Tesla Publishes Pessimistic Q4 Delivery Forecast, Confirming Tax Credit Hangover

I’ve been warning about this moment since September. Tesla just made it official: the tax credit pull-forward we documented is now showing up in the company’s own numbers, and even Tesla’s unprecedented promotional blitz couldn’t fill the demand vacuum.

In a first-of-its-kind move, Tesla publicly posted a consensus of 20 analyst delivery estimates directly on its investor relations website, projecting just 422,850 Q4 deliveries, down 15% from a year earlier. The company has never published this data publicly before.

• What: Tesla publishes sell-side analyst consensus showing Q4 2025 deliveries at 422,850 units
• Who: 20 analysts including Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, UBS, and Barclays contributed estimates
• When: Posted December 30, 2025, ahead of expected Q4 delivery announcement this week
• Why it matters: Confirms Tesla’s second straight year of declining deliveries, but the stock remains near record highs as investors bet on robotaxi and AI

Nach Angaben von MarketWatch, the company-compiled consensus is actually more pessimistic than independent analyst estimates. FactSet expected 447,000 units while Bloomberg’s compiled average sat at 445,000 deliveries.

Why Tesla Is Getting Ahead of Bad News

According to Travis Axelrod, Tesla’s head of investor relations, publishing this data publicly was “requested by investors.” That’s corporate speak for expectation management, but there’s a legitimate transparency argument here too.

For years, Tesla compiled these consensus estimates and shared them only privately through emails to select analysts and major investors. Publishing them on the company website creates a level playing field where retail investors see the same baseline expectations as institutions. Whether that’s damage control or genuine transparency depends on your level of cynicism.

The math is still brutal. If Tesla hits the median target of 420,000 Q4 deliveries, full-year 2025 would land at approximately 1.64 million vehicles, an 8% decline from 2024’s 1.79 million and well below 2023’s 1.8 million. That’s two consecutive years of declining deliveries for a company that built its early valuation on 50% annual growth promises.

The Tax Credit Pull-Forward We Documented Is Now Confirmed

This is exactly what we predicted. When we covered Tesla’s record Q3 deliveries in October, we warned that the 497,099 vehicles delivered weren’t a sign of demand strength. They were borrowed from Q4 and beyond.

The federal $7,500 EV tax credit expired September 30, 2025, and savvy buyers rushed to lock in purchases before the deadline. Gene Munster, managing partner at Deepwater Asset Management, estimated that 55,000 sales may have been pulled forward to Q3. His own Q4 estimate sits at just 415,000 units, even below Tesla’s published consensus.

When we documented the October EV sales collapse, unadjusted EV sales dropped from 98,289 units in September to just 74,897 in October, a stunning 24% decline in a single month. The timing directly correlated with the tax credit expiration.

Tesla’s aggressive response to that collapse, including 0% APR financing for 72 months und $0-down leases with free upgrades, apparently wasn’t enough to fully offset the structural demand shift. The company essentially self-funded the subsidies that taxpayers used to provide, absorbing nearly $10,000 in incentive value per vehicle. The question now is whether those incentives are protecting market share or just delaying the inevitable.

The Global Picture: U.S. Weakness, International Mixed

The U.S. demand vacuum isn’t Tesla’s only challenge. MarketWatch reports that European deliveries have fallen by almost 39% as of the end of November, while China deliveries dropped by more than 8% through November as local rivals BYD and Xiaomi continue to gain ground.

Deutsche Bank analyst Edison Yu expects Q4 deliveries to come in even lower at just 405,000 vehicles, with Europe and North America seeing declines of 34% and 33% respectively. UBS analyst Joseph Spak forecasts U.S. sales could be down more than 35% sequentially and 25% year-over-year following the tax credit expiration.

There is one geographic bright spot: rest-of-world deliveries outside Tesla’s major regions are expected to grow more than 60% year-over-year, partially offsetting weakness elsewhere as Tesla expands internationally.

The Energy Business: The Story Within the Story

Here’s something the delivery doom doesn’t capture: Tesla’s energy storage business is quietly becoming a bigger deal.

The consensus projects 13.4 GWh of energy storage deployments in Q4, up 22% year-over-year. For full-year 2025, analysts expect 45.9 GWh, rising to 63.9 GWh in 2026 and 87.7 GWh in 2027. Long-term estimates reach 141.8 GWh by 2029.

This matters for two reasons. First, the energy division carries higher margins than automotive. Second, it’s growing while vehicles are shrinking. Tesla is increasingly looking like an energy and AI company that happens to sell cars, rather than a car company that dabbles in energy storage.

That transition explains something that might otherwise seem irrational: the stock.

Stock Near Record Highs Despite Delivery Decline

Tesla shares have pulled back 6.4% since closing at a record $489.88 on December 16, trading around $458 as of Tuesday. But zoom out and the stock has still climbed 13.5% in 2025 despite two consecutive years of declining vehicle deliveries.

How does that make sense? The market has essentially decoupled Tesla’s valuation from its automotive business. The stock is now priced on robotaxi potential, Full Self-Driving adoption, and Optimus humanoid robot ambitions rather than how many Model Ys roll off the line in Fremont.

MarketWatch noted that a daily loss would be Tesla’s fifth straight, the longest such streak since a six-session decline ending July 1. But in the broader context, the stock is remarkably resilient to what would be devastating news for any traditional automaker.

EVXL’s Take

Tesla publishing its own pessimistic consensus is expectation management, but it’s also something we’ve been asking for: transparency. The data asymmetry between institutional and retail investors just got smaller. Give credit where it’s due.

We’ve been tracking this trajectory since the tax credit expiration was first signed into law in July. We warned about the September 30 deadline. We documented the pre-buy surge. We called out Q3’s artificial inflation. We tracked October’s 24% collapse. And now Tesla itself is confirming what we’ve been documenting.

But here’s where I have to play devil’s advocate against my own narrative: does any of this matter for the stock? Tesla bulls would argue, correctly, that the market already priced in automotive weakness months ago. The record high on December 16 came after all these delivery headwinds were known. Investors are betting on robotaxi, FSD, and energy storage, not Q4 vehicle units.

Here’s what I expect: Tesla’s actual Q4 deliveries will come in around 410,000 to 420,000 units. The company will pivot the narrative to robotaxi progress, FSD adoption, and energy storage growth. Wall Street will largely shrug because the stock is no longer priced on vehicle deliveries. The automotive purists will cry foul, and the AI believers will celebrate.

For EV buyers and owners, the implication is more concrete: the post-subsidy era requires EVs to compete on merit alone. Tesla’s aggressive incentives show even the market leader is struggling to make that math work without government help. The irony is that consumer interest in EVs actually ticked up after the tax credit expired, according to J.D. Power. The demand is there. The problem is price.

Whether Tesla remains primarily a car company or completes its metamorphosis into an energy and AI company will determine whether this delivery decline is a crisis or a footnote. Right now, the market is betting on metamorphosis.

What do you think? Is the vehicle delivery decline a real problem, or has Tesla successfully pivoted beyond cars? Share your thoughts in the comments below.