15,000 Tesla Model 3 Configuration Invites? (Customer Report)

December 15th, 2017 by Zachary Shahan

The first Tesla Model X that I got to drive was an early Model X from a regular CleanTechnica reader who drove it from Northern California to Southern California when I was there for the first Tesla Model 3 reveal. He put in an early reservation for a Model 3 too, and he just got his invite to configure a few hours ago.

More interesting is what a Tesla employee told him on the phone after he got the invite. The Tesla staff member told him that invites were going out in batches of 5,000. (Note: That doesn’t mean it’s true — Tesla sales people are not always perfectly informed and have provided incorrect information at times in the past.)

As this CleanTechnica reader noted, he seems to be in a 3rd batch of invites — the first batch being the one Kyle Field was in (he got the invitation to configure on November 22), the second batch being a week or so ago based on crowdsourced information in this Google Sheet, and the third batch being the one that apparently started going out yesterday. (Ironic timing since it was just yesterday that I published “Tesla Model 3 Production Ramp — ‘We Here Yet?’ Patience, Young Jedi.”)

What does all of this mean? Well, we can make a few guesses (or, as analysts would inflate them, “highly informed estimates and projections”).

First of all, it seems to mean that 15,000 Model 3 configuration invites have gone out to people who don’t work at Tesla or SpaceX but do or did previously have a Tesla vehicle (that was the second priority boarding group after employees). Also note that all of these people seem to be in California so far — the state Tesla was going to start with since it’s home to the Tesla car factory.

Surely, not all of those people have configured and ordered their cars. Also, as in the case of Kyle, plenty of those customers could have ordered Model 3s not fully loaded — the Standard rather than Long Range option (220 miles of range instead of 310) or excluding the Premium Package. Furthermore, if they were set on all-wheel drive, their deliveries would be delayed much longer. We have no real sense of what percentage of these 15,000 customers chose the Long Range Model 3 with the Premium Package (and RWD).

We also don’t have any real insight into how many Tesla and SpaceX employees have ordered and received their priority Model 3s. (It doesn’t help us much that they’re under strict agreements with Tesla to keep pretty quiet.)

Rather than just placing my own rough guess in here, I went ahead and set up a Google Sheet where you can copy & paste the template and then input your own guess (if you so choose). Have fun!

Zach’s Guess Person Guessing Configuration Invites Orders Placed % That Are Long Range + Premium Package Deliveries Made Employees & Founders 1,100 517 47% 470 Batch 1 5,000 2,000 40% 1 Batch 2 5,000 2,000 40% 0 Batch 3 5,000 2,000 40% 0 TOTAL 16,000 6,517 40% 471

Since we haven’t heard of any non-employees receiving delivery of their brand new Model 3 yet, I’m assuming only several hundred or perhaps ~1,000 Model 3 have been delivered so far. The first big question after that is how many of the currently ordered cars are Long Range ones with the Premium Package, and the second question is when those will be delivered.

My wild guess after putting in all the assumptions is that 4,231 Tesla Model 3 will be delivered in 2017. What’s your guess?

Also, when do you think another 5,000 Tesla Model 3 reservation holders will get invited to configure their Tesla Model 3?

Related:

Note: If you want a $1,000/€1,000 discount on a new Tesla Model S or Model X, feel free to use our discount code: http://ts.la/tomasz7234.









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