Is doing everything you can to alienate your core customer base good business?

The returns on this question would seem to be answering this question in the negative:

Tesla’s electric vehicle sales in the US are worse than what the media is reporting right now. That’s partly because Tesla is hiding its sales.

Here’s more accurate data.

Today, you might see many headlines about Tesla’s US sales based on Cox Automotive’s Q1 2025 US electric vehicle sales report.

The main problem with this report is that it is a complete estimate when it comes to Tesla, the biggest EV manufacturer in the US.

Of all the major automakers, Tesla is the only one that doesn’t break down sales by region or even model.

[…]

Cox’s estimate looks quite high. The best way to figure out Tesla deliveries in the US is to take deliveries based on registration data in all other markets where Tesla sells vehicles in the world, which are quite accurate, and subtract that number from Tesla’s reported global deliveries.

For the first quarter, Tesla reported 336,681 deliveries globally, and Tesla registrations in all markets except the US and Canada totaled 212,024 vehicles (via TroyTeslike).

This would mean Tesla delivered about 124,657 vehicles in the US and Canada in Q1 2025.

That’s already about 3,500 fewer deliveries than Cox’s estimate, but it includes Canadian deliveries, which are also hard to estimate in the first quarter. It’s safe to assume that they are at about 5,000 units.

This means that Tesla is down closer to 15% than 8% in the US in Q1 2025.

Maybe they can make that up in the Chinese market! [Taps earpiece] Oh.

Here’s a review of the Mustang Mach-E.