Unlike Elon Musk with his list of broken promises, the stats don’t lie. Tesla has lost the title of the world’s largest maker of EVs to Chinese automaker BYD. The signs have been there for a while, with BYD besting Tesla sales in Europe a number of times during 2025. Now it’s official on a global basis.
Despite being blocked from entering the US market, BYD’s seemingly unstoppable rise continues as its EV sales rose last year by 28 percent to 2.25 million. In contrast, Tesla announced today it delivered 1.64 million vehicles in 2025—its second annual decline in a row, and a 16 percent year-over-year decline for the fourth quarter. This is not merely the China brand edging ahead of Tesla in the electric vehicle race; it’s a marked shift.
Last week, BYD stated that in 2025 it sold 4.6 million “new energy vehicles” (which includes both full EVs and plug-in hybrids) globally, with more than a million of these being exported cars. Its passenger vehicle exports specifically were up more than 145 percent year-on-year.
The news comes after a frankly disastrous year for Tesla that saw the high-selling Model Y, crucial for both Elon Musk and his car company, get a half-hearted refresh that bombed, failing to reverse sales woes. It was also a year that disclosed just how few people bought the much-berated Cybertruck; in March, yet another recall revealed the company had apparently sold less than 50,000 electric pickups since customer deliveries began 14 months previously. Musk had told investors Tesla would sell 250,000 Cybertrucks per year.
With Tesla sales down in the US and in free fall in Europe, Musk turned to US president Donald Trump for help. Trump obliged by morphing the White House South Lawn into a makeshift Tesla showroom, claiming he would himself purchase a racy Model S Plaid. But by June it was reported Trump might be selling the car after publicly falling out with Musk.
Just last month, EV news site Electrek reported that Musk’s SpaceX had bought tens of millions of dollars worth of Cybertrucks that supposedly Tesla can’t sell. (You can see the pickups all lined up at SpaceX in this video.) If true, that move would significantly bolster Tesla’s financial performance in 2025’s fourth quarter, providing at least some respite for the automaker after the US ended its EV tax credits at the end of the third quarter.
“Tesla still has formidable assets, brand recognition, manufacturing know-how, and a strong installed base,” says Andy Palmer, former COO of Nissan and former CEO of Aston Martin Lagonda. “The challenge is that the market has matured while the product line has not moved fast enough. People are struggling to justify spending on a Tesla when other brands, including those from China, are delivering more innovative and advanced products.”
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