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As expected, Tesla had a big quarter of sales in the 3rd quarter. With the US EV tax credit being phased out, many buyers rushed to get their Teslas while they could benefit from the financial subsidy. Some headlines have cheered Tesla’s record quarter, but I have to admit that the numbers are genuinely not as good as I expected. They are more of a sign for worry than anything else, in my humble opinion.
Throughout the day, we’ve been writing about the enormous year-over-year EV sales growth at different brands. Volkswagen logged 231% growth in the 3rd quarter, Cadillac’s EV sales grew 146% in the same time, Chevrolet EV sales grew 86%, the Hyundai IONIQ 5 grew 90%, and the Ford Mustang Mach-E grew 51%. There are some caveats with Tesla — it was already starting from a very high base, and we have only its global numbers, not US numbers (though, that’s on Tesla for not being willing to share numbers by region). Nonetheless, its sales were up only 7.4% year over year.
And here’s the big kicker: That record delivery total the company logged? It was only 0.3% higher than the previous record, set in Q4 2024. So, even with the presumably massive US sales surge, the company barely beat its sales record (497,099 deliveries versus 495,570 deliveries). That’s not a great sign for the coming quarters.
Some people are still very bullish on Tesla, and some even think the 3rd quarter was a great quarter. I have a hard time even entertaining that possibility. The company would have to have something like a breakthrough to give me the sense that big growth is coming again, or any growth. We’ll see. Perhaps there are indeed some notable surprises around the corner.
To wrap up, below are various Tesla quarterly sales charts and cumulative sales charts. For each one, there’s an interactive version and then a static version, until the last one — for which there’s just an interactive version.
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