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(Op-ed) A neutral look at Tesla’s upcoming Q1 2025 vehicle deliveries
Elon Musk affects Tesla, but his impact on the company’s raw vehicle sales may not be as notable as critics would suggest.
Tesla is such a volatile topic for many that it’s difficult to get a neutral image of the company and its fundamentals today. A look at Tesla news coverage shows this, as even dedicated electric vehicle blogs and tech publications seem to find it difficult to separate Tesla from Elon Musk, who is more polarizing than ever.
This is what I aim to cover in this op-ed. I will be exploring Tesla’s first quarter vehicle deliveries, why they might be underwhelming, the reasons behind them, and why I believe the sky is not necessarily falling.
A likely miss
Analyst consensus for Tesla’s Q1 2025 deliveries currently stands at 418,000 vehicles. That would suggest a year-over-year improvement of 8.06% from the 386,810 vehicles that Tesla was able to deliver in the first quarter of 2024. Considering Tesla’s sales in China and Europe over January and February, 418,000 deliveries seem to be a long shot for the first quarter of 2025.
It would not be surprising at all if Tesla ends up missing Wall Street’s consensus estimates, and by a pretty wide margin. Such is expected considering Tesla’s focus in the first quarter. But what is this focus, really? Elon Musk’s politics? Not necessarily.
A Model Y-shaped hole
Critics and negative Tesla news coverage would argue that the company’s steep drop in sales in several European markets and China is a sign that the company is finished, or that Elon Musk is doing global damage to the Tesla brand. However, Tesla’s sales decline this Q1 may actually be affected in no small part by the company’s transition from the Model Y classic to the new Model Y, which was launched across the United States, China, and Germany.
The Model Y is Tesla’s strongest seller, and it comprises a huge portion of the company’s deliveries every quarter. Considering that the Model Y classic quite literally became the world’s best-selling vehicle by volume in 2023 and 2024, it would not be an exaggeration to state that Tesla’s deliveries have been greatly carried by the all-electric crossover. What would happen then if Tesla implements a transition to the Model Y’s new version across its factories worldwide? Raw Model Y deliveries will go down, at least until Tesla starts deliveries of the revamped all-electric crossover. This is exactly what seems to be happening in China.
A look at Tesla China’s numbers from January and February will show that the company saw fewer registrations this year compared to last year. However, vehicle registrations have since picked up with the start of the new Model Y’s domestic deliveries. Similar trends may emerge in the United States and Europe, as well as territories supplied by Giga Shanghai, Giga Texas, the Fremont Factory, and Giga Berlin.
The Elon Musk factor
There is no doubt that Elon Musk is at his most polarizing today, but to credit Tesla’s low deliveries to the CEO’s political antics is very shortsighted. Yes, Elon Musk affects Tesla, but his impact on the company’s raw vehicle sales may not be as notable as critics would suggest. This could be seen in the results of a poll from German publication t-online, which initially concluded that 94% of Germans won’t buy a Tesla anymore. As it turned out, the survey would end up painting the complete opposite picture once more respondents took the poll. With more than 467,000 respondents on the survey, over 70% stated that they would buy a Tesla.
To state that Elon Musk’s political actions are not adversely affecting Tesla’s appeal to some consumers would not be accurate. There are evidently people who will not be purchasing a Tesla due to Elon Musk and his work with the Trump administration. The impact of the Musk factor, however, may not be as drastic as Tesla critics would suggest. It would not, for example, result in 94% of car buyers suddenly swearing off Tesla. The vast majority of consumers, after all, generally gravitate to the best products in the market, period. Assuming that this is true for most consumers today, Tesla’s vehicles definitely still have a fighting chance this year.
In conclusion
Considering Wall Street’s 418,000 vehicle delivery consensus, it almost seems certain that Tesla will miss this estimate by a notable margin. This would likely result in a wave of reports alleging that demand is drying up worldwide or Musk has completely tanked the brand’s appeal to consumers. With the new Model Y now starting its deliveries across the globe, however, Tesla’s real performance and a clearer view of Musk’s effect on the company’s demand, would likely become more evident in the coming quarters.
Elon Musk
The Boring Company’s newest tunnel vehicle runs on Tesla parts and no one is driving it
The Boring Company’s new tunnel vehicle runs on Tesla Model 3 batteries and drive units.
The Boring Company just introduced a new piece of hardware, and it runs on parts pulled straight from a Tesla showroom. Liner Truck 3, unveiled in a post from the tunneling company’s official X account, is an all electric vehicle built around Tesla Model 3 battery packs and drive units, purpose built to move concrete tunnel segments to the boring machine face without a single person underground.
Introducing Liner Truck 3 — our latest fully electric tunnel vehicle.
– Tesla Model 3 battery and drive units
– Transports 22,000+ lb of concrete segments to the boring machine
– 28 miles of range
– 12 mph max operating speed
– Remotely piloted from Global OCC in Texas, with… pic.twitter.com/XB7FgSXnpy— The Boring Company (@boringcompany) August 7, 2026
The job itself is unglamorous but critical. Each precast segment run weighs more than 22,000 pounds, roughly the load of a full cement mixer, and Liner Truck 3 hauls that weight repeatedly between the surface staging area and wherever the Prufrock machine happens to be cutting.
The Boring Company said Liner Truck 3 is piloted remotely out of its Global Operations Control Center in Texas, extending the Zero-People-In-Tunnel approach the company has spent years building toward. An earlier version of a ZPIT liner truck was already tested at the company’s Bastrop, Texas research tunnels, and a factory tour released last month showed an employee flying a fully loaded liner truck with a PlayStation controller. Liner Truck 3 looks like the production version of that same idea, cleaned up and pushed into daily use.
The timing lines up with a company digging in more places than it ever has before. The Boring Company now has multiple Prufrock machines active or arriving in Nashville, where Music City Loop construction has been accelerating since February, and its Vegas Loop network keeps adding tunnel mileage on a near monthly basis. Every one of those projects depends on getting concrete segments to the cutting face fast enough to keep the boring machine from idling, which is exactly the bottleneck Liner Truck 3 is designed to remove.
It also reinforces something Tesla owners have watched happen gradually across Musk’s companies: passenger car hardware finding a second life in heavy equipment. Model 3 drive units already move people through the Vegas Loop, and now the same components are hauling concrete underground in Nashville and wherever The Boring Company digs next. Whether that kind of component reuse extends further into TBC’s equipment lineup, or into other Musk owned industrial hardware, is the next thing worth watching.
Elon Musk
Elon Musk and SpaceX shrugs off the trading day Wall Street feared most
SpaceX stock did the opposite of what most of Wall Street expected this week, when the day designed to be its most dangerous turned into a rally, and the rally kept going.
Thursday marked the first major lockup expiration since SpaceX’s June IPO, making roughly 911.5 million insider held shares eligible to trade for the first time, more than doubling the company’s public float. Analysts and short sellers had spent weeks bracing for a flood of selling, especially after the stock fell 13 percent following its first earnings report as a public company on Tuesday. Instead, shares rose 6.1 percent Thursday to close at $114.92, and by Friday they were trading near $129, up more than another 12 percent on the day.
SpaceX shorts get warned by Musk ally, echoing Tesla’s early struggles
The setup made the outcome notable. Short interest had climbed to roughly 34 percent of the float heading into earnings, among the highest of any large cap stock, with about 95 percent of available shares to borrow already on loan. CEO Elon Musk warned short sellers twice in the weeks before the lockup, writing on X that “the survival probability of firms who maintain a significant short position in SpaceX over time is very low,” then following up on the morning of earnings with “I try to warn them, but they just double down.”
When the newly unlocked shares hit the market and the selloff never showed up, some of that short position appears to have started unwinding. TipRanks reported that options activity shifted toward bullish strategies like put selling and risk reversals following the rally, with roughly $600 million in options premium trading Thursday alone. Retail buyers also stepped in during the earnings dip, according to Vanda Research.
The fundamentals behind the stock have not changed much in a week. SpaceX’s revenue nearly doubled year over year to $7.8 billion, with Starlink subscribers doubling to 12 million and the company’s AI segment growing 247 percent. What spooked investors on Tuesday was the spending side. Capital expenditures jumped to more than $18 billion for the quarter, up from $2.8 billion a year earlier, with AI investment alone rising from $749 million to $15.8 billion. Wall Street remains split on whether that spending is building infrastructure SpaceX needs or outrunning what the business can currently support, a debate Teslarati has tracked since shares first came under pressure.
None of that resolves the bigger question hanging over the stock. Thursday’s release was only the first of nine staggered lockup tranches, with roughly $800 billion worth of additional shares scheduled to become eligible through October, and Musk’s own stake stays locked until next June. If this week is any indication, the market is treating that supply as something it can absorb rather than something to fear, at least for now.
News
The Boring Company’s newest Vegas Station has a permit quietly waiting behind it
Sahara Las Vegas opened a new Vegas Loop station, joining an exclusive two resort transit club.
Sahara Las Vegas opened a new Vegas Loop station Thursday, giving The Boring Company’s underground transit system its northernmost stop yet on the Strip. The station sits at Sahara’s Paradise Road entrance, on the southeast corner of Las Vegas Boulevard and Sahara Avenue, and connects riders to the Las Vegas Convention Center, other Strip resorts on the network and, eventually, Harry Reid International Airport.
The addition makes Sahara the second resort, after Fontainebleau opened its own station in January, to get a stop built at street level rather than tucked into the property itself. Sahara now joins Westgate as the only two Strip resorts offering both a Vegas Loop station and a stop on the Las Vegas Monorail, giving guests two separate ways to get around without leaving the property.
The Boring Company just doubled its tunneling power in Nashville
The bigger news buried in Thursday’s announcement is what comes next. Boring Company has already secured its first permit to tunnel north of Sahara Avenue, extending the network beyond where it currently ends, even though permits to push the Loop toward downtown Las Vegas still haven’t been granted. Crews are also working on a two mile dual tunnel line running from Westgate to a planned station at 4744 Paradise Road, just north of Tropicana Avenue, that Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority CEO Steve Hill has said the company hopes to open in time for November’s Las Vegas Grand Prix.
Ridership has grown alongside the buildout. The Loop moved roughly 82,000 passengers during CONEXPO in early March, a total the company highlighted on its own X account at the time, and the system has now carried more than 4 million passengers through 11 open stations since it began running in 2021. The airport connector tunnels, meant to give the Loop a direct link to Harry Reid, have slipped past their original first quarter target and remain under construction, with Boring Company director Mike Baier saying that a full opening is still a few months out.
For Sahara, the calculation is straightforward. Convention traffic drives a large share of Loop ridership, and a station at the property’s front door gives conventiongoers one more reason to book rooms on the Strip’s north end instead of closer to the convention center itself.
