Tesla’s stockpiles seen from space are way smaller than they were a year ago. That isn’t necessarily a good thing

Last year in March, Tesla had a production problem. It was producing way more vehicles than it was able to sell, and as a result, it was forced to stash that excess outside its factories, in parking lots, and at ports around the world.

As we noted then, there were so many extra Teslas that you could easily see how packed the parking lots were from space.

A year later, Tesla still produced more cars than it sold — sales saw a record drop last quarter — but the excess at least isn’t showing up as much outside its Giga Texas factory, where Tesla produces its top-selling Model Y and its much more difficult-to-sell Cybertruck.

The reason? Tesla has been making a lot fewer cars.

On the company’s last earnings call in January, Tesla CFO Vaibhav Taneja said its factories would begin producing the updated Model Y in January. The changeover, he said, would “result in several weeks of lost production” in Q1.

The slowing of Tesla’s production, however, predates the latest factory retooling. Since 2023, production has been declining, as the company faces weakened demand and growing competition. Tesla produced 4% fewer cars in 2024 than it did in 2023, despite CEO Elon Musk celebrating “record production” on the Q4 earnings call.

Meanwhile, Musk has attempted to pivot his car company into a much more lucrative AI and robotics business, leaving the car business in the lurch.

If Tesla had produced more cars, it likely wouldn’t have been able to sell them, since even price cuts and low interest rates weren’t enough to juice sales last quarter.

As a result of the production decline, the lots outside Tesla’s Texas factory aren’t nearly as full as they were when we looked last year. In the image below, you can drag the slider in the center to compare the difference between satellite images of the factory in March 2024 versus March 2025:

Sherwood News had satellite analysis company SkyFi use its software to detect passenger cars in Tesla’s numerous parking lots and estimate how full those lots were then and now. There has been some reordering of where cars are parked, but generally the lots are a lot less full these days.

Importantly, SkyFi’s tool doesn’t differentiate between Tesla and non-Tesla passenger cars, so it’s not possible to figure out from these aerial photos if these are production lots versus employee.

Tesla did not respond to a request for comment for this story.

From a closer visual inspection, as well as from videos Tesla posted to X showing the finished cars going from factory to lots, it appears that the lots to left of (31% full in 2025) and above (52% full) the central Tesla factory, which says Tesla in huge lettering on the roof, contain mostly production vehicles. About a third of the vehicles in the lot on the left appear to be Cybertrucks, which have been especially difficult for the EV company to sell.

A Cybertruck was recently spotted driving around Texas, acting as a mobile billboard for the new Model Y — one way to deal with excess inventory.