In news that should surprise nobody, Tesla sold a bunch of Model Ys, now they’re for sale again. There was a lot of ill-informed, or ill-intended news reports of Tesla and EV sales demise over the past few months. Those of us paying attention understood that as Tesla upgraded production facilities to produce the refreshed MY, distribution to Australia paused temporarily.
Having re-engineering production facilities around the world, and in particular, Gigafactory Shanghai that produces vehicles for Asia-Pacific, deliveries of the new Model Y began in May 2025, a long wait from when the order page went live back in January.
Naturally Tesla tried to bridge the gap by selling through inventory items and even offered discounts to further entice people who couldn’t or didn’t want to wait.
Given this, Tesla’s Model Y sales numbers in Australia have returned as expected. According to the latest EVehicle Vehicle Sales Report, Tesla sold a total of 4,140 vehicles in May, marking a dramatic increase from previous months and signaling renewed momentum for the electric vehicle giant.
The new-look Model Y was perhaps so good that it drew some sales from the Model 3, which itself was only refreshed last year. Model 3 sold only 317 units in May, a steep 83.81% decline from the same month last year.
Tesla’s best selling vehicle, the mid-sized SUV accounted for an impressive 3,580 units, or nearly 87% of Tesla’s total sales for the month.
This strong performance represents a 122.5% increase compared to the 1,609 Model Ys sold in May 2024 and underscores the immediate popularity of the updated model, which began arriving in customer hands in early May.
The surge in Model Y sales propelled it to become the fourth best-selling vehicle overall in Australia for the month, a testament to its broad appeal in the competitive SUV market. The influx of the refreshed model, codenamed ‘Juniper’, appears to have released pent-up demand from buyers who had been holding off in anticipation of its launch.
Given an almost 5 month pause of it’s most popular model, it’s surprising the year-to-date sales in Australia were only down 45%, with Tesla having now sold a total of 10,391 vehicles so far in 2025, a decrease from the 19,026 vehicles sold during the same period in 2024.
The broader Australian electric vehicle market also saw growth in May. The total number of Battery Electric Vehicles (BEVs) sold was 4,140, entirely composed of Tesla’s figures in this specific report, indicating a significant market share for the brand.
Meanwhile, fellow EV specialist Polestar also recorded a positive month, with 243 vehicles sold, a 66.44% increase compared to May 2024. This suggests a growing appetite for electric vehicles in the Australian market, even as hybrid and plug-in hybrid models also experience a surge in popularity.
EAP/FSD Transfers
Tesla also announced this week that they would offer the ability to transfer not only FSD, but also EAP to a new vehicle if you take delivery before the end of this financial year.
While it’s hard to know exactly how motivating this will be for owners to pull the trigger on an upgrade, I have personally seen a number of people on my timeline report this was the bump they needed.
Tesla’s FSD package in Australia costs A$10,100 so leaving that investment behind is not an option for most, even Enhanced Autopilot at $5,000 would be a significant investment most don’t want to lose, so the transfer option is a great one and I wish they’d feature it permanently.
The subtext to all this is Tesla’s pretty close to launching FSD (Supervised) in Australia. While this software will run on HW3 and HW4 cars (as seen in the US), Elon Musk committed to upgrading hardware for those owners of HW3 that have purchased FSD. It is understood that the safety level required by FSD (Unsupervised) will require an increase to the compute.
By moving more people to newer vehicles, it reduces the cost to Tesla to upgrade them, although the total cost would quickly be funded by robotaxi revenue, assuming the company’s plans for scaling across the US go as planned in the back half of this year.
