Tesla’s sales in China have taken a significant hit, with Elon Musk’s EV giant experiencing its worst sales performance in years for the month of October.
Electrek reports that Elon Musk’s Tesla has faced a challenging year in China, the world’s largest EV market. In October 2025, the company delivered just over 26,000 electric vehicles in China, a 36 percent decrease compared to the more than 40,000 EVs it delivered during the same period last year. This marks Tesla’s worst month of the year, even surpassing the period when the automaker was transitioning production to the refreshed Model Y.
China’s EV market is highly competitive, and Tesla has been struggling to maintain its market share. The company’s year-to-date sales are down more than 40,000 units compared to the previous year. To avoid its first full-year sales decline in China, Tesla would need to achieve two consecutive months of record sales in November and December.
Chinese companies including BYD have engaged in a price war over the past few years in a desperate battle to take a larger piece of the China EV market. Breitbart News reported in 2023 that Musk’s Tesla agreed to uphold “core socialist values” as part of an industry pledge in the Communist country.
The company’s wholesale numbers, which include vehicles sold in China and those built in China for export to other markets, are also down 10 percent year-over-year. If this trend continues, it would mark two consecutive years of declining wholesale numbers from China for Tesla.
What is particularly concerning is that while EV sales are surging in China as a whole, Tesla is not benefiting from this growth. Despite the introduction of the Model Y refresh and the new Model YL, the company has not been able to regain its growth trajectory in the country.
The competition in China’s EV market is fierce, and Tesla appears to have reached a plateau. The company was expected to release new, cheaper versions of the Model 3 and Model Y, similar to its recent move in the US, but these plans have been delayed. Tesla’s shareholders had hoped that the Model Y refresh and the new Model YL would help the automaker recover from its worrying performance in 2024. However, the current sales figures indicate that these efforts have not been sufficient to boost the company’s growth in China.
Read more at Electrek here.
Lucas Nolan is a reporter for Breitbart News covering issues of free speech and online censorship.
