Tesla is officially smaller than China’s BYD in EV sales as it reports second-straight year of falling sales
Tesla stock is down over 6% over the last five days but the market seemed to be expecting Friday's news about EV deliveries.
Tesla has officially ceded its long‑held crown as the world’s top electric‑vehicle maker, with China’s BYD now firmly in the lead after a year of surging sales in Asia and stalling demand for Elon Musk’s cars. The changing of the guard comes as Tesla reports its second straight annual drop in deliveries, underscoring how quickly the balance of power in the global EV race has tilted toward China. It also comes after the end of federal subsidies for EV purchases in the U.S. from Musk’s on-again, off-again ally President Donald Trump, a move that Ford CEO Jim Farley predicted in September would cut the EV market in half.
China’s BYD said this week it sold about 2.26 million fully electric vehicles in 2025, an increase of nearly 28% from the prior year and enough to make it the world’s largest EV seller. The Shenzhen‑based company’s battery‑electric tally does not include its vast plug‑in hybrid lineup, which brings total “new energy vehicle” sales to roughly 4.6 million last year.
By contrast, Tesla reported that its 2025 deliveries fell to roughly 1.6 million vehicles, down about 8%–9% from 2024 and well below BYD’s all‑electric total. That marks the second year in a row of shrinking sales for Tesla, which peaked around 1.8 million deliveries in 2023, but it was still narrowly ahead of BYD in 2024.
In an unusual move, Tesla preemptively released a statement on Tuesday, detailing the estimates from 20 Wall Street analysts on its deliveries through 2029 while adding that it “does not endorse” any of that information. The Information‘s Martin Peers suggested that Tesla didn’t want anyone “to be shocked by the magnitude of the sales decline it’s on track to report for the fourth quarter of 2025.” Peers noted that analysts expected a 14.6% drop to 422,850 and, in fact, Tesla reported a 15% drop to 418,227. Analyst Gary Black was on the mark in a post on X, interpreting the Tesla statement as a sign that it would release a number closer to the 420,000 range than previous estimates of around 450,000. Tesla stock is down over 6% over the last five days, but was relatively unchanged on Friday, indicating that the market had already priced in this news.