Tesla delivered 486,532 vehicles in the third quarter of 2026. That is 2.1 percent below the record it set a year ago, but comfortably above what analysts had expected, and the company remains ahead of last year over the first nine months.
Tesla delivered 486,532 vehicles in the third quarter of 2026, according to the company’s production and delivery report, as reported by Electrek on October 2.
That is down 2.1 percent from the 497,099 vehicles it delivered in the same quarter last year, which remains its all-time record.
Production and Deliveries
| Production | Deliveries | |
|---|---|---|
| Model 3 and Model Y | 457,387 | 478,237 |
| Other models | 7,004 | 8,295 |
| Total | 464,391 | 486,532 |
Tesla delivered 22,141 more vehicles than it built, the second quarter in a row in which it has reduced its inventory.
Ahead of Expectations
The company-compiled consensus of 24 analysts had averaged 461,974 deliveries. Tesla beat that by 24,558 vehicles.
Individual estimates had ranged from 421,758 to 482,000, so the result was above every forecast on the list, Electrek reported.
A Difficult Comparison
The third quarter of 2025 was an unusual one. Buyers in the United States rushed to claim a $7,500 federal tax credit before it expired on September 30, 2025, which pushed Tesla to its record.
Compared with the previous quarter, deliveries rose. Tesla delivered 480,126 vehicles in the second quarter of 2026, so the latest figure is an increase of 1.3 percent.
The Year So Far
Over the first three quarters of 2026, Tesla has delivered 1,324,681 vehicles. That is up 8.8 percent from 1,217,902 at the same point in 2025.
Smaller Models Fall
Nearly all of the deliveries were the Model 3 and Model Y. The “other models” category accounted for 8,295 deliveries, down 48 percent from 15,933 a year ago.
Energy Storage
Tesla also deployed 13.7 GWh of energy storage products in the quarter. That is up 9.6 percent from 12.5 GWh a year earlier and up from 13.5 GWh in the second quarter.
It fell short of the record 14.2 GWh set in the fourth quarter of 2025, and was below the 15.9 GWh that analysts had expected, according to Electrek.
Image: A Tesla Model Y, 2025. Photo by Alexander Migl via Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0.