Tesla Delivers 480K Cars, Investors Hit Reverse 🚗📉

Tesla shares fell roughly 7.5% on July 2, the stock's steepest single-session decline in nearly a year, even after the company posted second-quarter deliveries well above analyst projections. The drop came three trading sessions after shares jumped more than 8% on June 29 following the rollout of the FSD v14 Lite update to older Hardware 3 vehicles for the first time in more than a year.

Tesla reported 480,126 vehicle deliveries for the quarter, against a company-compiled consensus of 406,024 and a StreetAccount estimate of 406,600. Production totaled 451,758 units, a 25% increase year over year and a 34% rise from the first quarter's 358,023 deliveries. The company also shipped more vehicles than it built, drawing down inventory that had grown earlier in the year. China-made EV sales rose 24.4% year over year in June, while Norway registrations fell 43%.

CNBC's Phil LeBeau called the figures a clear beat. "The consensus estimate going into today was 406.6 thousand vehicles. They beat it by 74,000 vehicles. So just a massive beat from Tesla for the second quarter," he said on air Thursday morning. Fund manager Gary Black noted that Tesla and Rivian shares had both climbed heading into their delivery reports, and said higher European gasoline prices linked to the Iran conflict likely pulled some demand forward, helped along by Tesla's cheaper Model 3 and Model Y variants.

Tesla's roughly $1.6 trillion market capitalization now rests primarily on its robotaxi and Full Self-Driving roadmap rather than car sales, a framing that echoes the doubts raised during Tesla's volatile 2010 IPO period. A National Highway Traffic Safety Administration probe remains open into a fatal June 19 crash involving Tesla's driver-assistance software, keeping regulatory scrutiny on the same autonomy stack now being deployed in robotaxis.

Tesla is scheduled to report full second-quarter financial results on July 22. That release will indicate whether the delivery beat was paired with pricing discipline or with margin-reducing incentives.