Non-Tesla EV sales +36% YoY. Tesla sales plunge to lowest since Q3 2022. Cybertruck sales fall for 2nd quarter in a row.
By Wolf Richter for WOLF STREET.
Tesla’s sales got further crushed in Q1 2025 in California, while non-Tesla EV sales soared, after one of the most successful and beloved consumer brands in California – and the only auto manufacturer building vehicles in the state – got sacrificed on the altar of Elon Musk’s political ambitions, he who used to walk on water in California. And now there are lots of other options for EV buyers, including from most of the legacy automakers, and their sales have soared.
Non-Tesla EV sales soared by 35.9% year-over-year in Q1, and by 61% over two years, to a record 54,094 vehicles, as measured by registrations, released by the California auto dealer association CNCDA. Non-Tesla EV sales had surpassed Tesla sales for the first time in Q4.
Tesla EV sales dropped for the second quarter in a row, and by 15.4% year-over-year, and by 22.0% from two years ago, to 42,322 vehicles, just a hair higher than in Q3 2022. Since the peak in Q2 2023, sales have plunged by 38.5%.
Despite the sales plunge of the biggest EV maker, total EV sales rose by 7.3% year-over-year.
Model Y: Sales plunged by 30.3% year-over-year to 23,314 vehicles. Despite the drop, the Model Y remained the #1 bestseller of all vehicles in the state, ahead of the Toyota RAV4 (16,719), the Tesla Model 3 (13,992), the Toyota Camry (13,792), and the Honda CR-V (13,565).
Model 3: Sales regained some of the ground it had lost in 2024, and rose 25% year-over-year to 13,992 vehicles, after its sales collapsed by nearly 60% through Q2 2024 as some popular versions didn’t qualify for the then new federal rebates. It returned to being the #3 bestselling model, behind the RAV4, and ahead of the Camry.
Cybertruck: Sales fell by 14.5% in Q1 from Q4, and by 30.9% from Q3, to just 2,282 trucks, instead of ramping up. Q3 2024 had been the peak in sales with 3,301 registrations.
The first trucks went on sale in late 2023, amid enormous hoopla. Then the hoopla vanished, production ramped up, and sales, after surging from nothing, have fallen back for two quarters in a row. And now Tesla has Cybertrucks coming out of its ears.
Automotive history is littered with immensely hyped models that cost a lot of money to develop that then failed to become successful for whatever reason, at great expense to the automaker, and the Cybertruck is starting to join that historic line-up.
Model X & Model S: Tesla’s other two models receded further into the background. Model X sales plunged by 51% year-over-year to just 1,800 vehicles in Q1, and Model S sales plunged by 17% year-over-year to just 934 vehicles.
The stock. With these kinds of problems under its belt — plunging sales and a super-hyped failing model — Tesla has become just like the other US automakers, and its stock should trade with the typical P/E ratio of Ford and GM, which is generally below 10, and sometimes as high as 15. You can do the math. Oh, the Cybercabs justify the share price? They still don’t even have the permits to operate, while the Waymos have been taking paying passengers around some US cities for over a year and a half.
On a sidenote: The #3 bestselling EV in California, after the Model Y and the Model 3, is the Honda Prologue. But Honda doesn’t even make an EV; the Prologue (along with the Acura ZDX) is based on GM’s Ultium EV platform and is mechanically the same as the Chevy Blazer EV and the Cadillac Lyriq, but looks different due to its different body panels. And this Honda Prologue has become GM’s bestselling EVs in California.
Not just in California. Tesla’s sales in California accounted for 12.6% of Tesla’s global sales in Q1 of 336,681 vehicles. California matters to Tesla, but this is playing out in other parts of the globe as well.
Tesla’s global deliveries plunged by 13% year-over-year, to the lowest since Q2 2022. But in its global deliveries data, Tesla doesn’t split out the details; it lumps the Cybertruck, the Model S, and the Model X together into the category, “other models” (green in the chart below), whose sales plunged globally by 24% year-over-year, which caused me to muse: “Are they still selling any Cybertrucks?” So now we have the answer: Tesla is still selling a few Cybertrucks, but not many, and fewer than it did last year.
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The post Oh Elon! Tesla Crushed Further in California in Q1, Non-Tesla EV Sales Soar. Cybertruck Joining Failed Models of Automotive History? appeared first on Energy News Beat.