shares plunged around 5% before the market open on Wednesday as Elon Musk's company sees a 13% drop in sales. Tesla has reported deliveries of 336,681 vehicles globally between January and March 2025.

The number was lower than analyst predictions with FactSet expecting around 408,000 deliveries over the period. In another blow to the giant, the total number of deliveries was down on the 387,000 vehicles sold over the same period last year. It comes after many Tesla owners threatened to sell their cars in protest at Elon Musk's position at the heart of Donald Trump's administration.

Experts are unsure how much the recent decline in sales is due to protests against Elon Musk or other factors.

Electric car sales have generally stalled in recent months with private demand a cause for concern across major markets.

However, it's the latest blow to hit Tesla with the American brand at risk of losing its dominant position to Chinese competition.

Previous analysis from the revealed Tesla's sales fell by a whopping 49% in Europe alone over the first two months of the quarter.

This came despite electric car sales growing by 28% overall across the entire continent.

Dan Ives, spokesperson at analysts stressed Tesla's first-quarter results were worse than expected. He stressed there was now "no debate" that the EV giant has a "brand crisis" which was having an impact on demand.

He said: "The brand crisis issues are clearly having a negative impact on Tesla...there is no debate. We are not going to look at these numbers with rose-colored glasses...they were a disaster on every metric."

Earlier this year, for the first time despite only debuting back in 2023.

which are seen as among the most premium cars on the electric vehicle market.

Data from found 1,614 BYD models were sold in January compared to 1,458 for Tesla.

A drop in Tesla sales has also been seen across Europe with a 63% decline in France in January.