Tesla reports 418,227 deliveries for the fourth quarter, down 16%
Tesla posted its fourth-quarter 2025 vehicle production and deliveries report on Friday, marking a second annual decline for Elon Musk's automaker.
Here are the key numbers:
Wall Street expected 426,000 deliveries for the quarter, according to estimates compiled by StreetAccount.
In a company-compiled consensus posted to its website on Dec. 29, Tesla said analysts it surveyed were expecting a 15% drop from a year earlier to 422,850 vehicles.
Deliveries for Q4 2025 were about 16% lower than the fourth quarter of 2024, when Musk's EV company reported 495,570. Q4 2025 numbers for production were down 5.5% from a year ago, when Tesla produced 459,445 vehicles.
For the full year, Tesla's deliveries fell 8.6% to 1.64 million from 1.79 million in 2024.
Tesla said deliveries of its entry-level Model 3 sedan and Model Y SUV amounted to 406,585 in the fourth quarter, or about 97% of total deliveries. Deliveries of its Model S, Model X and Cybertruck vehicles came in at 11,642 during the quarter.
After its design debut, Tesla boasted about more than 1 million reservations flooding in for the Cybertruck. The angular, steel pickup has yet to be a best seller for the company.
Musk's aerospace and defense company, SpaceX, reportedly purchased tens of millions of dollars worth of Cybertrucks in 2025.
Tesla faces heightened competition in the electric vehicle market from China's BYD, South Korea's Kia and Hyundai, and Volkswagen in Europe, among others.
BYD topped Tesla as the world's biggest seller of EVs in a calendar year, saying in a statement Thursday that sales grew 28% to 2.26 million units.
Deliveries are the closest approximation of sales reported by Tesla, but are not precisely defined in the company's shareholder communications.
In its energy business, Tesla said that it deployed 14.2 gigawatt hours of battery energy storage products in the fourth quarter, following a record in the prior period, when it deployed 12.5 GWh.
Tesla's battery energy storage systems include backup batteries for homes and larger systems used alongside data centers and utilities.
Zoom In IconArrows pointing outwardsTesla will report its fourth-quarter financial results on Jan. 28.
Sales of Tesla's cars were impacted by President Donald Trump's decision to end a federal EV incentive by Sept. 30, earlier than previously planned. The expiration pulled some EV sales forward to the third quarter for Tesla and other automakers.
Even before that, the start of 2025 was a struggle for Tesla.
After spending heavily to propel Trump back to the White House, Musk spent the first quarter of the year leading the president's DOGE initiative to slash the federal workforce.
Musk also endorsed Germany's extremist anti-immigrant party, AfD, and later supported British anti-Muslim and anti-immigration activist Tommy Robinson. In recent weeks, Musk has called to abolish the European Union.
Partly in response to Musk's incendiary rhetoric, Tesla has faced an enduring consumer backlash in Europe and the U.S. The company hasn't fully recovered despite introducing a new, more affordable version of its Model Y SUV in October.
However, Tesla shares still rallied in the second half of the year, jumping 40% in the third quarter, reaching a fresh record in mid-December. Musk bought $1 billion worth of shares in September.
Shareholders approved a new $1 trillion pay plan for Musk in November that will give the CEO more shares and increased control over the company. The vote came after Musk threatened to potentially leave Tesla if the plan didn't pass.
Critics voiced concerns that the plan doesn't require Musk to spend a minimum amount of time on his Tesla work and that there are no limits on his political activity.
Read more CNBC tech newsWhile Tesla doesn't break out deliveries geographically, data from the European Automobile Manufacturers' Association (ACEA) showed that the company lost market share in the region in 2025.
Tesla's European registrations fell 39% in the first 11 months of 2025, while Chinese rival BYD saw registrations rise 240% in Europe. Overall, battery electric vehicles were more widely embraced in Europe in 2025, amounting to around 16% of all new vehicles sold there.
Some analysts project that sales of Tesla's more affordable Model Y standard, which the company launched in October, will help the company regain ground in coming quarters.
In a note last week, analysts at Cannacord Genuity wrote that EV adoption "is rising quickly in emerging markets such as Thailand, Vietnam and Brazil, where robust consumer interest could create meaningful long-term upside for Tesla, even as it faces fierce rivalry from Chinese automakers."
Besides BYD, Tesla now faces competition from other Chinese EV makers including Xiaomi and Geely.
But Tesla is selling investors on Musk's vision of the future, or what he calls "sustainable abundance," more than EV sales. That vision includes robotaxis, which Musk has promised for years, and humanoid robots, which he says will someday be able to serve as factory workers, babysitters, crime stoppers and surgeons.
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