Tesla deliveries drop for second straight year; stock on pace to match longest losing streak ever
BYD outsold Tesla in battery electric vehicles for the first time in 2025.
Tesla Q4 deliveries fell 16% to 418,227 vehicles, falling short of estimates, while its full-year numbers dropped 8.5% to 1,636,129, marking the electric vehicle company’s second annual sales decline in a row.
Shares of the company fell 2.8% in afternoon trading, putting the stock on pace for its seventh straight day in the red. The stock has dropped 11% over that time. The last time Tesla slipped for seven straight sessions, its longest losings streak on record, was April 2024.
Meanwhile, Chinese competitor BYD saw its 2025 battery electric vehicle sales increase 28% to 2.3 million, overtaking Tesla for the first time on a calendar year basis.
After a record third quarter, in which the sunsetting $7,500 federal EV tax credit pulled forward demand, Tesla’s lower numbers represent a disappointing aftermath, wherein its cars and electric vehicles generally have effectively become more expensive, reducing demand. At the same time, CEO Elon Musk has been deemphasizing Tesla’s EV business, focusing the future of the company instead on autonomy, AI, and robots.
Ahead of the results, Tesla released its own compilation of analyst estimates that pegged the Q4 numbers at about 423,000 and full-year deliveries at 1.6 million. The move was widely seen as a way to lower investor expectations for the quarter, since other consensus estimates by Bloomberg and FactSet were notably higher. Tesla also released lower-cost, stripped-down versions of its Model Y and Model 3, whose new prices are still more than older versions with the federal tax credit.
On the company’s last earnings call, Musk said Tesla is so confident in the future success of its Full Self-Driving technology that it planned to increase vehicle production “as fast as we reasonably can,” potentially reaching a 3 million annualized production rate within two years.
For now, Tesla has not reached its goal of removing safety drivers from its Austin Robotaxi vehicles, and demand for its vehicles is not there.
