Tesla could sell a record number of vehicles in the US this quarter
That won’t be enough to keep full-year global sales from falling.
Tesla is widely expected to have a bad year, but it could have a very good third quarter.
A popular analyst who goes by the name Troy Teslike currently expects Tesla to sell a record 178,000 vehicles in the US this quarter, which is two-thirds of the way through, up from 156,000 a year ago. (Tesla doesn’t break out vehicle deliveries by region, so Teslike backs up those numbers using Vehicle Identification Number data.)
The surge, he says, is due in part to pulled-forward demand from subsequent quarters, as EV buyers generally try and purchase vehicles before the government’s $7,500 credit ends on September 30. Tesla is also trying to get ahead of the incentive deadline, since it’s expected to hurt both the company’s top and bottom lines, by offering steeper discounts than other EV makers. The effort appears to be working, as Tesla is running out of inventory in the US.
But while the US is Tesla’s biggest market, just one quarter of sales growth isn’t going to smooth out the declines from earlier this year, and presumably gains in Q3 will come at the expense of Q4 sales, after the incentive expires. Nor will it undo continued declining sales in Tesla’s other major markets, including China and Europe.
Globally, Teslike estimates Tesla sales will be 466,000 in the third quarter — less than a percentage point higher than Q3 2024 (though quite a bit higher than the FactSet analyst consensus of 433,000). For the full year, Teslike is estimating 1.6 million deliveries, a 9% drop in sales compared with last year, about the same as analysts.
“We’re in this weird transition period where we will lose a lot of incentives in the US,” CEO Elon Musk himself recently told investors, adding that Tesla "could have a few rough quarters” ahead.
