Tesla's car sales are looking up after a rocky couple of years. The EV maker delivered just over 480,000 cars worldwide in the second quarter, a 25% year-over-year increase that blew away Wall Street analyst expectations of around 406,000 units.
This is the rosiest that Tesla's car business has looked in recent memory. After moving a record 1.8 million units in 2023, sales dropped for two years straight and saw an especially brutal 2025. Elon Musk's support of right-wing causes gave the brand a stink. The Cybertruck, its first new model in years, has been a flop. Things were looking bleak. Now Tesla just notched its best second quarter of deliveries in its history. Has it turned the page? It depends where you look.
View Price on AmazonEurope played a big role, with data from the European Automobile Manufacturers' Association showing that the brand's sales shot up by 77% from January through May compared to the same period in 2025. It may be that the Musk Effect is finally wearing off. Or that cheap lease and financing deals are doing their job. It may also be a matter of a rising tide lifting all boats; plug-in car sales are booming in Europe. So far this year, 2.5 million electric and plug-in hybrid vehicles have been sold on the continent, according to Benchmark Mineral Intelligence, a 27% surge over the first half of 2025.
The firm chalks that up to government subsidies and high fuel prices. Gas prices are already higher in Europe than they are in the U.S., and a reliance on imports made the Iran oil crisis hit harder there. There are a couple of ways to look at this. Sustained, long-term growth in Europe's EV sector would be a boon for Tesla. But we may be looking at more of a sugar high created by temporarily high gas prices.
Analysts aren't sure if the gains will last for the rest of the year. "A primary negative interpretation here for us," analysts at BNP Paribas wrote in a note to clients, "centers on the price of crude oil, which is now back to ~$70/barrel and likely incites ratcheted-down EU-led growth through the 2H." Then again, with tensions flaring again, it's not exactly clear how long the conflict will last.
In China, meanwhile, Tesla sales fell by about 2% in the second quarter, marking its fifth straight quarter of declines in the country. Still, the automaker has been performing relatively well in a market with both intense competition and a broader slowdown in car sales, said Phate Zhang, founder of the Chinese EV website CnEVPost.
"Conventional wisdom might suggest that price cuts and new models by domestic competitors could impact Tesla, but experience over the past several years shows that this is not the case," he said in an email. Homegrown giant BYD posted a 22% drop in domestic sales for June, suggesting that Tesla is managing a fierce sales environment better than some Chinese giants.
Source: insideevs.com
