Polymarket bettors spent most of Q1 pricing Tesla Inc (NASDAQ:TSLA) deliveries below 350,000.

Wall Street’s consensus sat at 372,160.

The actual number, 358,023, handed traditional analysts a miss but validated the prediction market bettors who pivoted to the correct bracket days before the print.

Dan Ives, the Wedbush analyst with the Street’s highest Tesla price target at $600, called the delivery numbers “quite underwhelming” but said it was “not a shock” given the current EV backdrop.

He maintained his Outperform rating, arguing Tesla is shifting gears to focus on its AI strategy.

What The Prediction Markets Showed

For most of the quarter, the “below 350,000” bracket was the favorite, trading above 60%.

That aligned with UBS’s bearish 345,000-unit forecast, which sat roughly 7% below the company-compiled consensus.

Prediction market traders were more pessimistic than Wall Street for weeks.

Then on March 26, Tesla published its own analyst consensus of 365,645 vehicles on its investor relations page.

The Polymarket chart shows an immediate flip: the 350,000-375,000 bracket surged from around 25% to near-100% within days.

The bracket collapsed.

The actual 358,023 landed in that range.

Where Tesla Goes From Here

The 6.3% year-over-year increase looks respectable until you remember Q1 2025 was when Tesla shut down Model Y lines across all four factories for the Juniper refresh.

The more honest comparison is Q4 2025’s 418,227 deliveries, making this a 14.4% sequential drop.

TSLA is down about 13.5% year-to-date.

Canaccord slashed its price target by $100 this week. The analyst consensus is a Hold at roughly $395.

Earnings are expected on April 28, with the focus depending less on cars sold and more on what Musk says about Cybercab production, which is slated to begin this month.

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