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.
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:
| Production | Deliveries | Subject to operating lease accounting | |
| Model 3/Y | 345,454 | 323,800 | 4% |
| Other Models | 17,161 | 12,881 | 7% |
| Total | 362,615 | 336,681 | 4% |
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.
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China just laid out a plan to roll out over 100,000 ultra-fast EV charging stations by 2027 – and they’ll all be open to the public.
The National Development and Reform Commission’s (NDRC) joint notice, issued on Monday, asks local authorities to put together construction plans for highway service areas and prioritize the ones that see 40% or more usage during holiday travel rushes.
The NDRC notes that China’s ultra-fast EV charging infrastructure needs upgrading as more 800V EVs hit the road. Those high-voltage platforms can handle super-fast charging in as little as 10 to 30 minutes, but only if the charging hardware is up to speed.
China had 31.4 million EVs on the road at the end of 2024 – nearly 9% of the country’s total vehicle fleet. But charging access is still catching up. As of May 2025, there were 14.4 million charging points, or roughly 1 for every 2.2 EVs.
To keep the grid running smoothly, China wants new chargers to be smart, with dynamic pricing to incentivize off-peak charging and solar and storage to power the charging stations.
To make the business side work, the government is pushing for 10-year leases for charging station operators, and it’s backing the buildout with local government bonds.
The NDRC emphasized that the DC fast chargers built will be open to the public. This is a big deal because a lot of fast chargers in China aren’t. For example, BYD’s new megawatt chargers aren’t open to third-party vehicles.
As of September 2024, China had expanded its charging infrastructure to 11.4 million EV chargers, but only 3.3 million were public.
Read more: California now has nearly 50% more EV chargers than gas nozzles
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Tesla is starting to experience some consequences for misleading Full Self Driving customers – at least that’s the finding of one arbitration ruling that has Tesla refunding one customer $10,000 plus legal fees for failing to deliver on their promises. Find out more on today’s legally challenging episode of Quick Charge!
An arbitration “court” found that Tesla misled customers with its Full Self Driving product, and has now been forced to refund at least one person’s $10,000 payment (plus legal fees) for the not-quite autonomous driving software. France, too, is piling on claims of deceptive business practices – but there’s some good news for FSD fans! If you’re still willing to pay for it, Tesla will thrown in 0% financing on a brand new Cybertruck.
Check out the relevant links, below, to learn more.
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