Tesla Q3 deliveries due Friday: consensus is 461,974, but analysts missed Q2 by 74,000

Tesla reports third-quarter production and deliveries on Friday, October 2. Its company-compiled analyst consensus, put together from 24 firms, calls for 461,974 deliveries, including 450,712 Model 3 and Model Y vehicles, and 15.9 GWh of energy storage deployments, Not a Tesla App and Tesla North reported. Tesla shares were up 0.6% at $357.09 late Thursday morning, according to Nasdaq.

What the consensus implies

Set against Tesla's own reported figures, the consensus is a decline both from last year and from last quarter:

Individual estimates are spread widely. Electrek listed JPMorgan at 482,000, Goldman Sachs at 435,000 and Cantor Fitzgerald at 421,758, after cuts by both JPMorgan and Goldman in the second half of September. Electrek reported that Kalshi prediction-market contracts were trading in the low-to-mid 470,000s.

The thing to remember from last quarter

For the second quarter, the company-compiled consensus was 406,024. Tesla then delivered 480,126, which beat it by 74,102 cars, or 18%. A miss that size means the consensus is a weak anchor for Friday. That cuts both ways: analysts could be too low again, or they could have overcorrected.

The year-ago comparison is also unusual. Third-quarter 2025 was a record because US buyers rushed to claim the $7,500 federal EV credit before it expired on September 30, 2025. GM's third-quarter figures, released on Thursday, show how much that rush flattered last year: our sum of GM's 11 electric models shows its US EV sales fell 62%, to 25,473 from 66,501. A 7% year-on-year decline for Tesla would be a far smaller drop than that.

The number behind the number: production versus deliveries

Tesla's quarterly reports on SEC EDGAR give production next to deliveries, and the gap between them shows whether cars are coming out of inventory or piling up in it:

Tesla built about 50,000 more cars than it delivered in the first quarter, then sold about 28,000 of them in the second. Over the first half, production still ran about 22,000 ahead of deliveries, so some of that stock should still be available. Delivering more cars than it builds cannot go on indefinitely, though. On Friday, look at production as well as the delivery figure: a strong delivery number with production well below it means Tesla is still drawing down stock.

What else is in the report

Electrek, citing registration and retail data, reported that Tesla's US sales fell about 26% from a year earlier in August and China retail sales fell 12.4%. Those are third-party estimates, not Tesla figures. The storage consensus of 15.9 GWh compares with 13.5 GWh deployed in the second quarter and 12.5 GWh in the third quarter of 2025, so analysts expect energy to grow while vehicle deliveries shrink. Tesla North noted that the full-year consensus is 1,767,255 deliveries. After 838,149 in the first half and 461,974 in the third quarter, that leaves about 467,000 for the fourth quarter, so analysts are counting on deliveries picking up again by year-end.

Tesla's financial results follow later in October. For background on the business, see our Tesla explainer.

Sources: Tesla production and deliveries reports for Q2 2026, Q1 2026 and Q3 2025 via SEC EDGAR; Not a Tesla App; Tesla North; Electrek; GM; Nasdaq. Inventory changes and percentages are Chronicle calculations. This is market information, not investment advice.