By Wolf Richter for WOLF STREET.
Tesla’s deliveries across the globe in Q3 rose by 4.3% from Q2 and by 6.4% year-over-year, to 462,890 vehicles, its best Q3 ever, but still behind Q1 and Q4 2023 (red in the chart).
Over the three quarters of the year, Tesla’s delivered 1.294 million vehicles, down by 2.3% compared to the same period in 2023, which had been a record. Compared to the same period in 2022, deliveries were up by 42%.
To eke past its 2023 deliveries record (1.809 million), as Elon Must predicted Tesla would do, it will have to deliver a record 515,000 vehicles in Q4, which would be up by 6% from the record in Q4 2023. So now, Tesla is like some of the big US legacy automakers, where beating 2023 by a few units would be an accomplishment? This year is when Tesla’s high-growth story shattered, due to the plunge in Q1 and the insufficient bounce in Q2.
Deliveries of the Model 3 and Model Y rose by 4.2% from Q2 and by 5.0% year-over-year to 439,975 vehicles, also the best Q3 ever, but behind Q1 and Q4 2023 (blue in the chart above).
The Model Y was the #2 bestselling vehicle in the US, only a hair behind the Toyota RAV4 and ahead of the Ford F-150 in Q2, according to Experian’s report on vehicle registrations.
Total EV sales by all automakers reached a record market share of 9% in Q2. Despite all this nonsense in the media about flagging EV demand, EV sales are growing and are eating share from ICE vehicle sales. It’s just that Tesla’s share of the US EV market has been dropping and is nearing 50%, as other big players have surged.
The Cybertruck is showing up in the figures ever so slowly as Tesla is trying to ramp up production amid numerous challenges. Deliveries of “Other Models” – the Cybertruck, the Model S, and the Model X – rose by 6.3% from the prior quarter and by 43.4% year over year to 22,915 vehicles, also the best Q3 ever, but a few units behind Q4 2024 (green in the chart above).
Tesla said last year that it expects to be able to ramp Cybertruck production to 250,000 units in 2025. Musk said that the Cybertruck will not be material to Tesla’s financials until 2025 or beyond. In April, Tesla reached a milestone: production of 1,000 units a week, or an annual run rate of 50,000 units. So a long way to go to get significant production.
In China, which accounts for about one-third of Tesla’s deliveries, the company has run into very tough competition from domestic EV makers, especially BYD, and a price war has broken out. In response, Tesla introduced discounts on some paint options, 0% financing plans, insurance deals, and other incentives, which helped reanimate sales in China, where sales increased in July and August, after two quarters of declines, according to data from the China Passenger Car Association (CPCA), cited by Reuters.
In California, Tesla’s largest market in the US, sales have gotten crushed for the four quarters through Q2, even as other EV sales have soared, based on registrations reported by the California auto dealer association CNCDA in July, which caused us to speculate that many Californian EV buyers have had it with Musk’s barrage of BS about California.
Per new vehicle registrations in Q2, that kind of trend in California cannot be helpful to Tesla’s overall numbers. We’ll update this when the CNCDA releases the Q3 figures later this month:
Tesla: -24% year-over-year, to 52,211 vehicles.
Non-Tesla EVs: +45% year-over-year, to 49,232 vehicles
The Model Y was still by far the #1 bestseller in California in Q2, ahead of the Toyota RAV4. But sales plunged 15% year-over-year to 36,343 vehicles. So Q3 will be interesting:
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