JP Morgan Slashes Tesla Sales Forecast, Predicts Stock Will Fall To $120 Per Share

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Sometimes it seems that CleanTechnica is too pessimistic about the future of Tesla. Recently we asked who might buy the company when it goes bankrupt. While that story might have been a bit whimsical, the steep drop in the company’s share value has been breathtaking. The stock soared after the US election last November to a high of $480 per share, but has plummeted since Christmas as Elon Musk’s drug-induced antics have embarrassed virtually everyone who is not a confirmed MAGAlomaniac.

This week, JP Morgan issued a strongly negative prediction for Tesla. It said Q1 deliveries will be the lowest the company has seen in three years. Specifically, the investment firm slashed its delivery forecast for this quarter by 20% to 355,000 units. That’s down from the initial projection by JP Morgan auto analysts of 444,000. It also thinks that the free fall Tesla stock has experienced lately still has a long way to go, with the potential to hit $120 per share — about half of what it is now, and a level it hasn’t been at since January 2023.

There are several reasons for this. For starters, the Trump administration’s wanton bludgeoning of the US market via tariffs has only served to hurt car companies, including Tesla. It’s anyone’s guess what tariffs car companies and all associated suppliers will eventually be subject to. Today, it could be nothing. Or, if Canada, Mexico, the European Union, or China do anything that the Maniac of Mar-A-Loco could interpret as an affront to his gigantic ego, then punishment could come swiftly in the form of new tariffs. Such sudden and irrational moves are bad news for any company trying to plan for the future. Business values predictability, something the so-called president and his assortment of jock sniffers seem to have no interest in.

Tesla Suffers For Elon’s Sins

In the meantime, Musk’s right-wing exploits on his personal anti-social media platform can no longer be ignored. His words and speech have moved past simple inflammatory posts and well into the realm of influencing global politics. That influence is perceived by many members of minorities or those who do not swallow the MAGA codswallop as dangerous. For example, he has called Canada “not a real country,” feeding a growing call by the faithful to annex America’s neighbor to the north. Not surprisingly, such idiotic statements have alienated not only potential customers in Canada but existing owners as well. Telling Germans they need to get over the Nazi thing has led to a decline in Tesla sales in that country by as much as 70 percent. Way to go, Elon. Just today, he retweeted a post on X saying that Hitler didn’t murder millions of people.

No doubt this new sales strategy of yours will become part of the curriculum at business schools around the world under the title of “Things not to do if you want your company to be successful.”

Sales have started to collapse in many European countries and Tesla is facing increased competition from rivals in China. The Chinese market’s sales are still somewhat strong, but that won’t be enough to keep momentum going. Also, plenty of Chinese brands have been encroaching on Tesla’s market. According to the New York Times, Chinese customers who once flocked to Tesla are turning more and more to local brands that offer more efficient cars with better technology, sometimes at half the price. Tesla’s biggest rival, BYD, sold 481,318 cars in the first two months of this year, which is up 75 percent over the same quarter last year. Tesla sold 60,480 vehicles in the first two months of the year, a drop of 14 percent from 2024.

Yesterday’s News

Also, the cars are just kind of old. The Model 3 and Model Y may have been updated, but they’re essentially not all that much different than the cars they replaced. “Xiaomi is more fashionable,” one new car buyer in Beijing told The Times last week.  “Tesla, for me, it’s a little bit normal. You can see the Tesla Model Y everywhere.” Familiarity breeds contempt, my old Irish grandmother liked to say. Musk may see building the same car over and over and over again as a virtue, but people are always hungry for the next new thing, and Tesla has nothing to offer them.

Chen Jiaming, a salesperson at an FAW-Volkswagen dealership in Shanghai, told The Times, “I think Tesla’s competitiveness in China will only last for the next two or three years at most.” He added that Tesla’s self driving technology is no longer cutting edge compared with local rivals. After years of lobbying the government, Tesla was finally allowed to offer a version of its Autopilot technology to Chinese drivers last month, but it is a step below the full self driving technology that Tesla owners in the United States can use. Drivers who want access to the necessary software update in China have to pay an additional $8,800. That’s a problem when companies like BYD offer similar systems at no extra charge in cars that begin at less than $15,000. Talk about a competitive disadvantage!

Younger buyers prefer Chinese brands, Xia Lifang told The Times. Tesla and BYD remain the most trusted brands in China, she said, but people born in the 1990s and 2000s are more open to trying new brands. “Our car looks better than Tesla,” Ms. Xia said with a smile, then added, “You could buy two of our cars for the price of one Tesla.”

Musk’s behavior, inflation, and high interest rates have created the perfect storm for reduced Tesla sales. JP Morgan is hardly the only investment company predicting weaker sales ahead. UBS Group analyst Joseph Spak recently lowered his projection for Tesla production in 2025 to 1.7 million, which contributed to Tesla shares having their worst day since September of 2020. Now a second analyst covering Tesla is bracing for vehicle sales to drop this year, rather than rebound from the first annual decline in more than a decade.

Chris McNally at Evercore ISI also cut his full year estimate for Tesla vehicle deliveries to 1.75 million, from 1.88 million, in a report published March 12, 2025. McNally said the company is seeing brand and volume “destruction” around the globe. He also wrote that investors increasingly doubt Tesla will soon expand its lineup, and instead suspect the new, more affordable vehicles vaguely teased for the first half of this year will only be a cheaper, de-contented variant of the Model Y. On Wednesday, he cut his share price target to $235 from $270, citing the risks to Tesla’s sales as well as to the company’s autonomous vehicle hopes.

JP Morgan says that Tesla’s fall currently “has no equal” in the automotive market. “We struggle to think of anything analogous in the history of the automotive industry in which a brand has lost so much value so quickly,” the company wrote. Take a bow, Elon. You have made the financial community’s Wall of Shame.