Tesla remained the dominant seller of battery-electric vehicles (BEVs) in the U.S. last year, with early estimates showing that the company sold more than most of its competitors combined. While data isn’t yet available for every automaker selling BEVs in the U.S., we took the time to compile some of the earliest estimates available for 2024 BEV sales, giving us an idea of where Tesla’s competitors landed in the year’s sales.
According to Cox Automotive, automakers sold 1.3 million BEVs in the U.S. in 2024, making up 8 percent of the total market share of nearly 16 million vehicles sold across powertrain types. EV sales also jumped in Q4 to 356,000 vehicles, marking a 12 percent jump year over year.
Cox also expects EV deliveries to surpass 1.5 million in the U.S. in 2025, while 2023 deliveries topped out at 1.2 million.
General Motors (GM) and Ford took up the second and third spots in U.S. BEV sales in 2024, both following Tesla, which held first place decisively. GM’s BEV sales were made up of the Chevy Equinox EV, the Chevy Blazer EV, the Chevy Silverado EV, the Cadillac Lyriq, the GMC Hummer EV, the GMC Sierra EV, and the BrightDrop EV600 commercial van. Ford’s BEV sales were comprised of the Mustang Mach-E, the F-150 Lightning, and the E-Transit.
Toyota was one of the few other manufacturers to release specific U.S. and BEV data, with the latter being made up of those from the BZ4X and Lexus RZ. The vast majority of Toyota’s “electrified” vehicles is comprised of hybrid and plugin hybrid powertrains, along with the Mirai which sports a fuel cell powertrain. All of these electrified vehicle types are excluded from the figure below.
Hyundai’s BEV figure was made up of Ioniq 5, Ioniq 6, and Kona BEV sales, the latter of which is also offered in a hybrid version. The company’s subsidiary Kia had BEV sales including the battery-electric EV6 and EV9, and while the automaker also sells a BEV version of the Niro, it did not separate the vehicle’s hybrid and BEV versions in its report released last week.
It’s worth noting that Tesla doesn’t share figures for individual market sales, though the maker was estimated by Cox Automotive to have sold about 633,000 units to remain the clear leader in the market. Others, such as Lucid and Rivian, deliver the vast majority of their vehicles in the U.S., though they do not break out region-specific figures. Meanwhile, similar estimates for the brands have not yet been shared publicly.
READ MORE ABOUT U.S. BEV SALES: Colorado becomes the #1 state for EV sales, beating California
Audi had 23,152 BEVs sold in the U.S. made up of its e-tron Q4, Q6, Q8, and GT lineups, while its parent company, Volkswagen, sold blank units comprised of the ID.4 and newly launched ID.Buzz, which was only sold in the market in the fourth quarter. BMW sold its battery-electric i4, i5, i7, and iX models in the U.S. last year.
Nissan’s BEVs included the Leaf and the Ariya, which saw year-to-date sales increases of 57 and 47 percent, respectively.
Cox Automotive is also expected to unveil its 2024 EV Sales report in the coming weeks, which should shed light on many of the automakers that have not shared market-specific figures.
You can see the recent estimates from Cox Automotive on the top EV makers in the U.S. in 2024 below, along with some figures directly from each automaker. Additionally, the source of the figures are linked near the bottom of the page.
How many BEVs did automakers sell in the U.S. in 2024?
- Tesla: 633,762
- GM: 114,432
- Ford: 97,865
- Hyundai: 61,797
- Kia: 56,099
- Rivian: 51,442
- BMW: 50,981
- Nissan: 31,024
- Toyota: 28,267
- Mercedes-Benz: 21,154
- Audi: 23,152
- Volkswagen: 18,183
Top 10 EV models sold in the U.S., according to Cox Auto estimates
- Tesla Model Y
- Tesla Model 3
- Ford Mustang Mach-E
- Hyundai Ioniq 5
- Tesla Cybertruck
- Ford F-150 Lightning
- Honda Prologue
- Chevy Equinox EV
- Cadillac Lyriq
- Rivian R1S
You can see detailed estimates from Cox Automotive, which were released on January 13.
Audi | BMW | Ford | GM | Hyundai | Lucid | Nissan | Rivian | Tesla | Toyota | Volkswagen
Updated 1/19: Added the latest figures from Cox Automotive estimates.
What are your thoughts? Did I miss any automakers or U.S. sales figures? Let me know at zach@teslarati.com, find me on X at @zacharyvisconti, or send us tips at tips@teslarati.com.
Study reveals less than 1% of EV owners wish to switch back to ICE
Elon Musk
Tesla confirmed HW3 can’t do Unsupervised FSD but there’s more to the story
Tesla confirmed HW3 vehicles cannot run unsupervised FSD, replacing its free upgrade promise with a discounted trade-in.
Tesla has officially confirmed that early vehicles with its Autopilot Hardware 3 (HW3) will not be capable of unsupervised Full Self-Driving, while extending a path forward for legacy owners through a discounted trade-in program. The announcement came by way of Elon Musk in today’s Tesla Q1 2026 earnings call.
🚨 Our LIVE updates on the Tesla Earnings Call will take place here in a thread 🧵
Follow along below: pic.twitter.com/hzJeBitzJU
— TESLARATI (@Teslarati) April 22, 2026
The history here matters. HW3 launched in April 2019, and Tesla sold Full Self-Driving packages to owners on the understanding that the hardware was sufficient for full autonomy. Some owners paid between $8,000 and $15,000 for FSD during that period. For years, as FSD’s AI models grew more demanding, HW3 vehicles fell progressively further behind, eventually landing on FSD v12.6 in January 2025 while AI4 vehicles moved to v13 and then v14. When Musk acknowledged in January 2025 that HW3 simply could not reach unsupervised operation, and alluded to a difficult hardware retrofit.
The near-term offering is more concrete. Tesla’s head of Autopilot Ashok Elluswamy confirmed on today’s call that a V14-lite will be coming to HW3 vehicles in late June, bringing all the V14 features currently running on AI4 hardware. That is a meaningful software update for owners who have been frozen at v12.6 for over a year, and it represents genuine effort to keep older hardware relevant. Unsupervised FSD for vehicles is now targeted for Q4 2026 at the earliest, with Musk describing it as a gradual, geography-limited rollout.
For HW3 owners, the over-the-air V14-lite update is welcomed, and the discounted trade-in path at least acknowledges an old obligation. What happens next with the trade-in pricing will define how this chapter ultimately gets written. If Tesla prices the hardware path fairly, acknowledges what early adopters are owed, and delivers V14-lite on the June timeline it committed to today, it has a real opportunity to convert one of the longest-running sore subjects among early adopters into a loyalty story.
Elon Musk
Tesla isn’t joking about building Optimus at an industrial scale: Here we go
Tesla’s Optimus factory in Texas targets 10 million robots yearly, with 5.2 million square feet under construction.
Tesla’s Q1 2026 Update Letter, released today, confirms that first generation Optimus production lines are now well underway at its Fremont, California factory, with a pilot line targeting one million robots per year to start. Of bigger note is a shared aerial image of a large piece of land adjacent to Gigafactory Texas, that Tesla has prominently labeled “Optimus factory site preparation.”
Permit documents show Tesla is seeking to add over 5.2 million square feet of new building space to the Giga Texas North Campus by the end of 2026, at an estimated construction investment of $5 billion to $10 billion. The longer term production target for that facility is 10 million Optimus units per year. Giga Texas already sits on 2,500 acres with over 10 million square feet of existing factory floor, and the North Campus expansion is being built to support multiple projects, including the dedicated Optimus factory, the Terafab chip fabrication facility (a joint Tesla/SpaceX/xAI venture), a Cybercab test track, road infrastructure, and supporting facilities.
Credit: TESLA
Texas makes strategic sense beyond the existing infrastructure. The state’s tax structure, lower labor costs relative to California, and the proximity to Tesla’s AI training cluster Cortex 1 and 2, both located at Giga Texas and now totaling over 230,000 H100 equivalent GPUs, means the Optimus software stack and the factory producing the hardware will share the same campus. Tesla’s Q1 report also confirmed completion of the AI5 chip tape out in April, the inference processor designed specifically to power Optimus units in the field.
As Teslarati reported, the Texas facility is intended to house Optimus V4 production at full scale. Musk told the World Economic Forum in January that Tesla plans to sell Optimus to the public by end of 2027 at a price between $20,000 and $30,000, stating, “I think everyone on earth is going to have one and want one.” He has previously pegged long term demand for general purpose humanoid robots at over 20 billion units globally, citing both consumer and industrial use cases.
Tesla (NASDAQ: TSLA) reported its earnings for the first quarter of 2026 on Wednesday afternoon. Here’s what the company reported compared to what Wall Street analysts expected.
The earnings results come after Tesla reported a miss on vehicle deliveries for the first quarter, delivering 358,023 vehicles and building 408,386 cars during the three-month span.
As Tesla transitions more toward AI and sees itself as less of a car company, expectations for deliveries will begin to become less of a central point in the consensus of how the quarter is perceived.
Nevertheless, Tesla is leaning on its strong foundation as a car company to carry forward its AI ambitions. The first quarter is a good ground layer for the rest of the year.
Tesla Q1 2026 Earnings Results
Tesla’s Earnings Results are as follows:
- Non-GAAP EPS –Â $0.41 Reported vs. $0.36 Expected
- Revenues –Â $22.387 billion vs. $22.35 billion Expected
- Free Cash Flow –Â $1.444 billion
- Profit –Â $4.72 billion
Tesla beat analyst expectations, so it will be interesting to see how the stock responds. IN the past, we’ve seen Tesla beat analyst expectations considerably, followed by a sharp drop in stock price.
On the same token, we’ve seen Tesla miss and the stock price go up the following trading session.
Tesla will hold its Q1 2026 Earnings Call in about 90 minutes at 5:30 p.m. on the East Coast. Remarks will be made by CEO Elon Musk and other executives, who will shed some light on the investor questions that we covered earlier this week.
You can stream it below. Additionally, we will be doing our Live Blog on X and Facebook.
Q1 2026 Earnings Call at 4:30pm CT https://t.co/pkYIaGJ32y
— Tesla (@Tesla) April 22, 2026
Tesla confirmed HW3 can’t do Unsupervised FSD but there’s more to the story
Tesla isn’t joking about building Optimus at an industrial scale: Here we go
