Tesla’s Annual Sales Drop for the First Time—but the EV Industry Continues to Grow

Only a few days until 2025, electric vehicles he’s already had a rollercoaster ride of a year. Last week, Tesla began a difficult journey when it reported that, for the first time, the reigning champion of American EVs delivered fewer vehicles worldwide than the previous year. The automaker delivered 1.789 million vehicles in 2024, down 1.1% from the 1.808 million delivered in 2023. Tesla’s share price fell 8 percent on the news.

Then, on Friday, more numbers for the year came out, and the EV story turned positive around the edges. General Motors it said it sold 50 percent more electric vehicles than last year, led by its Chevrolet Equinox EV SUV. Honda’s Prologue EV, which went on sale in the middle of the year, shifted 33,000 units – which was against the Japanese electric company in the US. Although Fordwhich said last year that it would back away from his plan to expand all electronic commerce in favor of a mix of EVs, hybrids, and gasoline vehicles, with more than 50,000 sold Mustang Mach-Es.

Global EV sales numbers may not be available until next month, but experts say that in the US, electric vehicles are poised to account for 8 percent of all vehicle sales in 2024.

So maybe “roller” is too weird. In many ways, the story of selling EVs — and Tesla’s own little part — often plays out on what each of the companies thinks. In the first half of the decade, “people thought there was going to be crazy hockey stick growth for EVs,” says Stephanie Brinley, an automotive analyst at S&P Global Mobility. “That was not real. The way we see the market changing is true. “

“Everyone continues to make slow progress,” says Corey Cantor, senior associate who covers electric vehicles at BloombergNEF, electric vehicles and their manufacturers.

Great Expectations

No one said that the transition to electric cars would be easy. Electrification “has been one of the biggest changes the auto industry has ever seen—and the auto industry doesn’t change overnight,” says Ivan Drury, chief information officer at the automotive website Edmunds.

Creating new powerful tools-and find battery salt to power it—that’s only half the problem. People’s purchasing power, especially for one of the most expensive things they will buy in their lives, will be the other half. Given these challenges, “it’s amazing that we’ve seen such a big change,” says Drury.

Even Tesla’s hit on the road can be seen as proof that CEO Elon Musk’s automaker is doing it. something right. In 2006, Musk released “Master plan“What established the “big goal” of Tesla: “to help accelerate the transition from the economy of hydrocarbon mining and burning to the economy of solar energy, which I believe is the first, but not the only, solution to this problem.” The challenges of Tesla’s annual growth are based on , in part, because the gambit worked, and there is now a lot of global competition in the EV space. Tesla officially lost its title as the world’s top EV maker last year to China’s BYD, which also made other electric cars. 4,500 last year (Tesla at to be sold many EVs, and a great help (from Chinese buyers, who bought 8.8 percent of the automaker’s EVs last year than in 2023.)

Whether the global car electrification project stays on track comes down, in part, to policy. In the US, EV sales jumped in the last quarter of the year. That’s probably because consumers have heard about Trump’s new plans to deal with incentives for electric cars as well he took the advice of experts to buy new cars while still getting subsidies. What will happen in 2025 if the buying incentives go away?

Even with more sales numbers to come, the 2024 numbers seem to show the business is moving in the right direction. “It’s a crazy revolution,” says Brinley, an analyst of the electric car revolution. But he is confident that: “We will see raising more children,” he says.