Europe should be a source of strength when Tesla posts its second-quarter delivery numbers later this week
Tesla sold more than 1.8 million vehicles in 2023. It's been unable to match that feat in the years since.
Tesla is set to report second-quarter sales on Thursday, with Wall Street forecasting limited growth as the U.S. electric-vehicle market struggles to show a meaningful bounce.
The company is expected to have sold between 401,000 and 406,024 vehicles in the just-completed second quarter, implying growth of up to 5.7% from a year earlier, according to analysts. That would also reflect an improvement from earlier in the year, when Tesla $(TSLA)$ reported disappointing March quarter sales.
Tesla has had a rough time as of late, at least in terms of EV sales. After sales peaked in 2023 at 1.8 million vehicles, the company has been unable to match that performance. That's unlikely to change this year, according to analysts' forecasts. They expect 1.65 million cars sold this year, according to the Tesla-compiled consensus.
As J.P. Morgan analyst Rajat Gupta noted, the decline is tied to several factors, including the repeal of federal EV tax credits and backlash tied to CEO Elon Musk's stint in the U.S. federal government. Increased challenges from China have also weighed on Tesla's deliveries, he said in a note to clients last month.
"We see a pathway for re-acceleration" driven by growing adoption of Tesla's Full Self-Driving (supervised) advanced driver-assistance system, greater supply-chain integration and data collection, Gupta said. He also hypothesized that Tesla could cut vehicle or FSD prices to make its EVs more affordable and attractive to consumers.
Rolling out FSD in new regions has been linked to greater sales, Gupta said in a separate note, pointing to sales surging in Australia and South Korea after Tesla made the technology available there. The company is still seeking broader approval of FSD in China and making progress on winning over some European Union member states.
That could help continue Tesla's sales resurgence in Europe. Through May, the company's deliveries in the E.U., United Kingdom and European Free Trade Association countries were up 57% compared to 2025, the European Automobile Manufacturers' Association said.
Deutsche Bank's Edison Yu expects Europe to deliver the largest sales growth for Tesla in the second quarter, noting that "international strength is doing the heavy lifting." He projects Tesla's sales in China, the world's largest market for automotive sales and rife with tough competition, to grow 3%.
The research firm Cox Automotive expects Tesla to have sold 114,629 cars in the U.S. last quarter, reflecting a 20.1% drop year over year. The firm noted that Tesla's volumes in the first half of 2026 were down 14.6% "amid intensifying competition and fewer products to sell."
The U.S. market is undergoing a restructuring, Stephanie Valdez Streaty, Cox Automotive's director of industry insights, said during a recent presentation. The firm expects automakers to have sold 244,000 new EVs in the U.S. in the second quarter, down 22% compared to a year earlier.
While Tesla is still leading the industry, it's also dealing with rivals like Hyundai (KR:005380) gaining ground, Valdez Streaty noted. Plus, Rivian Automotive (RIVN) just came out with the R2 midsize SUV, its cheapest EV so far.
Slate Auto, an EV startup backed by Amazon (AMZN) founder Jeff Bezos, among others, has also confirmed plans to sell its first-ever vehicle for less than $25,000. Deliveries are set for the final months of 2026.
Tesla on Thursday will also give an update on second-quarter energy storage deployments, which Wall Street expects to come in at 13.8 gigawatt hours, a big bump from the prior quarter.
Tesla's auto deliveries, though incredibly important to the company as a whole, aren't as big of a deal to investors as they once were. Delivery reports can move the stock, but artificial-intelligence efforts have become more core to Tesla's narrative lately.
Tesla stock traded at $381.26 a pop when the market closed on April 1, but fell more than 5% by the end of April 2, after Tesla reported its first-quarter sales miss.
The next major catalysts for the stock, according to Baird's Ben Kallo, include the unveiling and start of production of Tesla's delayed Optimus humanoid robot and new energy products. Kallo also pointed to the possibility of Tesla rolling out robotaxis outside of the U.S., although that's not expected for a while.
Musk has major aspirations for Tesla's autonomous vehicles, which nearly a year ago he claimed would "probably" be conducting ride-hailing for "half of the population of the U.S." by the end of 2025. But his timelines have repeatedly fallen short, as analysts have long lamented is typical of Musk, both at Tesla and SpaceX $(SPCX)$.
In January, Tesla said it planned to expand its limited robotaxi services to nine cities by the end of June, according to an investor presentation. That goal, like others Musk has announced, has come and gone without success.
The company currently offers some unsupervised ride-hailing services in Texas' Austin, Houston and Dallas, along with supervised trips in San Francisco. On Tuesday, Tesla said it had begun its first engineering tests for the Cybercab robotaxi vehicle. Just a few days earlier, U.S. regulators proposed nixing rules requiring manual brake pedals in autonomous vehicles.
"The limiting factor for expansion is really rigorous validation, making sure things are completely safe," Musk said on a call with investors in April. "We don't want to have a single accident or injury with the expansion of robotaxi."
-William Gavin
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July 01, 2026 07:30 ET (11:30 GMT)
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