Tesla’s Sales Surge Is A Sugar High Powered By Less Musk And Trump’s EV Tax Credit Cut

The largest U.S. electric vehicle maker posted a record quarter, selling over 497,000 vehicles. It’s still on track for yet another annual sales decline. Read more: [https://go.forbes.com/Z6L7AZ](https://go.forbes.com/Z6L7AZ)

Forbes Official can’t read the fuckin room I guess lol

Production was actually down Q3 2025 vs Q3 2024. They were able to get rid of 50,000 cars that had been produced but never sold and were stored. Question is how many more tens of thousands do they have still in storage. EV sales were up over 30% Q3 yet Tesla was only up 7% which is nothing to brag about. Q4 sales are going to be off a cliff and there's no more demand for emissions credits so the thing that's been keeping them profitable has also evaporated.

No doubt the numbers look much better right now because of anyone rushing to buy before the credit ends. The next quarters numbers are going to look much, much worse.

Glad to see a major publication call this what it is. You know what follows a sugar high? For TSLA, another one, and then again and again. And then, an inevitable reckoning.

They may, but Tesla had record deliveries after the EV tax credit went away in Q1 2020. Sure, there might’ve been an influx from the pressure of the credit going away, but they’ve shown to have record deliveries without it in the past. Who’s to say that won’t be the case in the future again?

Can we even trust they sold as many as they said after the obviously fudged numbers that came out of Canadian dealerships?

No more carbon credits either, there were many quarters where that was the only thing that made Tesla profitable

Tesla numbers are make believe to begin with. They don't form a coherent timeline.

Stock goes down for some reason lmfao I hate this reality

Very simple Bad news = stock goes up Good news = stock goes down

Oh shit you’re right 🤯

None of Teslas sales figures matter. They never have. Not since like 2018. Also I don’t believe any of it anyways. Also I hear the opposite in China. No one is buying them.

What do you mean?

It’s not really good news tho? It’s bad news in the long run because I would expect a much bigger beat

Sales are immaterial where Tesla is concerned. All that matters is the number of *financial* deliveries.

I don't believe the numbers, and guessing I'm not alone given the 4-5% drop totday.

I still canceled my juniper order after his antics in London. My wife won’t drive one.

Q3 results would somewhat be ok. But Q4 financial results will be a bloodbath unless Bitcoin gains 100%.

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I'm so made I sold out of my TSLS this morning. I knew it was all BS but volume was up and I've seen TSLA do really dumb stuff before. Ugh.

They were cleared of that after a [government investigation ](https://driveteslacanada.ca/news/canada-clears-tesla-in-izev-rebate-investigation-43m-payment-unfrozen/?utm_source=chatgpt.com). The numbers were real.

Globally Tesla is doomed.

In 2020, there was not as much competition as there are now

This. Q4 deliveries would be negatively affected as purchasers would have made the sensible choice and bought it in Q3

pure raw report numbers Q1 and Q2 over production was roughly 52,000 so they're still sitting on 2025 stock, pretty sure theirs still residual impact from q1 2024 ripping through as well.

Record sales yet still over produced, pulled sales out of q4 and down 6% ytd, sounds like a buy.

On Wednesday, General Motors, Ford Motor Co., Hyundai and Kia also reported record EV sales for September and the third quarter, driven largely by the federal tax credit’s expiration. Tesla reported Thursday delivering a record number of EVs in the third quarter, driven by sales of its bestselling Model Y and Model 3. Globally, the company delivered 497,099 electric vehicles in the third quarter — **up 7.4% from** about 463,000 during the same quarter last year. Hyundai Motor America’s electric vehicles made up 38% of the company’s retail sales in September, the company said, with sales of its Ioniq 5 **increasing 151% compared with a year earlier.**

that was a completely different situation.

It went down because every other EV rose 50% or more.

Nothing unexpected, Tesla will still trail all other ev mfgs in sales gain in the U.S. and will most likely be down worldwide. After this the real pain for Tesla begins with a q4 showing record declines and an overall net loss in profits.

I’m more interested in number of units sold per mfg rather than yoy comparisons. Decline will always happen when more options are put to the table, but if one is still 2x+ more than everyone else then it doesn’t matter as much that it’s selling less units this year vs last.

Companies "investing" large sums in Bitcoin is a big red flag. If you're not going to reinvest in the company pay a dividend. Or at least buy back stocks.

In 2020 Tesla was rapidly expanding production capacity around the world to fulfill huge unmet demand and they just released what would become their most popular model by far. Now not so much. If the EV credit didn't matter we wouldn't see this sudden big jump in sales only in the US. It's going to be really apparent when Q4 and most likely H2 numbers are a huge drop YoY.

They are down the world over and that was without changes in credits. Not only will there be fewer buyers in Q4 due to credits going away, there will be far fewer buyers as the ones that may have bought in Q4 (had credits been extended) bought this quarter instead.

Why bother sells by cars at all when you can just have number go up?

*Why bother sells by* *Cars at all when you can just* *Have number go up?* \- onwatershipdown --- ^(I detect haikus. And sometimes, successfully.) ^[Learn more about me.](https://www.reddit.com/r/haikusbot/) ^(Opt out of replies: "haikusbot opt out" | Delete my comment: "haikusbot delete")

EV tax credit $7500 ends in Oct 1. Peoples rush to buy but before it ends. Tesla sales have been done entire year so it have tons of cars in storage so the sales just surges temporarily. Tesla just sold unsold cars stored. Q4 is the interesting quarter now tax credits ended.

Who is buying all these cars? Which countries? Which demographics? I don’t get that…

Funny you ask... because Tesla will not tell you.

Took you that long to realise he was an actual fascist?!

Nah, pretended he was gonna be quiet and be a businessman instead. I was wrong.

He's been acting like this for five years.

few thousand I guess

as people are saying, the Model 3 was new and hands-down better than the available alternatives in 2020. Model Y was becoming available too in 2020. The top 10 BEVs in 2020 were the Teslas, then the old Bolt, Gen 2 LEAF, e-Tron, Taycan . . . Tesla had basically zero BEV competition in 2020. https://web.archive.org/web/20210204052835/https://cleantechnica.com/files/2020/08/US-electric-vehicle-sales-1st-half-of-2020-CleanTechnica.png

~2M sales is Mercedes/BMW territory https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/u/1/d/1HflVng6sYIb6Gs4pOKiDGtqU5YJ2-hgdM4pRNaT62gs/htmlview

"Tesla has also kind of come away from Elon being a central government figure, which I think helped because when we looked at consideration for the brand earlier in the year and people shopping other brands, it didn't necessarily paint the rosiest picture. It seemed like it was taking a bit of a toll on Tesla's consideration." Media rehabilitation campaign in effect

Wow, that spreadsheet doesn't really track anything useful does it? With less revenue and declining margin and huge operating expenses its hard to take this comparison seriously.

? at best (e.g. maintains Q3 sales level somehow) it's under Mercedes/BMW, each with $60B market caps. I was a big TSLA skeptic 10 years ago since I figured the max it could grow was BMW-level. Absent robotaxi direction change, that looks to be right for what we know now. I've got ~$5000 in puts saying Elon doesn't get there by April.

Which indicates a big loss in marketshare.

yep

ShitStainWilly

Thanks for that! I was curious to hear these results, even if they don't align with what I imagined.