Tesla’s vehicle sales fell 8.6% last year, leaving the company led by Elon Musk well behind China’s BYD in the global ranking of electric car manufacturers.
Fourth-quarter deliveries fell 16% to 418,227 vehicles, Tesla said in a statement released on Friday (2), below analyst estimates compiled by Bloomberg and by the company itself.
BYD, in turn, increased sales of fully electric vehicles in both the quarter and the full year, with the delivery of almost 2.26 million units, compared to Tesla’s 1.64 million.
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Musk managed to deflect some attention from Tesla’s declining sales by highlighting advances in his long-running effort to launch a robotaxi business. However, although the company began driverless testing at the end of the year, consumers have so far only been able to call rides from a small number of cars in Austin and the San Francisco Bay Area, with safety supervisors sitting in the front seat.
BYD distanced itself from Tesla last year, after falling just behind its American competitor in 2024. Although the Chinese manufacturer delivered more all-electric cars in the fourth quarter of that year, Tesla maintained a narrow lead year-to-date. BYD has also sold more than 2 million plug-in hybrids in each of the last two years.
Wall Street has been increasingly skeptical about Tesla’s sales prospects for 2026. Two years ago, analysts predicted the company would deliver more than 3 million vehicles. The average estimate dropped to about 1.8 million.
Tesla’s chief executive ended the year by stimulating expectations around the Cybercab, a compact two-seater car with butterfly doors. Although the prototype first unveiled in late 2024 had no steering wheel or pedals, Tesla Chairman Robyn Denholm told Bloomberg News in October that the company will sell the vehicle with those components if required by regulators.
Tesla shares rose 1.5% at 9:12 am (New York time) before the opening of regular trading on Friday, recovering part of the losses after six consecutive falls in the last trading days of 2025. In the last year, the stock has advanced 11%.
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