Farewell to the Tesla Model S and Model X: The Two Cars That Changed How the World Saw Electric Vehicles

Some cars sell well. A rare few change what people believe is possible. The Tesla Model S and Model X belonged firmly in that second group, and now, after production wound down in 2026, they’re gone. Before they fade into the rear view mirror, I want to spend a little time on why they mattered so much, because it’s genuinely hard to imagine the electric car world we have today without these two. This is less a review and more a thank you note.

The Car That Made Electric Cars Cool

To understand the Model S, you have to remember what most people thought an electric car was in 2012. The mental image was a compromise. Something small, slow, and slightly apologetic, the automotive equivalent of eating your vegetables. Then the Model S arrived and quietly detonated that assumption.

Here was a sleek, genuinely beautiful full size sedan that could travel 265 miles on a charge at a time when that number sounded like science fiction. It had a giant central touchscreen when the rest of the industry was still fumbling with tiny buttons. And it was fast in a way that reordered your sense of what a family car could do, delivering silent, instant, slightly alarming acceleration that left startled sports car drivers watching its taillights.

The critics noticed. In a genuinely landmark moment, the Model S was named the 2013 MotorTrend Car of the Year, the first time in the award’s then 64 year history that an electric car had won it, and the decision was unanimous. Consumer Reports scored the 2013 Model S a 99 out of 100, at the time the highest score the publication had ever awarded a car. At the ceremony, Elon Musk called it a moment when, in his words, “the gears of history moved.” It sounded grand. It also turned out to be true.

What made all this possible is a detail that’s easy to skip past. The Model S was the first car Tesla engineered completely in house, from the ground up, rather than adapting someone else’s platform. That’s part of why it felt so cohesive, so unlike anything else, and why so many of the ideas it introduced, from the minimalist cabin to over the air software updates, have since spread across the entire industry. A lot of features you now take for granted in ordinary cars showed up first in the Model S.

The SUV That Refused to Be Sensible

If the Model S made the case that an electric car could be desirable, the Model X, which arrived in 2015 as Tesla’s first electric SUV, made the case that it could be genuinely theatrical.

The headline feature, of course, was those Falcon Wing doors. Rather than opening outward or sliding, the rear doors rose upward and folded as they went, using sensors to tuck themselves neatly into tight parking spaces. They were the kind of feature that draws a crowd in a parking lot, and yes, they occasionally got fussy in low garages and paused to think about their life choices. But they also made loading kids into the second row genuinely easier, and they gave the Model X a sense of occasion that no rival could touch. It was a family SUV that behaved like a showstopper.

Underneath the drama, it was seriously capable. The Model X could seat up to seven, came standard with a tow hitch, and could pull up to 5,000 pounds, which made it a real family and adventure vehicle rather than a novelty. It brought the Model S’s whole idea of desirable, premium, effortlessly quick electric motoring to the SUV buyers who make up such a huge slice of the market, and it did so years before most luxury brands had anything remotely competitive to offer.

When They Became Record Breakers

Then came the Plaid era, and this is where both cars went from very fast to genuinely absurd, in the most entertaining way.

The Model S Plaid, with three electric motors making around 1,020 horsepower, could sprint to 60 mph in a hair under two seconds under ideal conditions, a figure independently verified by multiple outlets and enough to embarrass hypercars costing many times more. It’s one of the quickest production cars ever built, full stop, and it does that while seating a family of five in comfort and returning genuinely long range.

The Model X Plaid took that same wild three motor setup and put it in a three row SUV weighing well over 5,000 pounds, and the result reaches 60 mph in about 2.5 seconds. To put that in perspective, this is a seven seat SUV with minivan friendly doors that accelerates harder than a Ferrari 488, while still offering over 300 miles of range. It became, and remained, the quickest production SUV in the world. There’s something genuinely delightful about a vehicle that can carry a soccer team and their gear, then humiliate a supercar at a stoplight on the drive home.

How They Changed the Way We See EVs

Here’s the part that matters most, and it’s bigger than any single spec.

Before these two cars, the electric vehicle was widely seen as a sacrifice. You bought one despite its being electric, not because of it. The Model S and Model X flipped that story completely. They were desirable first and electric second, cars that people genuinely lusted after, that happened to plug in. They proved that going electric could mean more performance, more technology, and more presence, not less.

That shift in perception is arguably Tesla’s single greatest contribution to the industry, and these were the cars that delivered it. Once buyers saw that an electric car could be the quickest, most advanced, most talked about vehicle in the room, the old excuses started to crumble. Every legacy automaker that now sells a premium EV, and every startup chasing the luxury electric buyer, is working in a market these two cars genuinely created. They didn’t just compete in the segment. For a long stretch, they were the segment.

You can draw a straight line from the Model S to nearly everything I write about on this site. The luxury electric sedans, the quick electric SUVs, the expectation that an EV should have serious range and serious software, all of it traces back in part to the standard these cars set well over a decade ago.

A Fond Goodbye

Tesla ended production of the Model S and Model X in 2026, following the announcement on its January 2026 earnings call, and the Fremont, California space that built them is being repurposed to produce the company’s Optimus robots. After the Model S spent 14 years in production, a genuinely long run for any car, and the Model X close behind it, that’s the end of the road for both.

I’ll admit to some genuine sentimentality here. It’s rare that you can point to specific vehicles and say, with a straight face, that they changed the direction of the entire automobile industry, but these two genuinely did. They took the electric car from an object of compromise to an object of desire, and they made the rest of the industry scramble to catch up. The fact that so many wonderful electric cars exist today is, in no small part, because these two showed the rest of the industry it could be done.

If you’ve ever wanted one, the used market is now the way in, and there are some genuinely compelling values there, especially the long range Model S for the road tripper and the Model X for the family that wants an SUV with a sense of theater. Just have the battery health and, on the Model X, those famous doors checked before you buy, and you may end up with one of the more special used electric cars on the market.

The Model S and Model X are gone, but their fingerprints are on nearly every EV worth writing about. That’s about as good a legacy as any car could ask for. Thanks for the ride.

*EV Rob writes about electric vehicles, automotive technology, and the future of transportation at The Wonderful World of EVs.*