Tesla delivery miss defies Musk's bold Model Y top selling 2025 car claim

Tesla has announced its Q4 delivery numbers, and they aren't pretty. The EV maker moved 418,227 vehicles, while the Wall Street analyst consensus was 422,850. The worse part is that Tesla made more than 16,000 more vehicles than it sold, so it will now have to discount its inventory to clear it out in the first quarter of 2026, too.

The Tesla delivery miss was expected, as it was the first quarter after the federal tax credit expiration and that $7,500 in government money was a big selling point of the Model Y and Model 3. Despite Tesla's humdrum Q4 delivery report, however, Elon Musk still claimed that the Model Y has remained the world's bestselling car.

This was undoubtedly true in 2023, when EV sales and especially those of the Model Y were still in their peak. Tesla made the same announcement for 2024, when the Model Y was slightly ahead of the RAV4, even though subsequent numbers placed Toyota's SUV at the top.

To insist that the Model Y has remained the world's most popular passenger vehicle in 2025 when Elon Musk's political activism and general EV market malaise sent its deliveries down year-on-year is at best debatable. Elon Musk's claim must be based on some sort of internal market data that is yet to see the light of day, as it is too early in the year to work through all the production and delivery numbers.

After all, Tesla pulled out all Model Y deal stops in Q4, introducing 0% APR financing and free options upgrade and still delivered a miss. For now, Elon Musk's rosy prediction should be taken with a grain of salt, at least until some more complete third-party numbers come out.

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