Stock Market Today: Tesla Drops Despite Record Deliveries and Subsidy-Driven Demand

Tesla Inc (NASDAQ: TSLA) closed at $436.00, down 5.11%. Trading volume reached 135 million shares, about 2 times its three-month average of 88 million.

Markets finished higher. The S&P 500 (SNPINDEX: ^GSPC) added 0.062% to 6,715.35, while the Nasdaq Composite (NASDAQINDEX: ^IXIC) gained 0.39% to 22,844.05, supported by tech and growth stocks.

Among EV peers, Rivian Automotive Inc (NASDAQ: RIVN) fell 7.39% to $13.53, while NIO Inc – ADR (NYSE: NIO) rose 3.20% to $7.89.

Tesla's decline came even after reporting record third-quarter deliveries of roughly 497,099 vehicles, topping forecasts. The surge was driven by customers rushing to capture the $7,500 U.S. EV tax credit before it expired at the end of September. With lease prices now raised across models following the credit's expiration, investors are questioning whether demand can hold up without subsidy support. Looking ahead, attention will likely focus on Tesla's fourth-quarter delivery guidance and margin trends, which will be key to proving that recent strength wasn't just pulled forward by incentives.

Market data sourced from Google Finance and Yahoo! Finance on Thursday, October 2, 2025.

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Daily Stock News has no position in any of the stocks mentioned. This article was generated with GPT-5, OpenAI's large-scale language generation model and has been reviewed by The Motley Fool's AI quality control systems. The Motley Fool has positions in and recommends Tesla. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.