Tesla is expected to report a 7% drop in third-quarter deliveries on Friday, as the end of federal EV tax credits last year pulled demand forward. Analysts at Goldman Sachs and Cox Automotive see steeper declines across Europe, China and the broader U.S. EV market, but Wall Street is increasingly focused on Tesla's robotaxi and robot ambitions instead of car sales.
Tesla is expected to report third-quarter deliveries of 461,000 electric vehicles on Friday, a 7% decline compared with the year-ago quarter, according to analyst estimates compiled by FactSet. That would also mark a drop of about 4% relative to the second quarter.
A tough comparison against last year
The year-ago quarter set a high bar. Tesla sold 497,000 EVs in the third quarter of 2025, marking its second-best performance ever on that metric, as buyers rushed to beat the Trump administration's decision to end federal tax credits by Sept. 30, 2025. That pull-forward in demand makes this year's decline less surprising to experts.
Since then, the broader U.S. EV market has also cooled. Cox Automotive has forecast a 45% drop in overall EV sales for the third quarter compared with a year earlier, and a 3% decrease versus the June quarter. Cox's director of industry insights, Stephanie Valdez Streaty, said on a recent webinar that new EV sales were stabilizing, while hybrid vehicles are the clearest growth story in the electrified-car market — a win for Toyota Motor.
Pressure outside the U.S. too
Tesla's weakness is not confined to its home market. Goldman Sachs analyst Mark Delaney said in a note to clients that European registration data will likely reflect a 25% to 35% sales decline in the third quarter compared with the same time last year. Sales in China were likely down in the high-teens range last quarter compared to a year earlier, Delaney added.
Tesla's sales have also likely been hurt by its decision to stop selling a pair of luxury cars earlier this year, freeing up space at its Fremont, California, factory to produce humanoid robots. Elevated U.S. fuel costs have failed to give EV sales much of a boost either, according to RBC analyst Tom Narayan.
Investors look past car sales
Car sales still fund Tesla's bigger bets. The company expects to spend more than $25 billion on capital projects this year, which would make 2026 its most expensive year on record, and it secured $30 billion in senior unsecured credit facilities earlier this week to help fund those plans.
Morningstar analyst Seth Goldstein told MarketWatch that what investors really care about is progress on robotaxis and robots. UBS analyst Joseph Spak wrote in a note to clients: According to MarketWatch: "We do not believe that vehicle deliveries matter that much for the stock." Analysts also expect Tesla to have deployed 15.9 gigawatt hours of energy-storage products last quarter, according to company-compiled estimates.
Source: MarketWatch
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