Tesla on Friday released its 2025 fourth-quarter vehicle production and deliveries report, marking Elon Musk’s automaker’s second annual decline.
The important numbers are:
Total deliveries in 4th quarter: 418,227 units Total production in 4th quarter: 434,358 units Total deliveries in 2025: 1.64 million units Total production in 2025: 1.65 million units
Wall Street had expected 426,000 deliveries for the quarter, according to estimates compiled by Street Account.
Tesla said in a consensus statement posted on its website on Dec. 29 that analysts surveyed expect vehicle sales to decline 15% from a year ago to 422,850 vehicles.
Deliveries in the fourth quarter of 2025 were down about 16% compared to the fourth quarter of 2024, when Musk’s EV company reported 495,570 vehicles. Production in the fourth quarter of 2025 was down 5.5% from the same period last year, when Tesla produced 459,445 vehicles.
For the full year, Tesla delivered 1.64 million vehicles, down 8.6% from 1.79 million in 2024.
Tesla announced that deliveries of its entry-level Model 3 sedan and Model Y SUV reached 406,585 units in the fourth quarter, accounting for about 97% of total deliveries. Deliveries of Model S, Model X, and Cybertruck totaled 11,642 units in the quarter.
After its design debut, Tesla boasted that the Cybertruck received more than 1 million reservations. The angular steel pickups aren’t yet the company’s best-seller.
Musk’s aerospace and defense company SpaceX reportedly purchased tens of millions of dollars worth of Cybertrucks in 2025.
Tesla faces increasing competition in the electric vehicle market from China’s BYD, South Korea’s Kia and Hyundai Motors, and Europe’s Volkswagen.
BYD said in a statement Thursday that sales rose 28% to 2.26 million units, making it the world’s biggest EV seller in the calendar year, surpassing Tesla.
Deliveries are the closest thing to Tesla’s reported sales, but they are not precisely defined in the company’s shareholder communications.
In its energy business, Tesla announced that it installed 14.2 gigawatt-hours of battery energy storage products in the fourth quarter, following a record in the previous quarter when it installed 12.5 gigawatt-hours.
Tesla’s battery energy storage systems include backup batteries for homes and large-scale systems used with data centers and utilities.
Tesla is scheduled to announce its fourth quarter results on January 28th.
Tesla vehicle sales were affected by President Donald Trump’s decision to end federal EV incentives by September 30, earlier than originally planned. The expiration caused Tesla and other automakers to push some EV sales to the third quarter.
Even before that, the start of 2025 was a struggle for Tesla.
After spending heavily to bring Trump back to the White House, Musk spent the first quarter of this year spearheading the president’s DOGE initiative to reduce federal workforces.
Musk also supported Germany’s extremist anti-immigration party AfD and later supported British anti-Muslim and anti-immigration activist Tommy Robinson. In recent weeks, Mr. Musk has called for abolishing the European Union.
Tesla faces persistent consumer backlash in Europe and the United States, in part due to its response to Musk’s inflammatory comments. Tesla hasn’t fully recovered, despite launching a new, more affordable SUV, the Model Y, in October.
But Tesla stock continued to rise in the second half of the year, rising 40% in the third quarter and hitting a new record in mid-December. Musk bought $1 billion worth of stock in September.
Shareholders approved a new $1 trillion compensation plan for Musk in November that would give the CEO more stock and control over the company. The vote came after Musk threatened to leave Tesla if the plan didn’t pass.
Critics raised concerns that the plan does not require Musk to spend a minimum amount of time on Tesla-related work and does not limit his political activities.
Although Tesla doesn’t deliver cars geographically, data from the European Automobile Manufacturers Association (ACEA) shows that Tesla 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’s European registrations rose 240%. Overall, battery electric vehicles gained wider acceptance in Europe in 2025, reaching around 16% of all new cars sold in Europe.
Some analysts predict that sales of Tesla’s more affordable Model Y Standard, which it launched in October, will help the company regain momentum in the coming quarters.
Canaccord Genuity analysts wrote in a note last week that EV adoption is “rapidly increasing in emerging markets such as Thailand, Vietnam and Brazil, and strong consumer interest could create meaningful long-term upside for Tesla, even as it faces strong competition from Chinese automakers.”
In addition to BYD, Tesla currently faces competition from other Chinese EV makers such as Xiaomi and Xiaomi. geely.
But more than selling EVs, Tesla is selling investors on Musk’s vision for the future: what he calls “sustainable wealth.” That vision includes robotaxis, something Musk has long promised, as well as humanoid robots that could one day serve as factory workers, babysitters, crime stoppers and surgeons.
WATCH: Tesla will have to bend over backwards to maintain stock price
