Tesla Still Sells Over Half of America’s EVs

Image: Tesla

Tesla sold an estimated 144,094 electric vehicles in the US in the third quarter, good for 54% of the market even as its own sales fell almost 20% from a year earlier. That’s according to the latest Kelley Blue Book EV sales report from Cox Automotive, which pegs total US EV sales for the quarter at 266,630, up 7.7% from the second quarter.

The Model Y did most of the heavy lifting with 99,037 sales in Q3, or 37.2% of every EV sold in the country, while the Model 3 added 40,346. Through the first nine months of 2026, the Model Y sits at 262,491 sales and the Model 3 at 106,962, keeping them as the two best-selling EVs in America by a wide margin.

A widely shared post put Tesla’s year-to-date share at 50.7%, but the Cox tables actually show 386,194 Tesla sales out of 729,869 total, which works out to 52.9%. That’s slightly lower than the 54% Tesla managed in the quarter alone, and below the Q1 share it posted earlier this year.

The bigger picture is that Tesla’s year-to-date volume is down 14.4% while the overall EV market is down nearly 30%, so rivals are shrinking faster than Tesla is. It’s a very different story from the record quarter a year ago, when buyers rushed to beat the end of the federal tax credit.

Tesla’s quarter still came in well below last year, when it sold 179,525 EVs in the US during the third quarter of 2025. The Model Y held up best with a 13.8% drop, while the Model 3 fell 25.1% and the Cybertruck slipped 19.7% to 4,323 units. The Model S and Model X have nearly disappeared from the tables, with just 215 and 173 sales in the quarter, down 88% and 95.2% respectively.

Rivian was the clear runner-up with 19,239 sales and a 7.2% share, up 45.7% from a year ago thanks to 8,469 commercial vans and 3,456 deliveries of the new R2. GM’s brands combined for 25,473 sales across Cadillac, Chevrolet and GMC, but Chevrolet alone fell 74.6% to 10,031 as the Equinox EV dropped to just 1,905 units. Ford sank 80.2% to 6,047 with only 289 F-150 Lightning sales, Hyundai fell 57.7% to 12,185, Kia dipped 35.3% to 9,575 and Honda’s Prologue fell 75.9% to 4,882, while Toyota jumped to 12,904 from just 3,015 a year ago on the bZ, bZ Woodland and C-HR.

Most of those declines trace back to the end of the $7,500 federal EV tax credit, which expired last fall after buyers rushed to grab it and pushed EVs above 10% of new car sales for the first time. Kelley Blue Book says EVs made up about 6.5% of all new vehicles sold in the US in the third quarter, up from 5.8% in the second quarter and the strongest result since the credit went away. That makes Q3 the best quarter for EV volume in a year, even with total sales still down 38.6% from the inflated 2025 peak.

Tesla’s 54% share is also a step up from the second quarter, when Cox counted 124,800 US sales and a 50.5% share during a stretch that also produced Tesla’s Q2 deliveries of more than 480,000 vehicles worldwide. It puts Tesla back near the level it reached in the first quarter, and it lines up with the 486,532 global Q3 deliveries Tesla reported earlier this month.

Do you think Tesla can hold above 50% once more new EVs reach showrooms?