Tesla Touts Lower EV Delivery Estimate. The Stock Is Falling.

Tesla (TSLA) released a compilation of analyst estimates for its first-quarter deliveries that’s lower than some other consensus forecasts. Tesla stock fell modestly Thursday amid a broad market sell-off.

The Tesla-compiled target is for electric vehicle deliveries of 365,645 units, down 12.5% vs. 418,227 in fourth-quarter 2025, but up 8.6% vs. the 336,681 in Q1 2025. However, the Tesla estimate is significantly below than the 382,000-unit consensus from analysts polled by FactSet.

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Q1 EV Deliveries

Tesla EV sales tend to decline in the first quarter compared to the fourth quarter. In China, a huge Tesla market, overall auto sales tumble early in the year as consumers celebrate the lengthy Lunar New Year holidays and await new model releases in March.

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Q1 2025 deliveries were likely impacted by the changeover to the new Model Y, which didn’t come out until March 2025. That meant that buyers considering a Tesla likely held off on purchasing one in January and February until the new model was available.

In Q1 2026, analysts expect Model Y and Model 3 deliveries will total 351,179 vehicles. Meanwhile, the remaining models — which include the Cybertruck and the soon-to-be discontinued Model S and Model X — totaled 13,946 deliveries.

For the full year, the Tesla-compiled estimate is for 1,689,691 deliveries, up 3.3% vs. 2025’s 1,636,129.

Tesla will likely release Q1 deliveries data on April 2.

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The compiled data also included forecasts for 14.4 gigawatt-hours of deployments from Tesla’s energy storage business. That would be a 1.5% gain from 14.2 GWh in Q4 and up 38% from 10.4 GWh in Q1 2025, according to Tesla data.

Tesla’s Future Businesses

This data comes as Tesla is in the midst of pivoting its business away from traditional car sales toward self-driving technology and humanoid robots. CEO Elon Musk has been clear he believes the future of the company is its Full Self-Driving (FSD) autonomous vehicle system, nascent robotaxi service and Optimus robots.

Tesla is in various stages of rolling out FSD and robotaxis, while Optimus remains years away from mass production.

In the meantime, Tesla still needs to rely on its auto business for the vast majority of revenue. It has made some progress in righting the ship; in Europe, Tesla monthly registrations rose for the first time in over a year.

Tesla Stock

Tesla stock fell 3.1% to 374.06 on Thursday afternoon, according to MarketSurge. Shares extended losses after Tesla released the vehicle delivery estimates, but the broader market sell-off intensified as well.

Last Friday, TSLA stock hit a six-month low, round-tripping a late 2025 rally to record highs.

On Monday, shares rose amid a broad market bounce, as well as a weekend announcement that Tesla and SpaceX, Musk’s other company, would collaborate on plans to build a massive semiconductor factory. Shares kept climbing on Wednesday on reports SpaceX might file for its initial public offering as soon as this week. But Tesla stock hit resistance at the 200-day line.

So far this week, Tesla stock is up nearly 2%, according to MarketSurge, seeking to snap a five-week losing streak. The stock is down about 16% year to date.

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