Tesla’s sales plummet 13 percent as Musk backlash grows
A protester rallies during a Tesla Takedown protest movement at a Tesla showroom in the Coral Gables neighborhood on Saturday, March 29th, 2025, in Miami.Amid growing fallout over Elon Musk's involvement in the Trump administration, Tesla's sales fell a staggering 13 percent in the first quarter of 2025 year over year.
The company said it produced a total of 362,615 vehicles in the first three months of the year, including 345,454 Model 3 and Model Y vehicles and 17,161 other vehicles," which includes the Model S, Model X, and Cybertruck. Tesla also said it delivered a total of 336,681 vehicles, including 323,800 Model 3 and Model Y vehicles and 12,881 other vehicles - a 12.9 percent decline compared to Q1 2024. (For a direct-to-consumer company like Tesla, deliveries are a proxy for sales.)
It was Tesla's worst production and delivery report in three years. Analysts had expected Tesla to report deliveries in the quarter of 377,592 vehicles, down from 386,810 vehicles a year ago, according to a consensus of 27 analyst estimates compiled by Tesla.When compared to Tesla's Q1 2023 performance of 422,875 deliveries, the company's sales fells over 20 percent.
It was Tesla's worst production and delivery report in three years
Tesla said that deliveries were impacted by the production changeover for the refreshed Model Y, which just recently started making its way to customers. But Tesla problems extend far beyond just that.
The report follows weeks of troubling signs for the electric automaker. Tesla's stock price shed nearly 36 percent of its value since the beginning of the year, the third steepest drop in the company's 15 years on the public market. The downswing wiped out nearly $460 billion from the company's market cap and shaved over $100 billion from Elon Musk's net worth.
There were other worrying signs ahead of the Q1 report. Tesla's sales in Europe for January and February were down nearly 43 percent year over year, according to registration data from the EU. In China, sales were down for much of the quarter until the final week, when vehicle insurance registrations shot up. (The company does not break out sales regionally, so registration data from Europe and China are watched closely.)
While Tesla faces new hurdles, other automakers are reporting brisk sales of their own EVs. General Motors, for example, reported nearly 32,000 EVs sold in the first quarter, roughly doubling its figure year over year.
Tesla's problems are partly because of Musk's position with the Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, a specious effort to cut waste and fraud" in the government that appears mostly aimed at eliminating humanitarian aid programs and terrorizing federal workers. He has also amplified racist theories on social media and made a fascist salute during Trump's inauguration.
Musk's antics have spawned a nationwide protest movement called Tesla Takedown, aimed at boycotting the company and driving down its stock price.And it appears to be successful in persuading many progressive Tesla owners to sell their vehicles, despite steep drops in used car values.
There have also been an unrelated spate of violent attacks on Tesla stores and vehicles around the world, including arson and vandalism. A fire at a showroom in Rome resulted in 17 cars being destroyed. President Donald Trump has said suspects caught defacing Tesla vehicles would be charged with domestic terrorism."
Musk is pinning his hopes on AI, robotics, and self-driving cars, which he argues will propel Tesla to new financial heights. He claims the company will launch an unsupervised" robotaxi pilot in Austin, Texas, in June. But his past promises about autonomous driving have failed to come true. And experts have questioned Tesla's approach to the technology, pointing to dozens of fatal crashes that have occurred involving the company's partially automated features.
Musk has said the company expects to introduce a new, lower-cost model sometime this year - but has yet to reveal any details about that vehicle.