Tesla once again manages market expectations, lowering hopes for a rebound in electric vehicle sales

Ask AI · Tesla delivery data keeps falling year over year—can an AI transformation reverse the slump?

China Financial News (Cailian She) March 27 News (Editor: Shi Zhengcheng)**** With first-quarter auto delivery data set to be released, Tesla, the “former world’s #1 electric-vehicle king,” on Thursday once again issued its “sell-side analyst expectations compilation,” quietly lowering market expectations for a rebound in this year’s EV sales.

Source: Tesla

This is also the second “analyst expectations compilation” Tesla has ever released. At the end of last December, before Tesla released its fourth-quarter and full-year delivery data, it compiled a selection of figures that were the first time below the market’s overall expectation (440,900), at 422,800, and the final numbers were even lower than Tesla’s compiled forecast (418,200).

The compiled data released by Tesla shows that the market expects the company to deliver 3.656 million new vehicles in Q1 2026, including 3.51 million delivered of Model 3/Y and nearly 0.18 million of other models such as the Cybertruck.

Going further, the expectations indicate that the latest compilation forecasts Tesla’s total deliveries in 2026 will be 1.689 million new vehicles, while the compilation forecast released for last quarter was 1.75 million.

What’s especially interesting is that Tesla’s “investment bank list” has also changed. In the coverage pool for the first quarter, the long-time cheerleader for tech stocks and Tesla—Wedbush Securities—along with Oppenheimer were removed from the list. Meanwhile, five institutions, including JPMorgan, Bank of America, and Mizuho Financial Group, were newly added to the list.

If this trend continues, whether Tesla can reverse the downward trend in its EV business this year is a question mark. Last year, the company delivered a total of 1.6361 million vehicles—not only falling for the second consecutive year, but also setting the largest year-over-year decline in history. Tesla delivered 1.8085 million and 1.7892 million vehicles in 2023 and 2024, respectively.

It needs to be noted that Tesla’s delivery data in 2025 also fluctuated sharply due to the impact of U.S. subsidy policies. Specifically, deliveries in the first quarter were 336,681 vehicles in the off-season, rising to 384,122 vehicles in the second quarter; deliveries surged to 497,099 vehicles—an annual high point—before the expiration of the electric-vehicle tax credit in the third quarter, and then fell back to 418,227 vehicles in the fourth quarter.

For Musk’s fans who bought Tesla at hundreds of times the earnings multiple, Tesla’s EV delivery numbers may no longer be the focus. Humanoid robots, Robotaxi, and newly emerged “digital Colossus” agents, as well as the Terafab chip factory, are constantly refreshing the idea of “Tesla is an AI company.” That said, before the aforementioned businesses truly generate cash flow, EVs are still the main source of Tesla’s cash flow, providing funding for AI projects that burn money.

(Cailian She Shi Zhengcheng)