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Electric vehicle sales to hit record this quarter as sun sets on tax credit

Cox Automotive expects US EV sales to reach 410,000 in Q3, up more than 20% from last year.

9/29/25 9:27AM

Electric vehicle sales are expected to reach 410,000 in the US this quarter — up more than 20% from Q3 2024, according to new estimates from Cox Automotive. That means EVs will make up a record share of the new car market, at 10% of sales.

Would-be EV buyers are pulling forward purchases in order to take advantage of the federal $7,500 tax credit, which ends this month. Of course, that likely means EV sales will soon fall off because of those who pulled their purchases forward.

“The federal tax credit was a key catalyst for EV adoption, and its expiration marks a pivotal moment,” Stephanie Valdez Streaty, Cox’s director of industry insights, said. “This shift will test whether the electric vehicle market is mature enough to thrive on its own fundamentals or still needs support to expand further.”

Cox also estimated that Tesla, which sells more EVs than any other manufacturer in the US by far, will see its third-quarter US sales decline about 6% year over year. The situation would be similar to the one in Europe, where EV sales rose 30% last month while Tesla’s sales declined 37%.

However, other estimates, including those from prominent Tesla analyst Troy Teslike, expect the company’s sales to rise about 15% to a record this quarter. Tesla’s stock, meanwhile, is on track for its best month since the election.

Tesla doesn’t break out vehicle deliveries by region, so both Cox and Teslike are using outside datasets to estimate their numbers. As far as total US deliveries in the third quarter, we’ll find out soon enough, as Tesla is expected to release those numbers early next month.

Rani Molla2h

Cybertruck battery material supplier writes down Tesla deal by 99%

South Korea’s L&F Co., a supplier of battery material for Tesla’s “apocalypse-proof” Cybertruck, has written down the value of its Tesla contract by more than 99%, Bloomberg reports — another sign that Cybertruck sales are faltering.

The company cited changes in supply quantities, slashing a contract valued at nearly $3 billion in 2023 to about $7,000 now.

Tesla Cybertruck Flop Proves Costly for South Korean Supplier

Rani Molla3h

Estimates for Tesla’s Q4 deliveries are declining

Analysts across the board are expecting Tesla’s fourth-quarter deliveries to decline from last year, as record deliveries fueled by the end of the EV tax credit come to grips with the actual end of the EV tax credit. And as the end of the quarter nears, estimates have sunk further.

Currently the FactSet consensus estimate expects Tesla to deliver 449,000 vehicles in Q4, down 9.5% from last year’s 496,000 and down from 450,000 earlier this month. Bloomberg now pegs the number at 445,000, down from a 448,000 consensus estimate at the start of December.

Prediction markets are even less bullish. The market-implied odds derived through event contracts show that less than a quarter of traders believe Tesla will surpass 430,000 deliveries in the quarter ending December. The actual delivery numbers are expected to be released in early January.

(Event contracts are offered through Robinhood Derivatives, LLC — probabilities referenced or sourced from KalshiEx LLC or ForecastEx LLC.)

How many vehicles analysts think Tesla will deliver this quarter

(Event contracts are offered through Robinhood Derivatives, LLC — probabilities referenced or sourced from KalshiEx LLC or ForecastEx LLC.)

Tesla has two days to remove Robotaxi safety drivers in Austin to reach Elon Musk’s repeated goal

It doesn’t look like it’s going to happen.

Rani Molla4h

Jon Keegan12/24/25

Chinese AI chatbots reportedly must answer 2,000 questions, prove censorship compliance

For American companies building AI today, it’s basically a free-for-all, a self-regulation zone with zero federal restrictions.

But for Chinese AI companies, the Chinese Communist Party exerts strict control over what models get released and what questions they cannot answer.

A report in The Wall Street Journal details the rigorous tests that AI models are subjected to before being released on the global stage to compete with Western AI models.

AI models must answer 2,000 questions that are frequently updated and achieve a 95% refusal rate for queries related to forbidden topics, like the Tiananmen Square massacre or human rights violations, according to the report.

The strict regulatory framework does have some safety advantages, such as preventing chatbots from sharing violent or pornographic material as well as protections from self-harm, an issue that American AI companies are currently wrestling with.

China Is Worried AI Threatens Party Rule—and Is Trying to Tame It

A report in The Wall Street Journal details the rigorous tests that AI models are subjected to before being released on the global stage to compete with Western AI models.

Rani Molla & Jon Keegan12/24/25

Report: OpenAI has started mocking up what ads in ChatGPT could look like

2025 saw OpenAI ink a flurry of massive deals. To pay for it all, the company has realized that it can’t get there on $20-per-month subscriptions alone; it also needs to monetize its hundreds of millions of free users.

To this end, despite repeatedly denying that ads are coming to ChatGPT, a new report says OpenAI is actually working through all those details.

Citing people familiar with the discussions, The Information reports employees have discussed different ways to prioritize sponsored information in ChatGPT in response to relevant queries.

Since ChatGPT burst onto the scene in late 2022, its offerings have been ad-free, relying instead on a freemium subscription model. But with Google recently telling advertisers it plans to bring ads to Gemini next year, and with OpenAI burning through truckloads of cash, the pressure to follow suit is growing.

OpenAI is looking at its AI model-developing competitors Meta and Google, which are pulling in hundreds of billions of dollars per year in advertising revenue, to arrive at this conclusion. It’s also seemingly inspired by Amazon’s (and Google’s) idea of sponsored product placement.

Per the report, in addition to trying to build new kinds of ad units, OpenAI is considering a few options:

Leaning into chats that are clearly about buying a product and giving priority placement to sponsored results — though this works out to only about 2.1% of queries, according to OpenAI.
Showing ads based on the treasure trove of information it has on users, by mining their chat histories.
A “sponsored” sidebar showing ads related to the conversation.

But the company realizes it has to be careful to not turn off users, who might not trust a chatbot that peppers sensitive conversations with ads.

OpenAI’s Ads Push Starts Taking Shape