Analysts expect Tesla to report third-quarter deliveries of 461,974 vehicles, down 7.1% from a year earlier, according to a company-compiled consensus published on Tuesday.
That would also be 3.8% below the 480,126 vehicles Tesla delivered in the second quarter, when it beat the same kind of consensus by more than 74,000 units.
The 24 contributing analysts expect record energy storage deployments of 15.9 gigawatt hours, up 27% from a year earlier.
The median delivery estimate is 463,406, slightly above the mean. Model 3 and Model Y account for 450,712 of the expected total, 6.3% fewer than the 481,166 delivered a year earlier.
All other models, including the Cybertruck, account for 11,285, down 8.7% from the second quarter and 29.2% from a year earlier.
The standard deviation among the 24 estimates is 22,659 vehicles, or 4.9% of the mean.
Tesla averages each line separately, so the model estimates add up to 461,997, 23 more than the total.
The storage estimate would top the 14.2 GWh record Tesla set in the fourth quarter of 2025.
Tesla delivered a record 497,099 vehicles in the third quarter of 2025, a quarter in which US buyers rushed to purchase before the $7,500 federal EV tax credit expired on September 30.
A Mixed Record
Tesla began publishing the consensus in December, and Tuesday’s release is its fourth.
It missed the first one, for the fourth quarter of 2025, by 4,623 vehicles, or 1.1%, delivering 418,227. In the first quarter of 2026 it delivered 358,023, 2.1% below the consensus of 365,645.
Storage deployments that quarter fell to 8.8 GWh, 38.9% short of the 14.4 GWh analysts expected.
However, the second quarter went the other way. Analysts had expected 406,024 deliveries, in the tightest spread of the four releases, and Tesla delivered 480,126, 18.3% more.
Deliveries exceeded production by 28,368 vehicles in that quarter, after a 50,363-unit build of inventory in the first.
Chief Financial Officer Vaibhav Taneja said on the July 22 earnings call that Tesla “exited Q2 with our largest order backlog since 2023.”
Full-Year View Raised
Analysts now expect 1,767,255 deliveries in 2026, up from 1,654,808 in the June consensus.
That estimate had fallen in each of the two previous releases, from 1,750,243 in December and 1,689,691 in March.
With 838,149 vehicles delivered in the first half, the full-year and third-quarter means together imply about 467,100 deliveries in the fourth quarter, 11.7% more than a year earlier.
That calculation is based on the published averages rather than a figure Tesla released.
Meeting the full-year estimate would lift deliveries 8.0% from 1,636,129 in 2025, Tesla’s first annual increase since 2023.
The 2026 storage consensus has moved the other way, easing to 56.5 GWh from 57.9 GWh in June and a high of 65.2 GWh in March.
That would still be 21% more than the 46.7 GWh Tesla deployed in 2025, and it implies about 18.3 GWh in the fourth quarter.
Other Forecasts
The company-compiled figure sits above the Visible Alpha consensus of 448,679 cited by Cantor Fitzgerald on Monday.
Cantor analyst Andres Sheppard expects 421,758 deliveries, calling his estimate “more conservative.”
Goldman Sachs analyst Mark Delaney cut his forecast to 435,000 from 490,000 this month, saying of China, the U.S. and Europe that “all three regions are tracking slower than we had previously expected.”
UBS analyst Joseph Spak is more optimistic, forecasting 470,000 deliveries.
The contributor list changed from June, adding six brokers, including Cantor, Mizuho and New Street Research, and dropping four, including Wells Fargo and William Blair.
