A new estimate put Tesla’s US sales down by 5% in 2024 compared to the prior year despite the automaker offering record discounts, incentives, and the addition of the Cybertruck to its lineup.
Following Tesla’s production and delivery results for Q4 and the full-year 2024, the market is still digesting the information.
As we pointed out, Tesla is the most opaque automaker when it comes to breaking down its delivery results. It doesn’t break them down by models or regions, and therefore, we have to rely on third-party data and analysis.
An analyst going by TroyTeslike on X has been amongst those most accurate in predicting Tesla’s quarterly delivery results, and he has now shared his breakdown per region:
We can see that Tesla is down about 10% in Europe, up 8% in China, although Tesla’s growth has greatly slowed down in the world’s biggest auto market, and finally down 5% in the US.
The US market is particularly interesting and worrying for Tesla, considering the automaker operated in the country in 2024 with record discounts and incentives, including price cuts and subsidized financing.
More importantly, Tesla added a vehicle to its lineup in the US for the first time in the last four years: the Cybertruck.
2024 was Tesla’s first full year of Cybertruck production, and while there were some clear demand issues with the electric pickup truck, it added at least more than 30,000 US deliveries for Tesla, and yet, the automaker is down more than 34,000 units in the US in 2024.
Troy also believes that Tesla has throttled down production at its US factories in 2024 in order to match the lower demand as it did manage to reduce inventory at the end of the year.
Electrek’s Take
This should be worrying people. There is no reason Tesla should be down in the US in 2024 when the EV market is up. There were macroeconomic issues for sure, but Tesla also countered those, as it did in 2023, with discounts and financing incentives.
Without Cybertruck, which is also disappointing with its sales, Tesla would have been down by more than 60,000 units in the US in 2023.
The automaker could blame the switch over to the new Model 3 for slowing down deliveries earlier in the year, but it appeared that Tesla could have easily caught up with Model 3 in the second half, but there simply wasn’t demand for it.
I think Tesla should really start to consider that Elon Musk’s antics are badly hurting sales in the US.