Tesla reclaims the quarterly EV crown from BYD, but the numbers tell a more complicated story

Tesla delivered 358,023 battery electric vehicles in the first quarter of 2026, edging past BYD’s 310,389 pure electric sales to reclaim the global quarterly BEV lead it surrendered across all of 2025. The margin, roughly 48,000 units, was enough for the headline. What it was not enough to do was silence the questions multiplying around Elon Musk’s car company.

The 358,023 figure, reported on Thursday, missed the Wall Street consensus of 365,645 by about 7,600 vehicles, and Tesla’s stock promptly fell more than 5 per cent in its steepest single-day drop of the year. The company has now lost roughly 20 per cent of its market value since January. More troubling than the miss itself was the gap between production and deliveries: Tesla built 408,386 vehicles during the quarter but shipped only 358,023, adding more than 50,000 units ...