Tesla loses EV crown to BYD as sales continue to decline

Unlike Elon Musk with his list of broken promisesstatistics don’t lie. Tesla has lost the title of the world’s largest manufacturer of EV to the Chinese car manufacturer BYD. The signs have been there for a while, with BYD outselling Tesla in Europe a certain number of times during 2025. It is now official on a global scale.

Although it is blocked enter the American marketBYD’s seemingly unstoppable rise continues as its electric vehicle sales increased last year by 28% to 2.25 million. In contrast, Tesla announced today that it has delivered 1.64 million vehicles in 2025— its second consecutive annual decline and a 16% year-over-year decline for the fourth quarter. It’s not just the Chinese brand that is ahead of Tesla in the electric vehicle race; this is a marked change.

Last week, BYD said that in 2025 it had sold 4.6 million “new energy vehicles” (which includes both full electric vehicles and electric vehicles). plug-in hybrids) worldwide, of which more than a million are exported cars. Its exports of passenger vehicles increased by more than 145 percent year-on-year.

The news comes after a frankly disastrous year for Tesla, which saw the hot-selling Model Y, crucial to both Elon Musk and his automaker, receive a half-hearted endorsement. refresh this bombedwithout being able to reverse the sales problems. It is also a year that has revealed barely how few people bought THE very reprimanded Cybertruck; in March, yet another reminder revealed that the company had apparently sold fewer than 50,000 electric vans since it began deliveries to customers 14 months ago. Musk had told investors that Tesla would sell 250,000 Cybertrucks per year.

With Tesla sales in the United States and in free fall in EuropeMusk turned to the United States President Donald Trump for help. Trump obliged by transforming the South Lawn of the White House into a makeshift venue Tesla showroom, saying he would buy a racy vehicle himself Model S Checkered. But in June, it was reported that Trump could be sell the car after publicly falling out with Musk.

Last month, electric vehicle news site Electrek reported that Musk EspaceX had bought Cybertrucks worth tens of millions of dollars that Tesla supposedly cannot sell. (You can see the mics all lined up at SpaceX in this video.) If true, the move would significantly strengthen Tesla’s financial performance in the fourth quarter of 2025, providing at least some respite for the automaker from the crisis. The United States has ended its electric vehicle tax credits at the end of the third trimester.

Musk recently claimed that moving away from electric vehicles would secure the company’s future, as well as a A $1 trillion wage package for him. Tesla is banking on robotaxis and the production of legions of Optimus robots to catch up. The problem is that, despite Musk’s promise to deliver 1 million humanoid robots over the next decade, (comedy) sequences We are still seeing the emergence of remote-controlled machines.