Catenaa, Thursday, July 02, 2026- Tesla stock fell by as much as 9% on Thursday despite vehicle deliveries and production levels for Q2 far exceeded Wall Street expectations.
Accordingly, the report showed that total Q2 vehicle deliveries stood at 80,126, while total vehicle production was 451,758.
Analysts were expecting around 406,600 deliveries, according to StreetAccount’s consensus. Tesla’s company-compiled consensus published last week was 406,024 deliveries.
The stock has fallen on each of the past three quarterly delivery reports.
In the same period last year, Tesla reported around 384,000 deliveries, and in the first quarter of 2026, the number came in at 358,023.
Thursday’s update showed a 25% year-over-year increase, and a 34% increase versus the first quarter in deliveries for Tesla.
Tesla doesn’t break out exact delivery numbers by region or individual model, but the company said its entry-level Model 3 sedan and most popular Model Y SUVs accounted for 467,762, or 97% of its deliveries. Deliveries are the closest approximation of sales reported by Tesla but are not precisely defined in its shareholder communications.
Tesla is trying to recover from consecutive annual declines in vehicle sales that were partly caused by a consumer backlash against Musk, the world’s wealthiest person, and by the loss of a US federal tax credit.
Musk’s incendiary political rhetoric, endorsements of anti-immigrant extremists in Europe, and his work with the Trump administration to shrink the federal workforce drove away some prospective EV buyers.
Meanwhile, Chinese automakers like BYD, Nio and Xiaomi came to market with an array of more affordable and high-tech EVs, while Tesla also faced increased competition from South Korea’s Hyundai Motor Group and European EV makers including Volkswagen.
To revitalize sales, Tesla started selling lower-cost versions of its Model 3 and Model Y vehicles, and more recently made its driver assistance systems, marketed under the brand name Full Self-Driving (Supervised), available in some European markets.
The biggest boon for the company in the quarter may have been soaring gas prices resulting from the war in Iran. European car buyers purchased more Tesla and other EVs in the first half of the year.
However, oil prices are now back near where they were trading before the war began in February, in response to a fragile truce between the US and Iran, and diplomatic efforts to bring the conflict to a lasting conclusion.
In the US, car buyers have pulled back from fully electric vehicles, and are embracing hybrids, according to Dan Hearsch, Managing Director at AlixPartners.
“We have a huge country, and people live far away from each other compared to Europe, where the charging infrastructure is better, and people don’t have to drive quite so far,” Hearsch said.
In the second half of the year, inflation, shifting trade policy, and the rising cost of chips and other components may pose the biggest challenges to US automakers, he added
