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First of all, I want to note that whether Tesla sales are booming in China or not is sort of irrelevant to Tesla’s/Elon Musk’s vision for the company and how it is supposed to succeed now. Musk has all but given up on serious growth from normal automaker improvements, vehicles expansion, and marketing. He sees the company’s potential exponential growth as coming from autonomous driving (and robots), and is as confident as he has been for the last decade that Tesla is just about to crack that nut and then the gold volcanoes will explode in Tesla’s favor.
However, for those who are not as sold on that path, or who at least care a lot about the traditional automaker sales story as well, there’s the question or discussion around how much Tesla can juice sales with model updates and new models. This year, the world got a new, updated Model Y, and China also got a long-wheelbase version of the crossover called the Model Y L. Some Tesla fans are super excited that Tesla Model Y sales are booming in China as a result. … But are they?
The excitement has come from news that: 1) Tesla sales rebounded in November. 2) Tesla’s vehicles are sold out in China for the year, with estimated delivery dates now being in January or February. 3) The Model Y L, specifically, is sold out until February. My first thought was, “Well, that’s just a few weeks to two months away.” It’s not like they have a 6-month wait list. It’s certainly better than having to offer a bunch of incentives to move vehicles at the end of the quarter (that’s an improvement), but given that these models were supposed to really jack up demand in China, I have a hard time understanding the enthusiasm and being bullish on this.
Nonetheless, I decided I’d dig a little more and put the data into broader context to understand if it did indicate a significant increase in sales in China. Looking at the first 10 months of the year, I found that Tesla Model Y plus Model 3 sales were down from ~500,000 sales in January–October 2024 to ~458,000 sales in January–October 2025. It will take quite a boost in sales just to catch up to 2024 levels … and remember that Tesla’s 2024 sales were a decline from 2023.
How about November? Well, in 2024, Tesla Model Y sales were down 11% year over year, so the fact that they increased 10% year over year in November 2025 is really not a big deal. It’s not even bringing us back to 2023 levels!
Will Tesla sell more vehicles in China year over year in December? Probably! But will its total 2025 sales be higher than 2024’s sales, let alone 2023’s? It doesn’t look like it.
Looking globally, Tesla had 1.41 million sales in the first 10 months of 2024. Around this time last year, Elon Musk indicated that the company wasn’t using all of its production capacity, and he expected they would do so in 2025 and would therefore increase sales by about 30% compared to 2024. Instead, through the first 10 months of the year, Tesla has sold 1.29 million vehicles. (And note that in the first 10 months of 2023, Tesla had sold 1.44 million vehicles.)
Yes, it’s a positive that Tesla sales are finally growing again year over year in China, but demand doesn’t seem to be booming in a historical context, and there’s no indication Tesla is returning to 2023 levels, let alone shooting past them.
The money is still all on Full Self Driving capability. At least Elon Musk has been clear and honest about that, even if he keeps missing sales targets year after year after year after year.
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