Tesla delivered fewer cars last year than it did in 2023, marking its first year-to-year drop and signaling that the company is struggling to reach new buyers. That means Tesla’s Cybertruck, which is the company’s first true new model since 2020, did little to boost the company’s growth in its first full year of sales.
The company announced Thursday that it delivered 1.77 million vehicles globally in 2024, down from 1.81 million in 2023. Just 85,133 of those vehicles delivered were what Tesla refers to as “other models,” which includes the aging Model S sedan, Model X SUV, and the Cybertruck. Tesla’s stock, which has been on a run since CEO Elon Musk helped Donald Trump win re-election in November, dropped about 2% in pre-market trading.
The drop is a stark change for Tesla and Musk, which spent years promoting the goal of a 50% annual growth rate. The company already started to miss that mark over the last few years — even with massive, unrelenting price cuts — but 2024’s drop is the first time sales actually declined since Tesla started delivering its first mass-market car, the Model S, in 2012.
Tesla warned investors at the beginning of last year that growth may be “notably lower” in 2024, and claimed that it was a company in between “two major growth waves.” Then, in April, Tesla laid off more than 10% of its workforce in a restructuring that was meant to re-focus on Musk’s long-promised idea of making a fully-functioning robotaxi.
At the same time, Tesla abandoned plans to make a $25,000 electric vehicle. The only other new vehicles it has in the near-term pipeline are mysterious models the company says will be built on existing production lines. They’re expected to be cheaper than Tesla’s current offerings (which start in the low $40,000 range), though it’s not clear by how much.
This story is developing…
