General view of a Tesla Store in Paramus, New Jersey, on March 20, 2025.
Kena Betancur | Getty Images
Tesla reported 336,681 vehicle deliveries in the first quarter of 2025, a 13% decline from a year ago, two days after the electric vehicle company’s stock wrapped up its worst quarter since 2022.
The company’s shares closed up more than 5%, rebounding from a dip after Politico reported that CEO Elon Musk could leave his Department of Government Efficiency position.
Here are the key numbers:
- Total deliveries Q1 2025: 336,681
- Total production Q1 2025: 362,615
Investors were expecting Tesla to report deliveries of between 360,000 and 370,000 vehicles, according to StreetAccount. Tesla’s investor relations team sends a company-compiled consensus to select analysts, and said the average estimate was for around 377,590 deliveries. Prediction market company Kalshi on Tuesday released a forecast for Tesla deliveries of 352,000.
In the first quarter of 2024, Tesla reported 386,810 deliveries, and production of 433,371 vehicles.
Wedbush Securities analyst Dan Ives, typically among Tesla and CEO Musk’s biggest believers, called the report a “fork in the road moment” for the electric vehicle company in a post on social media platform X.
“We knew 1Q Tesla deliveries would be soft but these numbers were bad,” he wrote. “We are not going to look at these numbers with rose colored glasses…they were a disaster on every metric. Refresh issues but brand crisis key.”
Deliveries are the closest approximation of vehicle sales reported by Tesla but are not precisely defined in the company’s shareholder communications.
Tesla doesn’t break out sales and production by model or region. However, the company said that it produced 345,454 of its most popular Model 3 and Model Y cars and delivered 323,800 of them in the three months ended March 31.
The company reported 12,881 deliveries of its other models, including its angular steel Cybertruck.
During the quarter, Tesla faced planned, partial shutdowns in some of its factories that allowed the company to upgrade manufacturing lines to start producing a redesigned version of its popular Model Y SUV.
Musk recently said during an all-hands session with Tesla employees that he expects the Model Y to be the “bestselling car on Earth again this year.”
But Tesla has to contend with an onslaught of EV competition and reputational damage. In the first quarter, the company was hit with waves of protests, boycotts and some criminal activity that targeted Tesla vehicles and facilities in response to Musk’s political rhetoric and his work as part of President Donald Trump’s second administration.
After spending $290 million to help return Trump to the White House, Musk is leading the so-called Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, which has slashed costs, eliminated regulations and cut tens of thousands of federal jobs.
Musk, the world’s wealthiest person, has also involved himself in European politics, promoting the anti-immigrant AfD party in Germany in February’s elections. Tesla’s business on the Continent is struggling.
Across 15 European countries, Tesla’s market share declined to 9.3% in the first quarter from 17.9% in the same period a year earlier, according to data tracked by EU-EVs.com. In Germany, Tesla’s market share in battery electric vehicles plummeted to 4% from about 16% over that stretch.
Sales of Tesla’s electric vehicles made in China came in at 78,828 in March, slumping 11.5% year on year, according to data from the China Passenger Car Association released Wednesday. The company is facing rising competition in the region from EV makers such as BYD.
Early in the quarter, Tesla claimed it sold 8,653 EVs during a single January weekend in Canada, the Toronto Star reported, qualifying it for tens of millions in EV subsidy payments that were part of a program that was ending. Canada’s transportation minister later froze the payments and is investigating the validity of the sales.
Tesla did not immediately respond to an email from CNBC asking whether the Canada numbers were included in the Q1 deliveries report.
Tesla shares sank 36% in the first quarter, their steepest fall since the fourth quarter of 2022 and third-biggest decline in the company’s 15 years on the public market. The drop wiped out $460 billion in market cap.
โ CNBC’s Samantha Subin contributed reporting.
Correction: This story has been updated to correct that Tesla’s market share in Europe fell from 17.9% in the first quarter of 2024 to 9.3% in the first quarter of 2025.
