini Starlink terminals in their backpacks.
“We found Starlink terminals at virtually every Russian position along the contact line,” said Mustang. “At some point, it felt like the Russians had more devices than we did.”
In the listening post this month, he scrolled through more than a dozen images from late 2025 showing Russian Starlink terminals set up between trees or beside the entrances to their positions.
“We targeted their positions deliberately,” Mustang continued. “But even if we destroyed a terminal in the morning or evening, a new one was already installed by the next morning.”
In the Russian-occupied eastern Ukrainian city of Kreminna, there was even a shop where soldiers could buy Starlink terminals starting in 2024. According to Ukrainian officials, these devices were not registered in Russia.
SpaceX’s move in early February to enforce a stricter verification system effectively cut off unregistered Starlink terminals operating in Russian-occupied areas. Only devices approved and placed on a Ukrainian Ministry of Defense “whitelist” remained active, while terminals used by Russian forces were remotely deactivated.
“That’s it, basically no one has internet at all,” a Russian soldier said in one of the messages played for Axel Springer reporters. “Everything’s off, everything’s off.”
The temporary shutdown allowed Ukraine to slow the momentum of Vladimir Putin’s forces, although the localized counteroffensives do not represent a fundamental shift along the front. Soldiers from other Ukrainian units, including the Black Arrow battalion, confirmed the military consequences of the Starlink outage for Russian forces in their sectors in interviews with the Axel Springer Global Reporters Network.
By mid-February, Russian shelling had increased again, though largely against frontline positions that had long been identified and precisely mapped — suggesting that Russia has yet to fully restore all of its lost capabilities.
Now, analysts from the Bureviy Brigade say Russian forces are scrambling for alternatives. They have been forced to rely far more heavily on radio communication, according to Mustang, which creates additional opportunities for interception.
Russian units will likely attempt to switch to their own satellite terminals. But their speed and connection quality are significantly lower, Mustang says. And because of their size, the devices are difficult to conceal.”The shutdown of Starlink, even if only of limited effect for now, highlights the limited ability of the Russian armed forces to rapidly implement ongoing cycles of innovation,” said Col. Markus Reisner of the Austrian Armed Forces. “This could represent a potential point of leverage for Western supporters to provide swift and sustainable support to Ukraine at this stage.”
