Tesla’s delivery miss means bigger brand issues in the US, Cybertruck is dead weight

Tesla’s big delivery miss means the automaker has bigger brand issues than expected in the US, and the Cybertruck is absolutely unsellable.

It’s worse than anyone expected.

Tesla delivered about 50,000 fewer vehicles in Q1 2025 compared to Q1 2024.

The results were also much lower than expectations for the quarter. Analysts expected roughly stable deliveries in China and the US, while they saw Tesla being down about 30,000 units in Europe.

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With regular registration data available in Europe and China, we have pretty good visibility in those markets. Analysts were right, with Tesla slightly up for the quarter in China and down about 30,000 units in Europe, with some countries having yet to report.

This means that the disappointing results are coming from the US.

Tesla likely delivered 20,000 feet units in the US this quarter than it did last year. The automaker is blaming that on the Model Y changeover, which is certainly partly true, but there’s more going on.

In Q1 2024, Tesla went through the Model 3 changeover, and Tesla was able to deliver its new Model Y on the same day as a new order at the end of March in the US. This would point to broader demand issues for Tesla in the US.

However, the automaker is still selling only the Long Range AWD Launch Edition version of the new Model Y in the US. The more significant demand test will be this quarter and Q3 when Tesla starts selling the cheaper versions and exhausts its backlog of demand from the last few months.

Tesla Cybertruck is dead weight

Tesla is super opaque about its vehicle deliveries. The automaker refuses to break down deliveries per model, making it harder to track the health of each model.

It bundles Model 3 and Model Y together, and all other models in a single category:

The “other models” category includes Model S, Model X, Cybertruck, and Tesla Semi deliveries.

These results with just 12,881 “other model” deliveries are particularly disappointing for Tesla.

For comparison, it is down 24% compared to Q1 2024 when Tesla was still ramping up Cybertruck production. It’s also down 44% compared to Q4 2024 when the category almost entirely consisted of Model S and Model X deliveries.

This would point to Tesla delivering between 5,000-8,000 Cybertrucks in Q1 2025 – depending on Model S/X delivery performance, which are also expected to be down. It would mark a third quarter in a row of sales decline for the electric pickup truck, just a little over a year into production.

Furthermore, the lower Cybertruck deliveries come as Tesla introduced new incentives to sell the truck in 2025 and even gained access to the $7,500 federal tax credit for electric vehicles.

Tesla is now having issues selling Cybertrucks at a rate of 40,000 per year, when Tesla prepared production for 250,000 units per year, and CEO Elon Musk said he could see Tesla reaching 500,000 units per year.

We reported yesterday that Tesla is sitting on over $200 million of Cybertruck inventory in the US.

Electrek’s Take

These are disastrous results, but the market still doesn’t understand them. You can’t blame everything on the Model Y changeover. Yes, it has an impact, but people forget that around the same time last year, Tesla was also going through the Model 3 changeover, and now a year later, Model 3 is ramped up and sales are down.

This should sound the alert.

Cybertruck is a complete dud in terms of volume, even with incentives.

Now, Tesla’s only hope is in the non-Launch Edition versions of the Model Y, which I expect Tesla to launch in the next few days.

They will help, there’s no doubt, but I think people need to consider more seriously the impact of Tesla’s brand problems due to Elon Musk.

In China, Tesla already has those models available, and it has already had to introduce 0% financing to sell them. That’s the equivalent of a $2,000 discount.

It’s going to be interesting to see how long after Tesla introduces those models in the US, it will also have to introduce 0% financing. It will give us a good idea of how popular is the Model Y refresh in Tesla’s home market.

The automaker needs it to be popular because Europe is a dying market for Tesla, and it is being squeezed out of China by competition.