Tesla Sales Down 13% (… or 18%), Yet Shareholders Have Faith — CHARTS

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Last Updated on: 3rd July 2025, 02:36 pm

Tesla is in a pickle. It’s unclear where it goes from here in the remainder of the year, and years to come. But what does seem clear now is that things have not been going in the right direction for the company, and there’s no “it’s no big deal” explanation for that. It’s also clear that shareholders don’t seem to care. Presumably, that’s because they think robotaxis and robots are going to solve all of Tesla’s problems. Otherwise, if they think Tesla sales are going to bounce back without a robotaxi breakthrough, I’m not sure where the logic is for that, but I’ll try to tease out some ideas in this article.

The overview of the news, though, is that Tesla sales were down 13% in Q2 2025 compared to Q2 2024, and down 18% in Q2 2025 compared to Q2 2023, yet Tesla’s stock price jumped from $300 to $316 yesterday in the initial response to the news.

Let’s jump into the charts and graphs for a closer look at what’s been happening. (Interactive versions of the charts are at the bottom of the article.)

Looking at overall quarterly sales across time, Tesla’s Q2 (and Q1) sales are a considerable step down from Q2 (and Q1) sales last year. Going back to Tesla’s record sales year of 2023, this year’s Q2 (and Q1) sales are also down considerably. What’s especially clear, though, is that Tesla is going to need a huge bounce back in sales in the 3rd and 4th quarter in order to not have a disastrous year relative to 2023 and 2024. It could get a boost in that timeframe in the US from the Republican budget bill that’s about to pass, because it will phase out EV tax credits for consumers, and people will thus rush to buy EVs, including Teslas, before the turn of the year. Longer term, though, that will only hurt Tesla sales in 2026…. Will it disguise a deeper problem for Tesla? Probably.

Looking at this graph displaying official Tesla delivery figures by model groups (since Tesla doesn’t break out sales of individual models like other auto companies and groups them together in an odd way), there’s one obvious positive point from the company. Tesla Model Y & Model 3 sales bounced back a bit from Q1, when Model Y production lines were shut down in the US, Germany, and China simultaneously to change from production of the original Model Y to production of the new, upgraded Model Y.

The downside is that those factory pauses were in January, and Model Y production should have been at full volume in Q2. Nonetheless, Q2 sales were way below Q2 2024 sales (373,728 vs. 422,405), and they were barely better than Q1 2024 sales (369,783), Tesla’s worst quarter for those key models last year. The fact that Model Y & Model 3 sales were nearly 50,000 units lower in Q2 2025 than Q2 2024 is a worrying sign for the company, and one would think it should be for Tesla [NASDAQ:TSLA] shareholders.

Further down the graph, sales of the Model S + Model X + Cybertruck are so low that they seem insignificant, and they have also declined. The problem here is that the Cybertruck was supposed to be a big boost of at least semi-high-volume sales, and it’s evident now that those are not coming. Despite various incentives and much hype, not many people are buying the Cybertruck. In fact, Cybertruck or not, the last time this group of model sales (non-Model 3 and non-Model Y sales) was lower than Q2’s figure was way back in Q3 2021! That’s several quarters before the Cybertruck even hit the market.

If we try to break out model-specific sales, especially based on data collected from some key markets, well, there’s not much to add. The only thing that really stands out to me is how little of a sales bounce the new Model Y provided after that horrible Q1. It’s not even close to its peak volumes.

Could the new Model Y production ramp-up have bled into Q2? That seems highly unlikely, as there was no mention of that when Elon Musk talked about the topic on the last Tesla conference call for investors. There’s no mention I’ve seen on any such problem, and the press release announcing Q2 sales didn’t make any excuses, even reaching ones, like it would normally do in such a case to assuage investor concerns.

In short, there’s a serious question whether Tesla can return to its sales peak of 2023, and there are clear reasons (which we’ve discussed at length) as to why they could continue to stagnate or even decline. It’s definitely clear that the company is far from its previous goal of 50% growth a year in the 2020s. That’s not happening. The only way it happens on average across the decade is with a crazy miracle and then hypergrowth.

It seems that the hopes shareholders are holding onto are some mixture of the following:

• Model Y sales bouncing back much more so in coming quarters. (Seems unlikely.)

• Cybertruck costs coming down and sales jumping. (Seems very unlikely.)
• A new, lower-cost Tesla model coming to market and having enormous demand, without cannibalizing Model 3 and Model Y sales. (Again, seems unlikely, but perhaps more likely than the two possibilities above?)
• Tesla robotaxi service expanding rapidly and massively juicing demand for Tesla’s vehicles. (Again, this seems very unlikely to me, but I think it’s what shareholders are most hopeful for, or even expect.)
• Tesla robots coming to market, having huge demand, jacking up Tesla’s revenue and profits. (Need I comment on this one?)

I’m having a hard time seeing a good, solid case for growth for Tesla at this moment. At the same time, the company’s operational costs have been going up considerably due to growing computing costs associated with its AI/FSD work. We’ll have to wait to see what the Q2 financials report and call have in store, and what kind of spin is put on things in this clearly trouble time. Can Elon Musk pull a rabbit out of the hat? And if he does, is it going to be real magic or an illusion of magic? Stay tuned.

In the meantime, below are also charts of Tesla’s cumulative sales and some model-specific cumulative sales, and then there are the interactive versions of several of the charts above as well as one additional chart.

The interactive charts are best viewed on an actual computer, rather than just a phone.