Liam Denning, Columnist

Musk Can Cheer the End of EV Subsidies This Once

October 3, 2025 at 9:30 AM UTC

Liam Denning is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist covering energy. A former banker, he edited the Wall Street Journal’s Heard on the Street column and wrote the Financial Times’s Lex column.

Timing is everything.
Photographer: Apu Gomes/Getty Images North America

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Tesla Inc. just moved a lot of metal. But it wasn’t alone in enjoying a surge in electric vehicle sales this summer as buyers locked-in expiring tax credits. That makes the third-quarter EV rush less than meets the eye; a harbinger of dusk rather than dawn, in the US anyway. It may yet have its uses for Tesla Chief Executive Elon Musk.

Tesla notched a record number of deliveries in the third quarter, about 57,000 higher than the consensus forecast. Deliveries outpaced production by almost 50,000 vehicles, clearing virtually all of the excess Teslas made in the first half of the year. This will boost the company’s top line and free cash flow as a big slug of working capital gets unwound.