Tesla sales hit a new low, with the company reporting a 14 percent drop in second-quarter vehicle deliveries compared to a year ago.
The company said that it produced a total of 410,244 vehicles between April–June of this year, including 396,835 Model 3 and Model Y vehicles, as well as 13,409 “other vehicles” like the Model S, Model X, and Cybertruck. That represents a minor 0.1 percent drop compared to the second quarter of 2024, when the company produced 410,831 vehicles.
Tesla also said that it delivered a total of 384,122 vehicles, including 373,728 Model 3 and Model Y vehicles, as well as 10,394 other vehicles — a 14 percent decline compared to the second quarter of 2024, when it delivered 443,956 vehicles. (For a direct-to-consumer company like Tesla, deliveries are a proxy for sales.)
Expectations were pretty grim for this quarter, with UBS predicting an 18 percent decrease in deliveries year over year, and Barclay estimating 375,000 vehicles sold. Tesla may have outperformed these expectations, but the company is still on a steady decline since reporting its first year-over-year sales drop since 2020 last year.
It was another troubling sign for the once high-flying EV company as it continues to struggle with rising competition, stagnant demand for electric vehicles, and a growing backlash against Elon Musk’s political activities within President Donald Trump’s administration. The Tesla Takedown protest movement, which began earlier this year, has targeted hundreds of Tesla dealerships around the world in an effort to erode the company’s sales even further.
Last month, Musk announced that he was stepping away from his position at the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) amid a bitter feud with Trump — but insisted that DOGE’s controversial cost-cutting efforts would continue. Still, his reputation in the US has plummeted, with a majority of people saying they have a negative view of him. His claims to have saved the government a trillion dollars by slashing “waste, fraud, and abuse” seem to have been mostly overstated.
There were other worrying signs ahead of the Q2 report. Tesla’s sales in Europe have been in a serious slump with five straight consecutive months of decline, according to registration data from the European Union. In China, the company’s sales continue to decrease as domestic brands like BYD grab more market share. (Tesla does not break out sales regionally, so registration data from Europe and China are watched closely.)
During Q1, Tesla attributed some of the drop in sales to design and production changes for the newly refreshed Model Y. But now the revamped EV is widely available, and the automaker’s numbers are still going in the wrong direction.
There’s been inner turmoil at Tesla, too. Last week, Omead Afshar, Tesla’s VP of manufacturing and a longtime Musk ally, left the company — with some reports suggesting he was fired. His departure follows that of Milan Kovac, head of the Optimus humanoid robot project, earlier this month.
The launch of Tesla’s long-delayed robotaxi service was also a bit of a bust. Instead of the “unsupervised” vehicles that Musk had promised at the beginning of this year, the robotaxis featured Tesla-employed safety monitors in the front passenger seat. Several videos of the service in action showed significant safety lapses, including a robotaxi driving over the double yellow line into the opposite lane of traffic and braking hard in the middle of the road for no reason.
