{"id":263825,"date":"2026-01-02T18:28:10","date_gmt":"2026-01-02T18:28:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/263825\/"},"modified":"2026-01-02T18:28:10","modified_gmt":"2026-01-02T18:28:10","slug":"tesla-loses-title-of-worlds-biggest-electric-vehicle-maker-to-chinese-rival-byd-us-news","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/263825\/","title":{"rendered":"Tesla loses title of world’s biggest electric vehicle maker to Chinese rival BYD | US News"},"content":{"rendered":"

Tesla has lost its crown as the world’s bestselling electric vehicle maker.<\/p>\n

The US firm faced a difficult year with unease over chief executive Elon Musk’s political activities<\/a><\/strong> and stiff overseas competition that pushed sales down for a second year in a row.<\/p>\n

Tesla<\/a><\/strong> said that it delivered 1.64 million vehicles in 2025, a decrease of 9% from a year earlier.<\/p>\n

Chinese rival BYD, which sold 2.26 million vehicles last year, is now the biggest EV maker.<\/p>\n

\"Tesla<\/p>\n

Image:
\n Tesla cars. Pic: AP<\/p>\n

Tesla sales totalled 418,227 between October and December, falling short of the 440,000 that analysts polled by FactSet expected.<\/p>\n

The sales total may have been hit by the end of a $7,500 (\u00a35,500) tax credit phased out by the Trump administration at the end of September.<\/p>\n

Despite this Tesla stock finished 2025 with a gain of approximately 11%. Investors hope Musk<\/a><\/strong> can deliver on his ambitions to make the company a leader in robotaxi services and get consumers to embrace humanoid robots that can perform basic tasks in homes and offices.<\/p>\n

Shares of Tesla rose almost 2% before the opening bell on Friday, with stock mostly unchanged at $450.27 in early trading.<\/p>\n

Read more:
Musk’s $1trn pay package approved by Tesla<\/a>
Tesla looks to cheaper model amid sales slump<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

<\/a><\/p>\n

The latest quarter was the first with sales of stripped-down versions of the Model Y and Model 3 that Musk unveiled in early October as part of an effort to revive sales.<\/p>\n

The new Model Y costs just under $40,000 (\u00a330,000) while customers can buy the cheaper Model 3 for under $37,000 (\u00a327,000).<\/p>\n

The new versions are aimed at helping Tesla to compete with Chinese models in Europe and Asia.<\/p>\n

For fourth-quarter earnings coming out in late January, analysts are expecting the company to post a 3% decrease in sales and a nearly 40% drop in earnings per share, according to FactSet.<\/p>\n

Analysts expect the downward trend in sales and profits to eventually reverse itself further into 2026.<\/p>\n

In November, Musk won a shareholder vote that will see him net a $1trn (\u00a3742bn) pay package if the firm meets a series of extremely ambitious performance targets over the next 10 years.<\/p>\n

Already the world’s richest man, he scored another huge windfall last month when the Delaware Supreme Court reversed a decision that deprived him of a $55bn (\u00a3408bn) pay package that Tesla gave him in 2018.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Tesla has lost its crown as the world’s bestselling electric vehicle maker. The US firm faced a difficult…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":263826,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[9,10,18,13,14,6,19,17,11,12,15,16,5,7,8],"class_list":{"0":"post-263825","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-headlines","8":"tag-breaking-news","9":"tag-breakingnews","10":"tag-eire","11":"tag-featured-news","12":"tag-featurednews","13":"tag-headlines","14":"tag-ie","15":"tag-ireland","16":"tag-latest-news","17":"tag-latestnews","18":"tag-main-news","19":"tag-mainnews","20":"tag-news","21":"tag-top-stories","22":"tag-topstories"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@ie\/115826924200067635","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/263825","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=263825"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/263825\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/263826"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=263825"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=263825"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=263825"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}