Is Tesla Really In Trouble This Time?

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One month is just that — one month. Tesla has been known to rebound from slow starts to quarters in the past. However, most of the hype around low Tesla sales in the first months of quarters in the past has been a misunderstanding — or misrepresentation — of how Tesla organizes its delivery schedule. The first month of a quarter is often low, and the last month often high. Nonetheless, when looking at year-over-year comparisons, that doesn’t normally matter — unless Tesla has dramatically changed something in its delivery schedule.

The concerning thing for Tesla this time around is that the beginning of 2026 looks very bad for Tesla compared to the beginning of 2025 — and remember that there were excuses for a slow start to 2025! Tesla had just launched a new version of the Model Y, production lines around the world had to be paused and changed to handle that, and sales were supposed to come in proceeding months as pent-up demand led to surging deliveries. Last January was supposed to be a poor January. So, for Tesla sales to be down in January 2026, one has to consider that the company is off to a very rough start to the year.

We don’t have full data yet, so this is still partly — or mostly — speculation, of course. However, initial data is not good, very not good.

Across 12 European markets where we have data so far, Tesla sales were down 23% in January 2026 compared to January 2025. In China, Tesla’s biggest market other than the US, its sales were down 45%! In the US, we certainly don’t have data yet, but the company is blasting out marketing emails. I’ve received three in the last nine days encouraging me to purchase a new car! That’s a very high rate of email blasts for Tesla. Just one small note, and related to the company’s push to get people to transfer Full Self Driving to a new car, but something to consider perhaps as we see the sales trends above and also consider how much the US EV market has been hit by Donald Trump and Republicans in Congress killing the $7,500 US EV tax credit.

Of course, it’s been clear for a while now that Tesla is supposed to revive sales growth through robotaxi capability, or true full self-driving capability. However, month after month, targets are missed on that and hope is pushed off. Dreams may continue, but you have to stay asleep a long time to keep the dreaming going (or transition to daydreaming I guess). Not that long ago, Elon Musk said that Tesla robotaxis would cover 50% of the US population by the end of 2025. They still cover essentially 0% of the US population. This followed nearly a decade of similar such claims. So, could the dream finally become reality in 2026? Yes, it could, but it could also be another year of missed targets and horribly incorrect promises. The difference this year, though, could be Tesla’s normal vehicle sales dropping to disastrous levels, perhaps even meaning that Tesla stops achieving quarterly profits and transitions to quarterly losses. Looking at January’s numbers, I think you have to be putting a blindfold on and plugging your ears to not consider that this is a serious possibility.

Of course, Tesla still has a lot of cash on hand. A ton of it. So, there is no serious immediate concern for Tesla for sure. However, it has been going along the wrong trend line for a long time now, and the company’s AI costs continue to shoot up even as sales go down. Sooner or later, trends have to reverse or Tesla will be in trouble. Instead of that happening to kick off 2026, however, one of the negative trends appears to be accelerating.