MAGA on fire.
Musk locked in – can’t get out.
Happy New Year.
Tesla vehicle sales declined for a second consecutive year in 2025, hitting their lowest point since 2022.
- The results mean that Chinese automaker BYD sold more EVs in 2025 than Tesla for the first time in a full year: 2.26 million for BYD and 1.64 million for Tesla.
Why it matters: Tesla vehicle sales are critical to funding CEO Elon Musk’s AI ambitions, including humanoid robots and self-driving cars.
Driving the news: The company on Friday reported a 8.6% drop in deliveries — a close approximation to sales — to 1.64 million for the year.
- The full-year drop came despite an unexpected boost to sales in the third quarter as consumers rushed to buy EVs to qualify for the federal tax cut before it expired at the end of September.
- Deliveries are now down 9.5% since their all-time high in 2023.
- Deliveries totaled 418,227 for the fourth quarter, down 15.6% from the same period a year earlier and missing Wall Street’s consensus estimate of 422,900.
- It was also the automaker’s worst fourth-quarter showing since 2022.
The big picture: The company suffered a backlash to Elon Musk’s political activity in early 2025 and the end of the federal EV tax credit later in the year.
- Some prospective customers spurned Tesla after Musk became a close adviser to President Trump and leader of the budget-slashing Department of Government Efficiency.
- Musk acknowledged “some blowback” from his political involvement was hurting the company and eventually left the administration.
Another non-political factor that might be hurting sales: Tesla’s vehicles are aging.
- The company hasn’t introduced a new vehicle or redesigned either of its two primary models this decade.
Yes, but: The sales performance was “much better than the whisper numbers” of about 410,000 for the fourth quarter, Wedbush Securities analyst and tech bull Dan Ives wrote.
- The whisper number is an unofficial estimate that sometimes reflects true analyst expectations.
- Tesla shares were up 0.7% in early trading Friday
========================
In other news:
For years, people have lodged complaints about Tesla Inc.’s doors — to US regulators, on social media, in legal filings — after incidents ranging from the mundane to the truly terrifying.
Just this month, a Virginia state trooper bashed the window of a burning Tesla Model Y when its doors wouldn’t open and pulled the driver to safety, a dramatic rescue captured by the police officer’s dashcam. Certain aspects of the episode — doors ceasing to function normally after a crash, leading to a close call involving first responders — mirror the circumstances of scenes Bloomberg News has reported on for months.
As part of a broad investigation into the risks of electric door handles, Bloomberg attempted to quantify for the first time the number of fatal crashes in the US in which door functionality played a role. This reporting turned up at least 15 deaths in a dozen incidents over the past decade in which occupants or rescuers were unable to open the doors of a Tesla that had crashed and caught fire.
The figures represent a small fraction of the hundreds of fatal electric vehicle crashes over that period, but the numbers are growing. More than half of the deaths in Bloomberg’s analysis occurred since November 2024.
There are no comprehensive, publicly available statistics from any state or federal agency on how many people have been trapped by inoperative doors and subsequently died. Gathering reliable data is complicated, in part because it can be difficult to know with certainty what happened in the frantic moments between when a vehicle crashed and when it was engulfed in flames.
“It’s terrifying,” said Kevin Clouse, a Georgia resident who was trapped in his Model 3 following a 2023 crash and had to kick out a window to escape. He recently filed a complaint with US regulators and has sought to raise awareness of door-related entrapment on social media. “You’re in a box that’s on fire and you can’t get out.”
A Washington Post review found at least a dozen cases since 2019 in which Tesla drivers, passengers or first responders were unable to immediately access or exit the vehicles in life-threatening situations. Two of the cases involve deaths in Cybertrucks.
In several instances, passengers who survived the initial impact of a severe crash were trapped inside as fire spread through the Tesla after the interior buttons ceased to function. Manual latches can open the doors if the buttons fail, but the steps — detailed in Tesla’s owner’s manuals — are not always obvious. Meanwhile, the Cybertruck’s rugged exterior — which is built to both withstand exterior blows and contain blasts from the inside — has in some cases factored into rescue efforts by first responders, according to documents reviewed by The Post.
A couple in Wisconsin died in November 2024 after a Tesla Model S erupted in flames following a crash and the electronically powered doors wouldn’t open, a lawsuit alleges. Months earlier, a man in Texas burned to death in a Cybertruck when he was trapped inside it, another lawsuit alleges.
Billionaire Tesla CEO Elon Musk signaled his support for Republicans on New Year’s Day ahead of the 2026 midterm elections after he feuded with President Donald Trump.
“America is toast if the radical left wins,” Musk wrote on X. “They will open the floodgates to illegal immigration and fraud. Won’t be America anymore.”
Musk responded to a social media post from a conservative influencer claiming he was “going all-in funding Republicans to help President Trump take back full control in the November midterms.”
I can’t tell if they’re only counting doors that stuck due to electrical failure, since stuck doors are a common problem in crashes (e.g., necessitating the “jaws of life”).
That reminds me that I still need to get a window hammer thingy mounted in my new car (replaced after my old one got T-boned January 2025).