Tesla expected to deliver 15% fewer vehicles in the fourth quarter

It didn't help that Musk pissed off his customer base with DOGE, nor has the Chinese production of cars that are less expensive been good for the US manuf.

The fact that BYD has quickly emerged as the largest seller of EVs on the globe is rather amazing, especially considering they can't even sell in the US.

Did I forget to mention that the EV tax credits are gone. Ouch.

PS. New article at bottom just published this am...update!

Tesla expected to deliver 15% fewer vehicles in the fourth quarter

Tesla’s Q4 delivery outlook is down — and it's circulating the estimate, trying to nudge the headline from “slump” to “beat,” before the print arrives

By Shannon Carroll, Quartz Media

Published Tuesday 9:30 AM

Tesla’s car sales continue to go in reverse — and the company is taking the unusual route of broadcasting that. Tesla published a compilation of analyst estimates on its website, and the fourth-quarter consensus from 20 firms pegs deliveries at 422,850 vehicles. If that figure holds, it lands roughly 15% below last year’s Q4 result and extends a slow, stubborn theme: Tesla’s growth story, in car units, keeps tripping over the real world.

The story here is less “analysts have an estimate” and more “Tesla chose the estimate.” And it chose a gloomy one. Tesla’s posted average is more pessimistic than Bloomberg’s compiled consensus (of about 445,061 vehicles), and other trackers have been higher, too (in the mid-440,000s range).

So Tesla is setting the bar where it wants the conversation to start: on the floor — and handing everyone a tape measure.

T​his “soft” fourth quarter is arriving after a year that has looked like three different stories taped together. Tesla delivered 336,681 vehicles in Q1 2025; deliveries rose to 384,122 in Q2; and then, Tesla hit a record in Q3: 497,099 deliveries. Now, the consensus says Q4 gives back a solid chunk of that momentum — and the reason is less about factory choreography or consumer behavior and more about policy gravity.

Federal EV tax credits — $7,500 for new EVs and $4,000 for used — expired on Sept. 30, 2025. And deadlines like that don’t erase short-term demand so much as rearrange it. Buyers who were on the fence get shoved into a single quarter, and the next quarter gets stuck holding the bag. Tesla’s November U.S. sales fell nearly 23% year over year to 39,800 vehicles, according to Cox Automotive data, even after Tesla rolled out cheaper (but still not that cheap) “Standard” versions of the Model Y and Model 3.

CEO Elon Musk has tried to wave away vehicle demand anxiety as a media obsession — “they’re fine, don’t worry about it,” he said in May — even as he later warned investors to brace for “a few rough quarters” in what he called a “weird transition period.” Tesla has been trying to ramp up the conversation about its long-promised robotaxis in Austin, Texas, ahead of Musk’s year-end target for safety-monitor-free rides. With a day to spare, it looks like that prediction's at least true in testing (and not at the fleet level as Musk has promised): Musk says a “Tesla with no safety monitor” drove him around Austin, and Tesla’s AI lead posted video of an empty front seat.

Zoom out, and the EV market is growing, but unevenly. Global EV registrations rose 6% in November, yet North America fell 42% as the post-credit slump spread. Europe is moving in the opposite direction on adoption — battery-electric vehicles are 17% of EU registrations year-to-date through November. Add in intensifying competition, including cheaper EV options from legacy automakers such as Chevrolet and Ford and expanding Chinese brands overseas, and Tesla’s fourth-quarter setup starts to look structural, not seasonal.

And yet, none of this has stopped Tesla’s stock from behaving like the car business is merely the opening act. The company’s shares are up more than 10% this year (and 21% year to date), a sign that plenty of investors are paying for the robotaxi dream and tolerating the delivery math. That split — cars down, narrative up — remains Tesla’s one real magic trick.

Tesla has already trained investors to expect a rationale for every wobble. Earlier in the year, the company blamed a Model Y line changeover across all four factories for “several weeks” of lost production. Q4 doesn’t come with that built-in excuse. If the consensus is right, this is what demand looks like when the incentives are gone, the field is crowded, and Tesla has to sell cars like a normal automaker — while its stock still trades like an AI bet.

World's wealthiest CEO delivers second annual sales decline

China's BYD is now the world's biggest electric vehicle maker, after Tesla sales shrank for the second year in a row under Musk's leadership

Published 1 hour ago

Tesla's annual sales have dropped for the second year in a row, the company said Friday.

The Elon Musk-led electric vehicle maker delivered 1.64 million cars last year, a 9% fall from the 1.79 million it shipped in 2024. It delivered 418,227 vehicles in the final quarter of 2025, down 16% year-over-year and missing analyst expectations for 441,000 vehicles, according to an average compiled by Bloomberg.

On Monday, Tesla took the unusual step of publishing a consensus estimate, which predicted the automaker would deliver 422,850 vehicles in Q4 — a modest estimate the EV maker ultimately missed.

The annual results snatch Tesla's crown as the world’s biggest electric-vehicle maker, overtaken by Chinese rival BYD.

BYD said on Thursday that it sold 2.26 million battery-electric vehicles in 2025, up 28% from a year ago, following its expansion in Europe and other overseas markets. The automaker had previously outsold Tesla on a quarterly basis, but Friday’s results mean it has now overtaken Tesla for annual EV deliveries.

Tesla had a bumpy ride in 2025. The company's share price fell 21.3% in the first half of the year due to a number of headwinds, including Musk's alienating political rhetoric, fiercer competition from Chinese and legacy U.S. automakers, and concerns among investors that the CEO's role heading the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) would cause him to neglect his businesses.

Tesla was also stung by federal EV tax credits — $7,500 for new EVs and $4,000 for used — expiring on Sept. 30, 2025. Tesla’s November U.S. sales fell nearly 23% year over year to 39,800 vehicles, according to Cox Automotive data, even after Tesla rolled out cheaper (but still not that cheap) “Standard” versions of the Model Y and Model 3.

However, Tesla's stock price has had a renaissance in recent weeks, hitting an all-time closing high of $489.88 in December. The rally came after Musk said the company had been testing driverless vehicles in Austin, Texas, with no occupants on board for the first time, almost six months after launching a pilot with safety drivers.

Tesla's second consecutive annual drop in sales came as its board reinstated Musk as the highest-paid CEO in history, with a new pay package of 96 million restricted shares worth $29 billion. His original 2018 moonshot mega-grant had been tied up in Delaware courts for seven years after a judge twice rescinded the package.

During litigation, Tesla moved to Texas from Delaware, and the board adopted a rule requiring any investor who wants to challenge Musk’s pay to hold 3% of the company's stock. The amount is equivalent to roughly $44 billion at current market price, helping to shield Musk against repeat challenges to his pay plan.

On top of this, Tesla's shareholders voted in November to approve the largest remuneration package in history that could see Musk pocket as much as $1 trillion in stock over the next decade, although required payments would reduce this to a modest $878 billion.

So, despite Tesla's enduring slump, Musk defended his title as the world's richest person last year, driven by Tesla pay packages and the soaring valuation of his rocket and satellite company SpaceX. Musk's fortunes approached an estimated $623 billion in 2025, up by more than $190 billion.