Tesla delivered 418k vehicles versus Street expectations of 420k and above the whisper number of 415k. Overall, deliveries were down 16% year over year in December, compared with up 7% in September. The quarter-to-quarter deceleration in growth is largely irrelevant given the timing of the tax credit expiration.

Taking a step back, we believe September deliveries pulled forward approximately 55k units that would have otherwise occurred in December or March. For simplicity, we assume the entire pull-forward impacted the December quarter. Under this assumption, September growth would have been down ~5% absent the 55k pull-forward, a Deepwater estimate tied to the credit’s expiration.

For December deliveries to have declined ~5% year over year would imply total deliveries of roughly 470k. Subtracting the 55k units pulled into September results in an implied December delivery figure of approximately 415k. The reported 418k suggests that, when normalizing for the tax credit timing, quarter-over-quarter growth has been consistently down ~5%.

Importantly, this ~5% decline represents an improvement from the ~13% declines seen in both the March and June 2025 quarters.

Over the past couple of years, based on data from Cox Automotive, Tesla has been losing U.S. EV market share, declining to just under 50%. Based on data for October and November, Cox estimates that total U.S. EV sales were down approximately 35%, compared to Tesla’s just reported down 16% for the full quarter.  For the first two months of the quarter, Cox reported Tesla market share of roughly a 65% share, up from under 50% in the September quarter.

While this data excludes December, the quarter as a whole is likely to show a material improvement in Tesla’s U.S. EV market share.

Disclaimer