Building 1 of Tesla's Gigafactory Texas near Austin, a long grey concrete building with a band of windows, behind a field of grass in June 2022 · Larry D. Moore, via Wikimedia Commons · CC BY 4.0

Article · 2026-10-02 · 5 min read · Electric vehicles and energy storage · Stocks

Tesla delivers 486,532 vehicles, 10,567 short of last year's record

Tesla's release of Friday 2 October counts 486,532 deliveries and 464,391 vehicles produced in the third quarter, 6,406 more deliveries than in the spring but 10,567 fewer than the record quarter of 2025, when buyers in the United States rushed to claim a federal tax credit before it ended; most of the gap is the other models, down to 8,295 from 15,933, while storage deployments came to 13.7 gigawatt hours and the first nine months run about 9 percent ahead of 2025.

By the desk. Researched and written by an AI model from the sources listed at the end; nothing here restates another publication's text.

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What Tesla reported

Tesla said on Friday 2 October that it delivered 486,532 vehicles in the third quarter and produced 464,391, and that it deployed 13.7 gigawatt hours of energy storage, the batteries it sells as Megapack and Powerwall, the first of which its quarterly report counts among its industrial storage products. The Model 3 and the Model Y, its two high-volume cars, made up 478,237 of the deliveries and its other models 8,295. About 1 percent of the deliveries are subject to operating lease accounting, which means Tesla keeps those cars on its own books and records their revenue over the lease instead of at the sale. ^{[1, 8]}

The release sets its own limit on these figures: deliveries and deployments 'represent only two measures of the Company's financial performance and should not be relied on as an indicator of quarterly financial results', which it says depend on average selling price, cost of sales and foreign exchange, among other things. Net income and cash flow come with the results. ^[1]

Against last year's record

By the desk's arithmetic on Tesla's releases, the quarter's deliveries were 6,406 more than the 480,126 of the second quarter and 10,567 fewer than the 497,099 of the third quarter of 2025, which that year's release called 'a record for both deliveries and deployments'. Of the 10,567, 7,638 were the other models, whose deliveries went from 15,933 to 8,295, and 2,929 were the Model 3 and Model Y, which went from 481,166 to 478,237. ^{[1, 2, 3]}

That record quarter came as a federal tax credit ran out. InsideEVs reported at the time that Model 3 and Model Y deliveries were 'benefitting from the last-minute sales rush in the U.S. before the federal tax credit ended on Sept. 30', the $7,500 credit for buyers of electric cars. The same report named the other models as the Cybertruck, the Model X and the Model S; Tesla's releases do not name them. ^[9]

Over the first nine months of 2026 the three releases add up to 1,324,681 deliveries, against 1,217,902 in the same months of 2025, about 9 percent more by the desk's arithmetic. The first quarter of 2025 was low for a reason Tesla gave at the time: 'the changeover of Model Y lines across all four of our factories led to the loss of several weeks of production'. ^{[1, 2, 4, 5, 6, 3]}

Produced and delivered

Tesla delivered more vehicles than it produced for a second quarter running: 22,141 more in the third quarter and 28,368 more in the second, after producing 50,363 more than it delivered in the first. Over the nine months the two come out almost level, 1,324,535 produced and 1,324,681 delivered, a difference of 146, by the desk's arithmetic on the three releases. The other models' production, 7,004, is the lowest of the seven quarters of releases read for this piece. ^{[1, 2, 4, 5, 6, 3, 7]}

Storage

Storage deployments of 13.7 gigawatt hours compare with 13.5 in the second quarter and 12.5 a year earlier; the record is still the 14.2 of the fourth quarter of 2025. A gigawatt hour is a million kilowatt hours of battery capacity. The nine months come to 36.0 gigawatt hours, against 32.5 in the same months of 2025, by the desk's arithmetic. Tesla's quarterly report says that for Megapack 'energy storage deployments can vary meaningfully quarter to quarter depending on the timing of specific project milestones and logistics'. ^{[1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8]}

In the second quarter, the last with filed results, energy generation and storage revenue was $350 million, or 13 percent, higher than a year earlier, which the report puts down to more Megapack deployments, partly offset by a lower average selling price per Megapack and fewer Powerwall deployments. One buyer is a related party: the report records $318 million of revenue in the quarter from SpaceX 'for its purchase of our Megapack products in the ordinary course of business'. ^[8]

The volumes feed a company that is spending heavily. The same report says Tesla expects its capital expenditures 'to be in excess of $25 billion in 2026, driven by our AI initiatives', and on 29 September it signed $30.0 billion of bank credit, which the desk's story of 30 September read in full. ^{[8, 10]}

What settles it next

Tesla posts its results for the quarter after the market closes on Wednesday 21 October, with a question-and-answer webcast at 4:30 p.m. Central Time; net income and cash flow come then. The quarterly report on Form 10-Q for the quarter ended 30 September follows, and the release says that is where the factors behind the results, average selling price, cost of sales and foreign exchange among them, will be disclosed. ^[1]

Who it reaches

Tesla is the filer, and every figure in this piece is from its own releases and quarterly report, with the comparisons worked out by the desk. SpaceX is tagged adjacent as the related party that bought $318 million of Megapacks in the second quarter, by Tesla's report. This piece prints no share price. ^{[1, 8]}

Sources

Every stock is a company; the desk grades the company behind the stock. This article describes; it does not recommend. Adjacent means the company is not named in the event and the path by which it is reached is stated above.

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