Wake up babe, Tesla’s Q3 delivery numbers just dropped…

What do you get when you mix FOMO, a $7,500 government coupon, and Elon Musk’s cultlike fanbase? Nearly half a million Teslas flooding America’s roads in a way we haven’t seen since Henry Ford cranked out Model Ts back in 1913.

If you’re wondering “what’s with the millions of Tesla headlines today?” Well, that’s because Tesla just reported 497,099 deliveries in Q3… its best quarter ever. That’s up 29% from Q2 and a solid 7% over last year. Wall Street was expecting around 447k, so yeah… Elon spiked the football like prime Gronk on this one. But of course there’s an asterisk. 

The massive sales explosion was (of course) juiced by the federal EV tax credit expiring, which had buyers piling into Teslas like they were the last lifeboats on the Titanic. Buyers weren’t exactly swept away by Tesla’s charm… they just didn’t want to lose that $7,500 voucher.

The clock ran out on that $7,500 tax break thanks to Trump’s latest budget cuts, so buyers crammed into Q3 like I used to hit Wendy’s 4 for $4 at midnight in college. It’s a record, but a fragile one. Without the credit, Ford’s CEO literally said EV sales could drop by half. 

Musk himself warned of “rough quarters ahead.” Tesla also hasn’t dropped a legit new model in years (Cybertruck doesn’t count, especially when the GMC Hummer EV outsells it) and that’s left its profit margins thinner than we’ve ever seen.

(Source: Yahoo Finance)

And while the U.S. delivered a record quarter thanks to the stampede, Europe was a different story. Registrations there fell 22.5% year-over-year in August, even as the broader EV market grew nearly 27%. I’m not a genius but I’m guessing being permanently online and yelling about politics isn’t the best way to win over German environmentalists. No worries though… Elon would rather have you focus on his humanoid robots, robotaxis, and oh yeah… a proposed $1 trillion personal pay package (to in his spokesperson’s words “make it worth Elon’s time to focus on Tesla.”

Looking ahead, Tesla needs a monster Q4 to top last year’s delivery count. A “budget” Model Y in the low $30Ks is rumored to drop, stripped down like a dorm futon but cheap enough to tempt buyers. Meanwhile, Ford and GM are keeping incentives alive through leases, so the EV dogfight is about to get nastier.

Don’t be too fooled by the headlines, yes, Q3 was a record, but it was Uncle Sam handing Elon one last stimmie check before yanking away the subsidy. The stock’s ripped 30-40% in the last quarter, but now the training wheels are off. And we’re about to find out if people actually want Teslas… or if they just wanted a government coupon stapled to one.

At the time of publishing this article, Stocks.News holds positions in Tesla and Ford as mentioned in the article.