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These were the best-selling EV brands in the U.S. in Q1
Tesla remained the clear market leader in Q1, while Chevrolet and others saw substantial sales growth with the introduction of new models.
A recent report has revealed the latest estimates on electric vehicle (EV) sales for the first quarter of the year, with Tesla and Ford landing the top two spots, while GM’s brands saw the most sales growth.
On Thursday, Cox Automotive released data estimates for the U.S. EV market in Q1 2025, showing that Tesla remained the clear market leader among brands, while Ford, GM, BMW, and Hyundai made up the rest of the top five. The report estimated 296,227 EVs sold overall, marking an 11.4 percent increase year over year, and bringing new-vehicle EV sales to around 7.5 percent of the market.
Cox notes that this is still a steady increase from 7 percent of the market during Q1 last year, despite headwinds created by the Trump administration’s tariff war.
“The year certainly started strong, but the road ahead will be anything but smooth,” said Valdez Streaty, Cox Automotive analyst.
Tesla outsold the next top 10 brand names combined in Q1 with 128,100 units, though sales declined 8.6 percent year over year for the brand. Ford was the second-best-selling brand with 22,550 units sold, representing an 11.5 percent increase year over year.
Meanwhile, GM’s Chevrolet brand saw a 114.2 percent increase in sales from the first quarter of 2024 with 19,186, as led by the Chevy Equinox EV. The rest of the top 10 was made up, in order, by VW (9,564), Honda (9,561), Kia (8,656), Rivian (8,553), and Cadillac (7,972).
Brands such as Porsche, Toyota, and GMC joined the Chevy brand in seeing substantial sales growth, representing 249 percent, 196 percent, and 183 percent increases year over year, respectively.
It’s worth noting that multiple automakers own different brands, such as Chevrolet, GMC, and Cadillac being owned by GM, Audi being owned by VW, or Stellantis owning Jeep and Dodge, among other examples still.
EV Sales Volume Change by Brand: Q1 2025 versus Q1 2024
Credit: Cox Automotive
New Entries: EV Sales Volume in Q1 2025
Credit: Cox Automotive
READ MORE ON EV SALES: Tesla vs. competition: How many BEVs did OEMs sell in the U.S. in 2024?
Tesla doesn’t break out sales data by region, though the company recently reported delivering 336,681 units globally in the first quarter, representing a 13-percent drop from Q1 2024.
While it’s not a surprise that Tesla’s market share steadily declines as more competition enters the market, recent pressure on Elon Musk for his involvement with the Trump administration has, if nothing else, caused some automakers to try to poach Tesla owners with special trade-ins and other promotions.
Tesla has also been rolling out the refreshed Model Y, and the potential effects of the transition to it from the legacy model may play a role, though future quarters will show a better glimpse at the impact of the redesigned vehicle’s arrival.
At the time of writing, Cox Automotive has also not yet responded to Teslarati’s request for clarification on which brands are included in the “additional EV models” category. However, we expect these to include low-volume, luxury, and other niche EV brands, such as Lucid Motors. The publication also says the data overall excludes super exotics.
You can see EV sales ranked by brand below, check out the full data from Cox Automotive here, or read the publication’s press release on the report here.
Mass-market EV sellers in Q1 2025, ranked by brand
- Tesla: 128,100
- Ford: 22,500
- Chevrolet: 19,186
- BMW:13,538
- Hyundai: 12,843
- VW: 9,564
- Honda: 9,561
- Kia: 8,656
- Rivian: 8,553
- Cadillac: 7,972
- Nissan: 6,471
- Audi: 5,905
- Toyota: 5,610
- Acura: 4,813
- GMC: 4,728
- Porsche: 4,358
- Mercedes: 3,472
- Subaru: 3,131
- Volvo: 2,718
- Jeep: 2,595
- Dodge: 1,947
- Genesis: 1,496
- Lexus: 1,453
- Mini: 696
- Jaguar: 381
- Additional EV models*: 5,390
Total EV sales estimated by KBB in the U.S. in Q1 2025: 296,227
*The additional EV models category is likely made up of low-volume, luxury, and niche EV makers
Top 10 EV models sold in the U.S. in Q1 2025
- Tesla Model Y: 64,051
- Tesla Model 3: 52,520
- Ford Mustang Mach-E: 11,607
- Chevrolet Equinox EV: 10,329
- Honda Prologue: 9,561
- Hyundai Ioniq 5: 8,611
- VW ID.4: 7,663
- Ford F-150 Lightning: 7,187
- BMW i4: 7,125
- Tesla Cybertruck: 6,406
Here’s how many EVs were sold in the U.S. last year by model
Tesla Full Self-Driving is now the centerpiece of the company’s newly revised Referral Program, which launched on October 29.
Instead of referring people to purchase vehicles and the referrer receiving $250 in Tesla Credit, the new program now incentivizes Full Self-Driving subscriptions.
If a Tesla owner is on an FSD trial and uses a referral code to subscribe to Full Self-Driving, the person whose Referral Link was used will receive one month of FSD (Supervised). Their code can be utilized 12 times per year, with January 1 marking the reset date.
Realistically, this means that if your Referral Code is used by 12 Tesla owners on an FSD trial, you will receive a full year of FSD for free.
🚨 Here is Tesla’s new Referral Program for Full Self-Driving (Supervised):
When someone subscribes to FSD using your link, you’ll get a month free. Up to a year of FSD is available to you for free!
If you’d like to use my link: https://t.co/g00IX9OCE3 https://t.co/GFBzEO2jjS
— TESLARATI (@Teslarati) October 30, 2026
The previous program made it pretty difficult to get referrals; buying a vehicle is obviously a much larger financial strain than subscribing to Full Self-Driving for a month.
Of course, the previous Referral Program also offered a tangible benefit: $250 in credits you could use on Service, Supercharging, or anything in the Tesla Shop. It truly could pay for someone’s travel for a year. It recently bought me a new backpack and a T-shirt.
However, this new program is much more attainable for those who do not have a massive online presence of a slew of friends in the Tesla community who will use the code and max out subscriptions for vehicle purchases.
Woke up to maxed out Referrals! Thank you guys, that’s awesome!
Share your referral link below so others can use it! https://t.co/kesbwTcoTV
— TESLARATI (@Teslarati) October 30, 2026
The Full Self-Driving suite will now be the keystone of the Referral Program, which makes it more inclusive and more fun for everyone with an awesome benefit.
It also gives the impression that Tesla is truly focused on FSD subscriptions, something that saw a tremendous increase in volume in Q3, as 75 percent of deliveries for the quarter came with an FSD subscription attached.
Full Self-Driving data is so instrumental to the suite’s improvement that this kind of program benefits Tesla as much as it does the consumer.
Elon Musk
Tesla made napping in a Robotaxi easier with its latest update
Tesla’s quiet mode reaches Model Y Robotaxis, blacking out the screen for riders wanting rest.
Tesla’s quiet mode, the setting that blacks out the screen for riders who want to rest, has moved beyond the Cybercab. A video posted Thursday by Spencer (@scotsrule08) shows the feature running in a Model Y Robotaxi on a night ride that appears to be in Dallas.
New quiet mode now on @Robotaxi https://t.co/2cM2eM9NeN — Spencer (@scotsrule08) October 29, 2026
The rider taps a small crescent moon icon in the bottom right corner of the map screen. The map, media player, app shortcuts and Grok prompt disappear, leaving a dark display with “Arriving soon,” the destination and a line reading “Tap display to exit quiet mode.” Controls a passenger may still need, including Pull Over, cabin temperature, volume and Support, stay visible. One tap anywhere brings the full map back.
Quiet mode first showed up in the Cybercab last week, which Teslarati reported alongside a new rear camera view. Tesla has been trimming cabin noise in other ways too. On October 25, Spencer reported that Robotaxi turn signals now chime for the first four blinks and then go silent. Tesla has not published release notes for either change.
Elon Musk has been pitching this use for more than a decade. In October 2014, he said that “maybe five or six years from now I think we’ll be able to achieve true autonomous driving where you could literally get in the car, go to sleep and wake up at your destination,”
By 2017 he was setting a higher bar. Speaking at TED, Musk said the hard part was not making self-driving work 99.9 percent of the time, “because, like, if a car crashes one in a thousand times, then you’re probably still not going to be comfortable falling asleep. You shouldn’t be, certainly.”
Owners asked for something similar in their own cars. In December 2019, a Tesla owner requested a Nap Mode that would keep the climate running and wake the occupant with an alarm, and Musk answered “Ok,” as Teslarati covered at the time.
The line returned when the Cybercab was unveiled at the We, Robot event in October 2024. “We’ll move from supervised Full Self-Driving to unsupervised Full Self-Driving, where you can fall asleep and wake up at your destination,” Musk said. On Tesla’s first quarter earnings call in April 2025, he called it the deciding measure: “The acid test is, can you go to sleep in your car and wake up in your destination and I’m confident that will be available in many cities in the US by the end of this year,”
Tesla has run driverless Model Y rides in Dallas and Houston since April, so a passenger dozing off on the way home is now a realistic use of the button. Tesla is also offering new riders a free first trip in both cities, according to an in-app screen shared by tracker Ethan McKanna, and said on its third quarter call that Cybercab rides would launch in Dallas next month.
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FCC green lights SpaceX’s move to a showdown with Verizon and AT&T
The FCC advanced plans opening 482 MHz to satellite phone service, boosting SpaceX’s Starlink Mobile.
The Federal Communications Commission voted Thursday to move forward with a proposal that would open an additional 482 MHz of spectrum to satellite service beamed directly to ordinary phones, a step that could widen the road for SpaceX’s Starlink Mobile to compete with the country’s largest wireless carriers.
The commission adopted the notice of proposed rulemaking at its October open meeting in Washington, Reuters reported. The proposal would raise the number of bands eligible for Supplemental Coverage from Space from five to 13, according to the FCC fact sheet. Commissioners also advanced a companion item proposing an auction of 25 MHz in the 1675 to 1695 MHz and 2020 to 2025 MHz bands, which could be used for terrestrial service, direct to device service or both.
Thursday’s vote does not hand any spectrum to SpaceX. It opens a public comment period, and final rules will come later. Under the draft, comments would be due 60 days after the notice is published in the Federal Register. The FCC had not released the adopted text at the time of writing, so it is not yet clear whether any bands were changed before the vote.
That question is where the fight now moves. AT&T, Verizon and T-Mobile, through industry group CTIA, asked the FCC to drop the 2.5 GHz and 3.45 GHz bands, which make up 290 MHz of the 482 MHz on the table, as Teslarati reported ahead of the vote. T-Mobile argued satellite interference could wipe out up to 96% of a cell site’s uplink coverage area. SpaceX asked the commission to go the other way and add the 902 to 928 MHz band.
The rule change that matters most to SpaceX may be a structural one. Today, a satellite operator must lease spectrum from every carrier holding co-channel licenses across an entire region such as the contiguous United States. The proposal would replace that with a certification that the operator has coexistence agreements covering only the areas it plans to serve, or that it holds the terrestrial licenses itself.
SpaceX has spent this year building that second path. It bought EchoStar’s AWS-4 and H-block licenses in a deal worth roughly $17 billion, and earlier this month agreed to acquire Grain Management’s nationwide 800 MHz portfolio, which the company said would pave the way for Starlink to become a major US mobile carrier. The FCC approved SpaceX’s purchase of three unused AWS-3 licenses from Tristar on October 21, and cleared its plan for 15,000 next generation direct to cell satellites on October 6.
The regulator has not always sided with SpaceX. In April, the FCC dismissed a SpaceX petition seeking access to Mobile Satellite Service spectrum held by incumbents, and it rejected 2.5 GHz for satellite coverage when it first adopted the framework in 2024.
The carriers are also building their own defenses. In May, the three companies agreed in principle to form a joint venture pooling spectrum for satellite service, and T-Mobile remains SpaceX’s US launch partner for Starlink Mobile even as it leads the push to keep satellites out of 2.5 GHz. SpaceX President Gwynne Shotwell has said service on SpaceX’s own airwaves is targeted for early 2028.
Tesla Full Self-Driving becomes main pillar of new Referral Program
Tesla made napping in a Robotaxi easier with its latest update
