Tesla said in its third-quarter update on Wednesday that it “ended the quarter with the largest backlog for our passenger vehicles in four years,” and that battery availability, not demand, limited how many cars it could build.
“While battery availability continued to be the limiting factor in increasing auto volumes in the quarter, we have made additional progress in securing future supply, as we work toward our goal of maximum utilization of our factories,” the company wrote on page 3 of the deck.
The update gives no backlog figure, order count or deposit total. Management takes questions on a webcast at 5:30 p.m. ET, which had not started at the time of writing.
The Comparison Period
On the second-quarter call in July, Chief Financial Officer Vaibhav Taneja said Tesla had exited the quarter with its “largest order backlog since 2023.”
The third-quarter deck now says four years, which reaches back to 2022, and moves the claim into the highlights page. The second-quarter deck did not mention a backlog in writing.
The language on batteries has also shifted.
In July, the second-quarter deck described battery pack capacity expansion as “the main limiting factor to near-term vehicle production volume increase.”
The third-quarter deck says on page 7 that “battery availability remains a limiting factor on the pace of our global vehicle production ramp,” and on page 3 that it “continued to be the limiting factor in increasing auto volumes.”
The deck also names Full Self-Driving as a demand driver. “We believe that FSD is driving demand in markets where it is available, and we continue to work with regulators to get it approved in other markets.”
FSD (Supervised) attach rates reached “over 75% of new vehicle deliveries in North America – our most mature market – a nearly twenty percentage point sequential increase,” Tesla said.
Active subscriptions rose to 1.74 million from 1.48 million at the end of June and 1.04 million a year earlier, a record for net new subscriptions.
Demand
On page 6 of its shareholder letter, Tesla said it “achieved record quarterly deliveries in several markets, including Canada, Australia, Japan and Taiwan,” without figures.
“Given the strong demand we are seeing across various markets, we remain focused on increasing production across our factories and attained record production at Gigafactory Berlin,” it added.
In Canada, the company halted orders for the Shanghai-built Model 3 during the quarter over Ottawa’s import quota, so the record there was set with a narrower lineup.
The outlook on page 9 says “Deliveries and deployments will be impacted by aggregate demand for our products, supply chain readiness and allocation decisions between sale to customers and use for our owned and operated fleet.”
The second-quarter deck used “or use” in place of “and use.” Vehicles kept for the robotaxi service do not count as deliveries under Tesla’s definition, which requires transfer to an end customer.
Cybercab entered the Austin fleet on September 3 and the deck lists its Texas capacity at more than 125,000 units a year.
What the Numbers Show
Tesla delivered 486,532 vehicles in the quarter, down 2.1% from a year earlier, and produced 464,391, up 2.8% from the second quarter, according to the operational summary on page 5. Deliveries exceeded production by 22,141, after a gap of 28,368 in the second quarter.
Global vehicle inventory fell to 11 days of supply from 15 at the end of June and 27 at the end of March, but was above the 10 days of a year earlier. The inventory line on the balance sheet, which also includes materials and parts, rose to $14.09 billion from $13.75 billion.
Model 3 and Model Y deliveries fell 0.6% from a year earlier to 478,237, while deliveries of other models dropped 47.9% to 8,295, the steepest decline in the series and most of the overall drop.
Tesla does not separate the Cybertruck from the Model S and Model X. Vehicles delivered under operating leases fell 32.4% to 6,911.
Automotive sales revenue, which excludes regulatory credits and leasing but includes FSD and other ancillary sales, was $41,896 per non-leased delivery, up 0.2% from a year earlier and down 1.0% from the second quarter.
Tesla listed “lower vehicle average selling price (ASP) (excl. FX impact), inclusive of mix impact” among the drags on revenue on page 25, along with a “decrease in vehicle deliveries,” and cited “positive FX impact of $0.3B” and “higher automotive ancillary sales, primarily driven by an increase in FSD subscriptions” on the other side.
Sales Where Tesla Does Not Comment
The deck does not mention the US federal clean vehicle credit, which the IRS says is not available for vehicles acquired after September 30, 2025. That expiry set a high base as Tesla’s record 497,099 deliveries in the third quarter of 2025 came as US buyers rushed to claim it.
In China, Tesla’s domestic sales fell 16.0% from a year earlier to 142,133 in the quarter, while exports from Giga Shanghai hit a record 132,978, based on China Passenger Car Association data.
Semi and Cybercab Orders
The deck gives no order figures for the Semi or the Cybercab. It lists the Semi line in Nevada at 25,000 units of annual capacity, with volume production begun, and Cybercab capacity in Texas at more than 125,000.
Tesla’s 2025 total was 1,636,129 deliveries, and it has delivered 1,324,681 so far this year. The company gave no delivery guidance for the fourth quarter or for 2026.
The backlog, the battery shortfall and the share of output to be kept for the fleet are the three numbers that would allow the demand claim to be tested, and none is in the deck.
