Tesla’s sales recover slightly, but the trend lines are all bad

Tesla’s first quarter sales report is out, and depending on how you look at it, the numbers are good but also bad. The company’s sales are up a modest 6 percent year over year, but that’s probably not the best way of looking at it considering the extraordinary circumstances surrounding Tesla — Elon Musk’s Nazi salute, DOGE, Tesla Takedown protests — at the start of 2025. Tesla’s sales were down a whopping 13 percent that quarter, so a modest increase was expected.

Instead analysts are looking at how this quarter stacks up against the previous one, and they’re not finding a lot to like. Tesla said it delivered 358,023 vehicles to customers, down 14 percent compared to the fourth quarter of 2025. And it produced 408,306 vehicles, which was down 6 percent quarter over quarter.

In other words, Tesla is still in rough shape, having recorded two consecutive years of declining sales. It is making and selling fewer cars than it used to, as Musk attempts to wrestle his company away from automotive sales and toward robotaxis and humanoid robots. In Europe, the company lost nearly half of its market share thanks to rising competition, especially from Chinese brands, and Musk’s hard-right political commentary.

Globally, EV sales have been softening. Tesla, along with most other automakers, have been hurt by the elimination of the $7,500 federal EV tax credit. Dozens of electric models have been cancelled or delayed in recent weeks.

Musk is certainly pushing the message that Tesla’s days as a car manufacturer are numbered. Earlier this year, the company discontinued its former flagship vehicles, the Model S and Model X, to make room for the mass production of robots. A top Tesla executive has said that the company should be viewed more as “transportation as a service” than as an automaker. And Musk has repeatedly asserted that Tesla didn’t need to make more mass-market vehicles because, in the future, all cars will be autonomous.

In 2025, Tesla brought in $94.8 billion in revenue, $69.5 billion — or 73 percent — of which was from car sales. Its automotive revenues have been in free fall, down 10 percent year over year, while its other revenue streams — energy generation and storage; and services and other revenue — are on the upswing. But even there, things are looking iffy. This past quarter, Tesla said it deployed 8.8 GWh of energy products, which is a drop from the 10.4 GWh of storage the company deployed in Q1 2025.

In all major categories — vehicle sales, production, and energy storage — Tesla is coming in below expectations. Wall Street analysts were expecting 370,000 customer deliveries and 14.4 GWh of storage. And yet Musk continues to push the message that Tesla was on the cusp of becoming a global leader in AI and robotics.

Of course, most of his focus is likely on the imminent public debut of his other company, SpaceX, which is expected to be historic and make him exponentially more wealthy than he already is. The company was valued at $1.25 trillion after recently merging with Musk’s xAI. Tesla’s struggles surely look quaint in comparison.

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• Andrew J. Hawkins