Tesla Has Its 4th Best Quarter Ever

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Tesla sales rebounded, and strongly, in the second quarter. In fact, looking historically at Tesla quarterly sales (which I publish every quarter), you can see that the 2nd quarter of 2026 was Tesla’s 4th best quarter ever in terms of vehicle deliveries — 480,126 Tesla vehicles were delivered to customers.

Note that static versions of all of the charts except the red bar charts are included at the bottom of this article.

We have been covering Tesla’s long-term sales decline in the past few years, especially after hyping up Elon Musk’s plan to have vehicle sales grow by 50% a year, on average, across the 2020s. It’s been a quite clear trend for the past few years, since the company’s best year of 2023 when 1,808,581 vehicles were delivered. However, perhaps things are turning around for the company?

Tesla’s best quarter was Q3 2025 (497,099 sales), but that was obviously driven by a US sales rush resulting from the end of the $7,500 federal EV tax credit. Its second best quarter was the 4th quarter of 2024 (495,570), but that was again driven by a rush to by cars before incentives in key markets changed. Its third best quarter was Q4 2023 (484,507). Again, similar deal, and the last quarter of the year is typically best in general. There’s no such explanation for Q2 2026, though. That said … there is a potentially short-term explanation.

Sales were driven in part by the new, standard, cheaper versions of the Tesla Model 3 and Tesla Model Y in Europe. While these are not hugely cheaper in the US and didn’t have such an impact here, they are much cheaper in Europe. Even more so, though, the war in Iran, the long closure of the Strait of Hormuz, and the high gas prices that resulted drove a lot more people to buy electric cars, and no electric cars were available in higher volume and quicker than Tesla’s. So, that did give a big boost to the company. Tesla actually said last week that it plans to boost production at its German factory by 20% to 7,500 vehicles per week.

It was a bit of a similar story in China, where Tesla sales have also been good. In that case, though, the company got a significant boost from its extended wheelbase Tesla Model Y L.

Tesla was not projected to have done very well in the US, however. Cox Automotive estimates that Tesla sales dropped 20% in its home market. Hmm….

Of course, Tesla doesn’t break down sales by region (like other auto companies do) or even fully by model. Estimates of the model sales breakdown follow.

We’ll have to wait to see if this is just a blip or if Tesla’s fortunes have turned around.