In 2025, Tesla sold an estimated 5,889 units of the Model S and 13,066 units of the Model X in the United States, according to data from Cox Automotive. [1, 2]
Sales Breakdown for 2025
Model S: 5,889 units (down 52.6% year-over-year from 12,426 in 2024).
Model X: 13,066 units (down 34.2% year-over-year from 19,855 in 2024).
Combined Total: Roughly 18,955 units for these two specific models in the U.S. (globally, Tesla bundles them with the Cybertruck under an “other models” category totaling around 50,850 units). [1, 2, 3, 4]
Look up the meaning of the word “CONTEXT.”
GoogleAI:
Context is the set of facts, background information, or surrounding circumstances that help explain an event, idea, or statement. Without it, words or actions can be easily misunderstood. You can explore linguistic and situational definitions through tools like Cambridge Dictionary or look at real-life examples on Reverso Context. [1, 2, 3, 4]
Key Types of Context
Linguistic: The words right before and after a phrase that give it exact meaning.
Historical: The time period and past events that shape why something happened.
Cultural: The social habits, beliefs, and traditions of a group of people. [1, 2]
Isnt it all about the Stock price. What has Tesla done over the past few years. Flat at best? Actually brings me joy to see Musk and his companies take the hits. Guy is such a jerk. A piece of you know what. All you have to do is watch a video of his idiot father and realize the apple didn’t fall that far from the tree.
I do mis guys like Domney on the SA board with full 100% loyalty to Tesla and Musk as if he was brainwashed into the cult.
Seems like you’re down to one bull on this board.
Oh didn’t look at the actual price today. An amazingly huge market today and TSLA was flat at 298. Which is where it was in Dec 2021. Yea, great investment the last 5 years.
Then we have the SpaceX lockup expiring soon. That should be a fun day. Already down 1.5 trillion from its stupidly moronic high. Loving every moment of it.
Looking at the last 5 years, “volatility” is hardly an issue. It’s been relatively flat, trading in a narrow range.
Now if you go back to 2019 to 2022, yeah, that’s a terrific jump. My only problem is I can’t figure out how to go back and get that. And, of course, if you look from 2013 to 2019, it’s flat flat flat, again.
I believe you’re letting a one time (tremendous) jump color your view of the stock performance, which has been mediocre for half a decade, at least.
(PS: Elon didn’t have to lose a lot of money to be a big loser.)
If you’re not a long term holder and only look peak to peak, you miss what have been buying opportunities to add tranches. The stock has nearly tripled since the low of 2023, almost doubled since the low of May 2024, and up 25% from the trough of March of 2025. Much of the best buying opportunity was when the hysteria regarding Musk’s political activism was at its peak.
Tesla definitely has to reassert itself in the EV market and or prove its other revenue sources can justify the price. However, we’ve seen lots of great companies go for long stretches where the stock price did nothing. But, there is no denying this is a best in class manufacturer drawing in some of the finest engineering minds. When focused, Musk is relentless in setting the direction of the business and overall problem solving in the pursuit of technological advances.
I made good money when KNDI first spiked up as the Chinese Tesla. I watched an Elon battery swapping show and took an instant dislike to the guy. What he as doing was pure show, you cannot efficiently swap batteries in cars not purposeful designed for swapping. I also learned from Kandi that batttery swapping was not a good idea.
GoogleAI:
In June 2013, Elon Musk demonstrated a 90-second battery-swapping technology for the Tesla Model S at the company’s design studio in Hawthorne, California. [1, 2]
The 2013 Demonstration and Plan
The Event: Musk showed how a Model S battery pack could be swapped out from underneath the vehicle in about 90 seconds—less than half the time required to refuel a comparable gasoline car. Drivers did not even need to exit the vehicle during the process. [1, 2]
Proposed Cost: The swap was intended to cost roughly the same as a full tank of premium gasoline (around $60 to $80 at 2013 prices), whereas standard Supercharger use remained free. [1]
Infrastructure Goals: Tesla planned to upgrade existing Supercharger locations into full Tesla stations that offered both free fast-charging and paid automated swapping. Each station was estimated to cost $500,000. [1]
Total BS! Seven years later I watched Tesla’s Battery Day and started investing in TSLA.
GoogleAI:
Tesla’s 2020 Battery Day introduced ambitious innovations aimed at drastically lowering battery production costs and improving electric vehicle range. [1]
Key Innovations
4680 Cell Form Factor: Unveiled a larger cylindrical cell (46mm wide by 80mm tall) offering 5 times more energy and 6 times more power. [1, 3, 4, 5]
Tabless Design: Removed the traditional battery tab to shorten the electrical path, drastically reduce internal resistance, and improve thermal performance. [1, 2]
Silicon Anodes: Shifted toward using raw, low-cost metallurgical silicon in anodes with an elastic polymer coating to handle expansion, increasing range significantly. [1, 2]
Dry Battery Electrode: Adopted a solvent-free dry film electrode process originating from Maxwell Technologies to minimize factory footprint and manufacturing costs. [1, 2]
Structural Battery Pack: Integrated cells directly into the vehicle’s structure using single-piece rear and front castings, reducing mass and component count. [1, 2]
Never regretted it. BTW, lots more Kandi and Tesla posts at SoftwareTimes.com
As opposed to now, with all of the new ideas from that last 5 years that have been converted into disruptive, revenue-generating products, like Semi, Cybertruck, robotaxi, Cybercab and Optimus, to just name a few.
I mean, I’ll deny it. Tesla’s a perfectly adequate manufacturer, but there’s no real evidence that Tesla’s a “best in class” manufacturer. There are some aspects of manufacturing they’re genuinely bad at. They’re literally terrible at getting products from release into production (witness the years between release of Cybertruck and Semi and when Tesla was able to finally start making them in volume) and routinely have quality control problems with the introduction of new models (back when they used to do that). Up until this very last year, Tesla’s been kind of mediocre in terms of the fit and finish and overall reliability of even their established products. This year they managed to get into the top 10, but they’re still behind the real “best in class” manufacturers like Toyota. And they’re still genuinely bad at making the Cybertruck, which has significant manufacturing quality issues relative to baseline standards for a major auto manufacturer. Not something you’d expect from a “best in class” manufacturer.
Tesla has certainly tried to cultivate the myth that they’re some legendarily exceptional manufacturer. Or at least, they used to. Back before Tesla pivoted to being an AI company and was just a car company, that was supposed to be the distinguishing factor that supported their sky-high valuation. Tesla factories were going to be “dreadnoughts” of manufacturing excellence, producing cars so fast that air resistance would be a limiting factor, implementing this revolutionary “unboxed” technique for building cars.
Of course, none of that really happened. Their manufacturing is good but not best in class, they never actually implemented the “unboxed” technique (they’re supposedly doing that for Cybercab, but they never did it for any other car), and obviously their factories are not dreadnoughts pushing up against the bounds of air resistance. If you back out the non-manufacturing parts of their gross auto revenue (regulatory credits and FSD sub revenue), their gross margins are decent but not great - in the low teens just like most other auto manufacturers.
They’re a good, but not “best in class,” manufacturer.
Except they still can’t build the Cybertruck to even minimal industry standards for reliability, fit and finish. They enjoyed high margins during the pandemic supply chain problems, but since then their actual manufacturing margins have been pretty average, once you take out the juice of billions of dollars in regulatory credits. Those ADAS features are very good, but they’re not evidence of manufacturing prowess. They’ve shown no ability to get products into production well or timely. And up until this last year, they were fairly mediocre across their product line up in terms of the reliability, build quality, fit and finish of their cars - the literal “nuts and bolts” of being an auto manufacturer. This last year they got into the good, but not exceptional, category for most of their cars, though the Cybertruck is still poorly manufactured by automotive standards.
They’re an above-average auto manufacturer, but they’re not “more than just good.” They have genuine weak points in their actual production and manufacture of automobiles.
I don’t view the Cybertuck as the litmus test for Tesla’s capabilities. I think of it as more of a hold my beer moment by a Quirky Billionaire. They sold 65,000 units compared to total model y sales to date of more than 4 million worldwide.
Again, I think you underestimate the importance of how they manufacturer, problem solving capabilities, the pace at which they can scale, vertical integration, and their ability to pivot and change directions as needed in a company of its size.
I mean, it’s easy to conclude that a company is “best in class” if you ignore everything they do badly. Cybertruck may have ended up having very low sales and poor demand, but they intended for it to be a volume seller, and they’re very bad at manufacturing it. Not something that you would expect from a company that is ostensibly a best in class manufacturer. The fact that the product failed and became such a poor seller doesn’t change that - in fact, it makes it a little worse, because part of the reason the product failed is because Tesla couldn’t actually manufacture the thing that they promised people.
And again, it’s not just the Cybertruck, though that’s the most egregious example. For all their cars, the overall build quality, reliability, fit and finish has consistently been pretty bad at product introduction and then rising to barely average, only getting to the “pretty good but not great” level in the last year. Once you back out the non-manufacturing revenue streams like regulatory credits, their automotive margins are pretty average. Cybertruck and Semi were ridiculously slow in getting from launch into volume production. Etc.
They’re a good, but certainly not outstanding, auto manufacturer.
I’m not ignoring the Cybertruck model. It’s an awful looking design, IMO. Musk and his Team acknowledged it was a High risk experimental design. Again, part of what I view as Tesla’s inherent advantage as a manufacturer is its willingness to take risks and then pivot, if it doesn’t work. CT clearly did not work as mass produced truck to compete with FORD, GM and others in this area. I don’t think it indicates Tesla is overall a poor manufacturer.
It’s not just that it “didn’t work” in the sense of garnering a lot of demand. It was poorly manufactured. It has serious issues with build quality, reliability, fit and finish. It’s not just that it’s a poorly designed car - it’s been a poorly made car as they’ve tried to physically build it. And those problems have been a non-trivial part of why it didn’t sell well - the truck didn’t just have a polarizing design, but had very well-publicized issues with basic build quality (panel gaps, poorly assembled interior components, etc.). That’s not something consistent with a “best in class” manufacturer.
It’s not just the Cybertruck. For all Tesla’s models, they have generally shown relatively modest manufacturing quality. Again, build quality, reliability, fit and finish for Tesla’s cars have almost always been below average in the early stage of introduction. Tesla just hasn’t been as good as other manufacturers at doing a good job of building their cars in the early phases of production. Later stages of production were better, but still pretty much middle-of-the-road in terms of the actual making of the cars.
The same is generally true of their margins. Big revenue streams like emissions credits boost their numbers, but those don’t really indicate how good (or bad) Tesla is at actually manufacturing the cars. Take out those non-manufacturing revenue streams, and (again) Tesla is pretty much middling.
Again, Tesla is by no means a bad manufacturer of automobiles. I’m not saying they’re “overall a poor manufacturer” - they’re better than average compared to the overall industry. But they’re certainly not best in class.
They’re still selling the Cybertruck, aren’t they? The Edsel lasted two years and two months and Ford pulled the plug. The Cybertruck has been on sale two years and eight months, was (by most metrics) a worse flop than the Edsel, and they’re still selling it.
Where is the “pivot”?
For those who like data, the Cybertruck sold about 20,000 units last year. Tesla does not break out sales of the S or X, both of which have been discontinued, but puts the sales of all three (S, X, and Cybertruck) at 50,000 for 2025. Which means the S, at least, probably sold more than the CT, as the X was a very low seller.
Tesla Cybertruck U.S. sales reached a record low of 3,519 deliveries in Q1 2026, marking a 45.1% year-over-year decline according to Cox Automotive data.
So, ~14k units annual run rate.
At least these cutting-edge fabrications will use less SpaceX storage this year.
They have dramatically scaled production, ended the model s and x and pivoted effort and resources towards robotaxi. They have focused consumer car production on variations of the Y and model 3. In addition, they abandoned efforts at an inexpensive model 2 that would have been capital intensive and provided very low margins. That’s what I mean by the ability to pivot as needed. There is no ego at play or some massive bureaucracy that delays decision making. They are going to try different approaches (fail or succeed) and the reassess as needed.
Crappy customer service and expensive repairs are other discussed topics (not directly manufacturing related).
This is manufacturing related, from today’s news:
The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration said on Friday it has opened a preliminary investigation into about 1.2 million Tesla vehicles over reports of suspension failures that could cause a loss of vehicle steering control.
The regulator said its Office of Defects Investigation has received 156 complaints, alleging the front lower lateral link detached in certain 2018-2020 Model 3 and 2021-2023 Model Y vehicles.
NHTSA said the suspension failure could leave the vehicle undriveable and require it to be towed.
