Tesla beats forecasts with 486,532 third-quarter deliveries

Tesla delivered 486,532 vehicles in the third quarter, comfortably ahead of analyst forecasts and up on the previous quarter, though still slightly below the record it set in the same period last year.

The figure beat the company-compiled analyst consensus of 461,974 by about 5%, and was above every estimate in the range of forecasts we reported earlier this week, including JPMorgan’s 482,000, the most optimistic of them.

Deliveries were up 1.3% on the 480,126 Tesla handed over in the second quarter, and down 2.1% on the record 497,099 of the third quarter of 2025.

The Model 3 and Model Y accounted for 478,237 deliveries, with Tesla’s other models making up the remaining 8,295.

Tesla built 464,391 vehicles in the quarter, around 22,000 fewer than it delivered. Model 3 and Model Y production was 457,387, and other models 7,004.

Energy storage deployments were 13.7GWh, up from 12.5GWh a year earlier but short of the 15.9GWh analysts had forecast. It is Tesla’s second-biggest quarter for storage, behind the 14.2GWh of the fourth quarter of 2025.

Tesla will release its full third-quarter financial results on 21 October, US time.