Foucault said: The model 3 VIN tracker on Twitter has said today that Tesla has registered 39,680 new model 3 VINs, none of which are right hand drive. At current production rate that’s about 7 weeks production, so I wouldn’t expect any UK cars to be produced until July, meaning at least August and more likely September for deliveries. Click to expand...

UK M3s will be the first shipment.



UK M3s will have its own designated batch to ship

The UK is one of the most popular European markets for Tesla (based off this older article) and is currently untapped in terms of M3.

Having a single ship travel from California to the UK, and then to Europe, and then to any other RHD market (e.g Japan, Australia, NZ etc...) is insane logistically and very expensive.

logistically and very expensive. Other RHD European countries are much smaller, and weren't even listed by Elon for the first sets of RHD ordering. Unloading all of the European RHD M3's in Zeebrugge only to ship 99%+ of them using additional shipping methods to the UK just adds unnecessary costs. Moving that much freight over a short distance for no real gain and a lot of cost, plus we know Tesla is operating on thin margins for the M3. Talk about logistics hell. This is the most likely reason all UK RHD's will go straight to the UK.

Norway is Tesla's best EU market. There will be 3 Ports in Europe Tesla will ship to: somewhere in the UK, Zeebrugge and Olso. Norway is the furthest of the three from the US geologically and commands the highest number of Tesla orders. If you fill up a ship with UK, mainland EU and Norway orders you have to compromise in terms of numbers for one of those markets, which could push down the profitability of the shipment as a whole if you have to spend the money to dock at 3 different ports in different countries. Moving those giant cargo ships around the world isn't cheap.

Tesla needs to ship as many LR / P M3's as fast as possible to make their earnings looks good, therefore shipping as many high-spec M3's to the UK in one go makes sense financially and logistically instead of sharing the ship with mainland European orders.

If you're doing all of the LR / P M3's in one go to the UK you might as well fill up the rest of the ship with the lower-cost variant to avoid having to send a ship soon after with just lower-cost variant Model 3's.

Something's not quite right with this assumption. You're assuming the UK delivery date is based on the accumulative amount of production time for the number of cars registered in largest VIN registration batch.We might actually be able to guess the amount of Model 3's currently ordered and possibly when they're shipped in the first batch to the UK.How many teslas are actually in the UK at all? I don't think the number is even over 20,000. Between 2013 - April 2016 only 2135 teslas were registered in the UK , so as a rough ballpark8,000 - 10,000 teslas have been registered in total in the UK as of right now. So as an estimate we'll say 9,000 in 6 years. Granted, those cars are much more expensive than the M3 but we'll keep that in mind as an indicator for demand. I can't find anymore accurate numbers than that so I've actually submitted a freedom of information request to the UK Driver and Vehicle Licensing Agency because nothing helps fuel hype and wild speculation like raw data.Next, we know that over 15,000 Model 3's have already been shipped to Europe (excluding the UK). Ontop of that we know Standard Range Plus is already being shipped to those same countries, or is at least available to order. I think it's fair to assume that those markets are already getting their reservation demand for Long Range / Performance completed if they're already triaging their production from the more expensive models down to the SR+. To boil that down further we know the most popular European market for Tesla, Norway, has registered 5,300+ Model 3's, followed by Germany at 2,200+, the Netherlands at 2,100+ and France at 1,100+. If most of the demand has been set for higher-priced Model 3's (in order to justify now shipping SR+ to Europe) then we can say those numbers just listed either roughly or mostly represents the reservations of higher-priced M3s in those respective countries. The number of LR / P M3's in each shipment will reduce until they reach an equilibrium in respect to the ratio of SR+ and LR / P sold in their respective markets. We'll say there's somewhere between 1500-2600 LR / P M3 reservations in the UK. I think that's also reasonable in relation to the demand / numbers for Model S and X here. How many SR+ orders there are is really hard to guess as we have no European numbers to compare them too.Orders to the UK are opening up before the rest of the RHD markets. This suggests at least one of two things:Tesla Model X and S are shipped to Tilburg, Netherlands because there's an assembling plant there where they reassemble the car as a way to avoid paying some import duties to the EU. We know that the Model 3 isn't dissembled before international shipping so there's a good chance it'll be shipped directly the UK. It would be too expensive to ship all RHD's to the Zeebrugge port, Belgium ( as they have been currently for Mainland LHD Europe ) and then some back across the pond to the UK. RHD Model S and Model X are shipped to mainland Europe prior to the UK likely because they're much lower volume (and the reassembling accounting magic done in one place outweighs the cost of also having to do it in the UK). The UK comes before Zeebrugge geologically (depending on the port) so it makes sense to stop in the UK first for RHD M3's, or perhaps only to the UK for that particular shipment if making multiple pit-stops is too expensive. The UK is also very likely to receive it's own shipment because: Norway took a shipment of ~1800 Model 3's in March directly , which further supports the idea that geological distance is a factor in shipping M3's to ports other than Zeebrugge. If the UK indeed has its own designated shipment it changes the dynamic a lot. Some poor sod on Reddit counted 5400+ Teslas on their way to Europe in one of the first shipments. so going from those past 2 numbers tesla will likely ship somewhere from 1800 to full capacity of a similar sized ship to the European-designated ships (i.e ~6000 to ~6800). The shipped heading to Norway stopped first at Zeebrugge before going to Oslo port, Norway . which I know contradicts an earlier point I made, but as I mentioned before there are other justifications for a UK RHD dedicated ship.If there is a dedicated ship for the UK it makes sense to fill it as much as possible to get the best bang for you buck instead of sending off a half-empty ship and not getting your money's worth. Dependingon whether or not the UK receives the shipment directly and / or a dedicated shipment I'll take a guesstimate and say there's a good chance Tesla will make a UK RHD batch (before other RHD markets) and deliver all of the Long Range / Performance Model 3's and, if we're using a ship similar to the Glovis Courage, fill the rest of the capacity with SR+ all in one go. Tesla haven't used a ship lower than 4000 ceu (car equivalent units) to deliver Teslas Internationally yet, and all of its EU ships have been 6000 ceu or over. Yes, I checked each ship . For whatever reason, Tesla loaded 5400+ cars onto that previously pictured ship , not full capacity. If we load our 1500-2600 LR / P UK M3's on the ship and fill out of the rest of the slots out of that 5400 number with SR+'s we get 1500-3900 SR+'s, minus a few from Model S's and X's that have also come along for the ride.depending on how long it takes to prep the Fremont factory to switch to RHD production. They would likely do so if they don't have multiple production lines at Fermont or their primary production line cannot manufacture both LHD or RHD M3's at the same time. It makes sense to switch between RHD and LHD production as little as possible as you aren't producing cars when the production line is down. Elon said there is 'minimal' engineering and tooling change for RHD production and they have very likely been making behind-the-scene changes and producing RHD parts in preparation for the switch. The UK will be first to order RHD, so it also makes sense that most or all of the first RHD M3's coming off the production line are sent straight to the port if they want to fill up a ship to the UK as quickly as possible instead of having M3's waiting around in a parking lot for some other RHD territory (i.e not being sold straight away). It takes around 3 weeks to ship from San Francisco ports to Zeebrugge . If we go off of one dedicated week of production for UK orders and the shipping time, plus adding in some extra time for changing production lines, hiccups, etc... Bundle that in with the assumption that there's a dedicated UK ship and. Worst-case scenario being if they're going to put other EU Model 3's in the ship then I think the Norway number of around 1800 UK M3's is reasonable. In that case, 2-3 shipments to fulfil UK reservations. The first being June / July, the second being late July / August, the third being late August / September going by the average of 9 days (rounded up) between each departure of EU-bound Tesla-designated carriers . If it'll take multiple ships then there will be more orders to fulfil too (more time = more new orders), but as I said I don't think that'll happen (i.e there'll be one ship for the reservations). Theywant to start production on UK RHD's quickly as it's geologically closest and largest untapped market for high-spec M3's, and then also fill the ship as doing the fewest possible RHD / LHD production shifts and sending the least number of possible ships is good financial sense.- The UK will be the first RHD Model 3 market to have cars delivered to it. If there's one ship going directly to the UK all Long Range and Performance Model 3's will be shipped in one go, as will a few thousand SR+'s. If instead they send a ship headed for the UK as its first stop (with Europe being the second, I think any situation resulting in RHD M3's going to mainland Europe first and then to the UK is seriously doubtful) it'll take 2-3 shipments to fulfil orders to the UK. First shipment of either scenario being June / July, second being July / August, third being August / September (if a third one is even necessary to fulfil all reservations), but that segmented-approach is not as likely as a single ship heading directly to the UK.