A Tesla being towed in London (Richard Baker/Getty Images)

Even Tesla bull Dan Ives predicts “very soft” first-quarter deliveries

He estimates that only 30% of that has to do with Musk, DOGE, and brand damage.

3/27/25 12:12PM

Next week, Tesla will release its first-quarter delivery numbers, a closely watched metric for the electric car company and an indicator of how likely this year’s promised “return to growth” will be.

Monthly data has been bad this year and analyst consensus estimates have been dropping. Now, even Tesla bull Dan Ives expects a “very soft rip the band-aid off 1Q delivery number” of 355,000 to 360,000, which would be a 7% to 8% year-on-year decline, according to a new note from the Wedbush Securities analyst. Earlier this year, his firm had predicted 8% growth in Q1.

Ives concedes that some of Tesla’s damage has been the result of CEO Elon Musk’s recent actions.

“Musk leading DOGE has essentially taken on a life of its own as in the process Tesla has unfortunately become a political symbol globally with protests, violence and demonstrations at dealerships and cars keyed, and a massive ‘TeslaTakedown’ day of action planned by protestors for this Saturday, March 29th.”

Interestingly, Ives estimates this quarter’s decline has 30% to do with “Musk/brand/DOGE” and is 70% related to “timing and non-brand headwind issues.” Still, the bull remains bullish:

“We believe 1Q will be the low point and the Street is starting to look through these numbers to better understand the delivery trajectory the rest of the year with much stronger 2H the key as model refreshes are around the corner.”

The analyst consensus estimate on FactSet is still predicting year-on-year growth, with 417,000 deliveries, but that includes many months-old estimates. Estimates made this month — factoring in monthly sales declines around the world, President Trump’s tariffs, Tesla boycotts, among other headwinds — all predict a decline.

Ives maintains his firms “outperform” rating and price target of $550 — nearly double what it’s trading at currently.

Rani Molla1h

Tesla’s European sales rise for the first time in more than a year but still lag BYD

New Tesla registrations jumped 12% in February from a year earlier to 17,664 units across the European Union, the United Kingdom, and the European Free Trade Association, according to new data from the European Automobile Manufacturers’ Association. China’s BYD once again beat out the American EV maker, posting 17,954 registrations in February, up 162% from a year earlier. BYD and Tesla each represented 1.8% of the European new car market last month.

The February data is a notable shift for Tesla, which saw its first monthly jump in the region since December 2024. Tesla has struggled in Europe since CEO Elon Musk’s ascension to the Trump administration and his forays into European politics in support of far-right parties. Tesla also posted gains in China in February, which is a much larger market for the carmaker.

Jon Keegan17h

Jensen Huang: We have achieved AGI now... sort of

Lots of AI leaders are thinking about a big moment looming over the current AI boom: when will we have achieved artificial general intelligence?

There’s no shortage of predictions, but we haven’t yet seen a full-throated declaration that this slippery milestone has been achieved.

Until now. On Lex Friedman’s podcast Monday, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang was asked what he thought the timeline looked like for “an AI system that’s able to essentially do your job. So, run — no, start, grow, and run a successful technology company.”

Huang confidently answered: “I think it’s now. I think we’ve achieved AGI.”

Huang then hedged, noting that Friedman was talking about running a $1 billion dollar company, but he didn’t specify for how long. Huang elaborated, “It is not out of the question that a Claude was able to create a web service, some interesting little app that all of a sudden, you know, a few billion people used for $0.50, and then it went out of business again shortly after.”

So maybe it will be a while before Jensen Huang can get help running Nvidia by eating his own dog food.

Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang says ‘I think we’ve achieved AGI’

Huang confidently answered: “I think it’s now. I think we’ve achieved AGI.”

So maybe it will be a while before Jensen Huang can get help running Nvidia by eating his own dog food.

17.5%

Jon Keegan18h

OpenAI is trying to woo private equity investors with a sweet offer: a guaranteed minimum return of 17.5% on their investments, which is “significantly higher than typical preferred instruments,” as well as early access to new models, according to a report from Reuters.

The deal aims to build joint ventures to raise capital amid OpenAI’s intense competition for a bigger slice of the enterprise AI market. The minimum return offer is something that its competitor Anthropic is not currently offering, per Reuters.