Tesla Model Y Set to Take Top Spot as World's Best Selling Car in 2023

The Tesla Model 3 and Model Y are in the Top 10 vehicles sold worldwide

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Tesla's CEO, Elon Musk, once said, "I say something, and then it usually happens. Maybe not on schedule, but it usually happens." In April 2021, Musk predicted that the Model Y would be the world's best-selling vehicle. He wasn't sure if it would happen in 2022, but he was confident the electric SUV would take the global crown from Toyota's Corolla in 2023.

Moving on Up

According to a report from Focus to Move, the Model Y is now the fourth best-selling vehicle worldwide after an astonishing 88 percent jump from 2021 to 2022. There were 759,000 Model Ys sold last year, just 28,000 units behind the third-place Ford F-150 which has been the best-selling truck for the previous 46 years. Toyota claimed the top two spots, with the RAV4 at 870,000 and the Corolla selling 1.12 million.

The runway is clear for the Model Y to vie for the world's best-selling car title in 2023. There are three critical elements to achieve the goal: capacity, demand and competition.

Capacity

First, capacity. To reach the top spot, the Model Y will need to increase its sales by approximately 60% compared to 2022, which is a very achievable goal, considering both the Giga Texas and Giga Berlin factories aim to produce 500,000 cars per year. During Tesla's Q4 earnings call, Elon Musk said Tesla plans to produce about 1.8 million vehicles in 2023, up about 37% from 2022. Musk later added that Tesla may be able to reach 2 million vehicles in 2023, which would be an increase of 52% over its 2022 numbers.

Demand

Second, demand is there. In the wake of the recent price drops, Bank of America predicts Tesla's volume to jump 53 percent, up from its original forecast for 17% growth. Also, Musk said during the fourth quarter earnings call that the company is receiving the most orders year to date in its history. Plus, the price tag of the Model Y and Model 3 is now very close. As a result, many buyers may consider getting into the slightly larger Model Y over the Model 3.

Competition

Thirdly, the competition. Toyota's Corolla is half the price of the Model Y. Therefore, to grab the top spot in the world, the Corolla will have to come down a few pegs. As the manufacturer is playing catch up on the EV market, perhaps the bZ4X will take away from Corolla's typical buyers.

Top 5 Cars Sold Worldwide

Below is a list of the top 5 vehicles sold worldwide, as compiled by Focus2Move. It's not clear whether Focus2Move includes used cars in their figures or if they include sales for vehicles that have yet to be delivered.

You Can Now Track Tesla’s Robotaxi Deployment

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Thanks to Tesla Yoda on X, we have found out that Tesla’s Robotaxi fleet is registered on the Texas Department of Transportation’s public-facing Automated Vehicle Deployment website. This makes the fleet’s movements publicly viewable and trackable, and marks a first for Tesla.

This isn’t just any old FSD test - this is the first officially acknowledged, government-tracked, and sanctioned deployment of a Tesla Model Y operating as a ride-share vehicle. But that’s not all - Texas DOT’s tracker notes that the Tesla does not have a safety driver.

View on the Map

Visitors to the Texas DOT website can filter for “Tesla”, and see, currently, a single active vehicle operating in the Austin Metro area. According to the state’s official data, here’s what we know:

Company: Tesla

Description: Ride-share service

Status in Texas: Testing

Safety Driver: No

The final point is definitely the most significant here. While Tesla has been testing FSD with safety drivers for some time in Austin and LA for employee-only testing, this is the first time that a vehicle has been officially registered and deployed on public roads without a human behind the wheel for safety. 

The fact that there is no safety driver officially shifts the liability from the occupant of the driver’s seat to Tesla, for the first time in a public setting. That’s already pretty significant - we previously dove into how Tesla plans to insure its own vehicles, and potentially owner vehicles in the Robotaxi fleets. 

The status currently lists Tesla as “Testing,” confirming that the service isn’t available to the public, but this is expected to change in the coming weeks.

This testing phase is likely part of a short but crucial period that lets Tesla capture data on the safety levels of its current iteration of Unsupervised FSD without a driver supervising. Tesla already stated that they’d be avoiding difficult areas, so this testing can also expose additional areas Tesla may want to avoid, such as school zones or blind driveways.

Tesla will need to prove, both internally and externally, that FSD Unsupervised has the necessary performance to safely navigate the streets without any incidents.

Regulatory Milestone

For years, the concept of a Tesla Robotaxi has been a future promise. Now, it's a present-day reality, albeit in a testing capacity.

Having an official government body list a Tesla as an active, driverless vehicle shows that they’ve been able to clear regulatory hurdles, which Tesla has often pointed to as the issue. It demonstrates a level of confidence from both Tesla and Texas regulators in the system's capabilities.

While it's just a single vehicle for today, we’ll likely see this list slowly expand over time. Alongside being able to track Robotaxi incidents at the City of Austin’s website, we’ll be able to closely watch Tesla’s progress with its first Robotaxi deployments.

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Tesla FSD in Europe: June Update

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The road to bringing FSD to Europe has been a long and complex one and filled with regulatory and bureaucratic hurdles. Elon Musk, as well as other members of Tesla’s AI team, have previously voiced their grievances with the regulatory approval process on X.

However, it appears that there is finally some progress in getting things moving with recent changes to upcoming autonomy regulations, but the process still seems slow.

Waiting on the Dutch

Elon commented on X recently, stating that Tesla is waiting for approval from Dutch authorities and then the EU to start rolling out FSD in Europe. Tesla is focusing on acquiring approvals from the Dutch transportation authority, which will provide them with the platform they need to gain broader acceptance in Europe. Outside of the Netherlands, Tesla is also conducting testing in Norway, which provides a couple of avenues for them to obtain national-level approval.

The frustration has been ongoing, with multiple committee meetings bringing up autonomy regulation but always pulling back at the last second before approving anything. The last meeting on Regulation 157, which governs Automated Lane Keeping Systems, concluded with authorities from the UK and Spain requesting additional time to analyze the data before reaching a conclusion.

Tesla, as well as Elon, have motioned several times for owners to reach out to their elected representatives to move the process forward, as it seems that Tesla’s own efforts are being stymied. 

This can seem odd, especially since Tesla has previously demoed FSD working exceptionally smoothly on European roads - and just did it again in Rome when they shared the video below on X.

FSD Supervised testing in Rome, Italy

Pending regulatory approval pic.twitter.com/TXh3uQIfrx

— Tesla Europe & Middle East (@teslaeurope) June 12, 2025

DCAS Phase 3

While the approval process has been slow, Kees Roelandschap pointed out that there may be a different regulatory step that could allow FSD to gain a foothold in Europe.

According to Kees, the European Commission is now taking a new approach to approving ADAS systems under the new DCAS Phase 3 regulations. The Commission is now seeking data from systems currently operational in the United States that can perform System-Initiated Maneuvers and don’t require hands-on intervention for every request.

This is key because those are two of the core functionalities that make FSD so usable, and it also means that there may not be a need to wait years for proper regulations to be written from scratch. Now, the Commission will be looking at real-world data based on existing, deployed technology, which could speed up the process immensely.

What This Means

This new, data-driven regulatory approach could be the path for Tesla to reach its previous target of September for European FSD. While the cogs of bureaucracy are ever slow, sometimes all it takes is a little data to have them turn a bit faster in this case.

Alongside specific countries granting approval for limited field testing with employees, there is some light at the end of the tunnel for FSD in Europe, and hopes are that a release will occur by the end of 2025. With Europe now looking to North America for how FSD is performing, Tesla’s Robotaxi results could also play a role.

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