Pilbara Minerals Ltd (ASX: PLS) shares are down nearly 4% at the time of writing, while Core Lithium Ltd (ASX: CXO) is down 1.27%. Shares in Allkem Ltd (ASX: AKE) are currently trading 1.51% lower while Sayona Mining Ltd (ASX: SYA) shares are currently even with Friday's closing price.

Let's take a closer look at what might be weighing on lithium stocks today.

What's going on?

Materials shares are falling overall so far today, with the S&P/ASX 200 Materials Index (ASX: XMJ) down 1.13% at the time of writing. They're performing better than the S&P/ASX 200 Index (ASX: XJO) which is down 1.67%.

Lithium is an essential component in the use of electric vehicle (EV) batteries. News that EV giant Tesla delivered fewer vehicles than expected in 2022 could be weighing on demand sentiment today.

Overnight, Tesla announced it delivered 405,278 electric vehicles in the fourth quarter of 2022. Overall in 2022, EV deliveries grew 40% year on year to 1.31 million.

However, this fell short of the company's goal to lift deliveries by 50%, Bloomberg reported. Also, analysts had been tipping Tesla to deliver 420,760 vehicles during the quarter. Bernstein analyst Toni Sacconaghi said (as cited by Bloomberg):

We believe that Tesla is facing a significant demand problem. We believe Tesla will need to either reduce its growth targets (and run its factories below capacity) or sustain and potentially increase recent price cuts globally, pressuring margins.

Meanwhile, economic data out of China could also be weighing on investors' minds. Manufacturing in China slowed in December, Bloomberg reported. China makes 75% of all lithium-ion batteries, according to a December Australian Department of Industry report.

In recent news, Core Lithium advised on Friday it has achieved the first shipment of 15,000 dry metric tonnes (dmt) of 1.4% Li2O. This achieved a price of US$951 per dmt. The ship will depart Darwin for Fancheng, China. Core Lithium CEO Gareth Manderson said:

The first DSO shipment being loaded for export from the Darwin Port is another significant milestone for the company.

Share price snapshot

The Core Lithium share price has soared 70% in a year

 The Sayona Mining share price has jumped 44% in the last 52 weeks.

Allkem shares have climbed 6% in a year.

Pilbara shares have gained 12.5% in the past year.

The post Why are ASX 200 lithium shares running on empty today? appeared first on The Motley Fool Australia.