Tesla sales fell in 2024

• After a few years of gains, Tesla sales and deliveries dropped
• Tesla’s share of the U.S. EV market has dropped below 50%
• U.S. registration figures are yet to come back

Tesla sales and deliveries turned downward in 2024, after a seemingly unstoppable trajectory of double-digit gains for a few years. 

Globally, Tesla delivered about 1,789,226 million vehicles in all of 2024, with production of about 1,773,443 million vehicles. Each of those figures are down versus the reported 1,808,581 deliveries and 1,845,985 vehicles made in 2023. 

That’s just over a 1% drop in deliveries in 2024 and an almost 4% drop in production for the 12 months. And it may need been worse with out a rally within the fourth quarter. Tesla noted that it posted a delivery record for Q4, at 495,570 vehicles.

To check, a 12 months ago Tesla was touting some very different results. Its 2023 deliveries and sales grew 38% and 35%, respectively, over 2022. Tesla’s 2023 sales surge was strong, and its sales numbers exceeded 2022 numbers each month of the 12 months in accordance with DOE data. That said, China’s BYD continued to edge up on Tesla on the worldwide front in 2023.  

In 2023, Tesla CEO Elon Musk became political and by extension so did Tesla in a way it never had been before. Even by April, reputational studies were showing a connection, as much more of the American car-buying public connected Tesla with Musk—suggesting that the world’s richest man could also be getting in the way in which of Tesla sales growth, especially in California, where it’s held greater than a tenth of the new-vehicle market. 

Tesla’s share of the EV market shrank in 2023 despite price cuts, to around 50% of the U.S. EV market, and with 2024 EV sales expected to rise overall by about 20% versus 2023, it would actually lose more of that in 2024. Tesla had continued those price cuts in 2024, with an April move that repositioned the Model Y below the Model 3, because of the federal EV tax credit that Musk has backed eliminating. 

The Model 3 and Model Y composed the overwhelming majority of Tesla’s global total. Just 94,105 of its global production and 85,133 of its global deliveries were of “other models”—likely including the Model S, Model X, Cybertruck, and Semi. 

2024 Tesla Model Y. – Courtesy of Tesla, Inc.

As a footnote to this: It’s not yet clear whether Tesla saw sales sputter in the identical way within the U.S., your entire 12 months. Through October they were down, nonetheless. Citing registration-based figures through that month, Automotive News tallied 499,870 sales through that month, versus 535,834 for the equivalent period in 2023. 

Tesla doesn’t report U.S.-market sales figures, which generally depend on state registration numbers and their commensurate lag. But we’ll have an idea on those, and whether Tesla managed to attain U.S. sales gains for the 12 months, inside just a few weeks.