While I don't completely share your optimism (more on that in a moment), but I did a very complex breakdown the day after I configured on 6/28 to try to better estimate where I was in line and my numbers now aren't too far off. A longer post, but might be worth looking through for estimates. Math!
I originally figured that the cars configured before me were mostly produced and ready to be delivered on July 1st, and I estimated that there would be 20,000 or so ahead of me, and figured that my car would probably finish production around mid-August. That didn't happen. I did three things that I now think were errors:
1) I assumed that they would base delivery off config date more than reservation date. In part, this was because I had assume most early reservation holders had already had access to order their cars, and therefore Tesla would have changed to caring more about configuration date. In many ways, this made sense to me, although from later configurations held by earlier reservations, it seems that never happened, which is fine. That set my estimates off.
2) I assumed that they could produce AWD or RWD cars at the exact same clip when the configurator was opened. It looks like they didn't gear up for AWD until after that.
3) I assumed they had backlogged their deliveries with both AWD and RWD cars and that starting on 7/1, almost all May configurations would be filled.
For sure, we didn't see a huge backlog of AWD cars delivered in July. We instead saw a huge backlog of RWD cars delivered, as well as extremely quick delivery times on new RWD cars ordered. This means the majority of their RWD orders were filled. Based on the number of RWD cars produced (which we know, since it was the only car in production, as around 40,000 by that time), we can assume that RWD demand was about 10% of pre-orders. If we assume that Tesla produced another 20,000 RWD cars in July and so far in August, which based on lots of factors seems reasonable to me, 15% of the orders so far went for RWD.
Okay, now the other data point that we know is that Tesla has said that they had nearly equal orders for AWD as RWD. If we have 60,000 RWD cars of demand, we can expect 60,000 cars worth of AWD demand too.
Those numbers also line up really well with two of the other numbers that Tesla gave out - 5,000 cars per week produced, and a 3 month delivery window...
5000 cars * 12 weeks = 60,000 cars.
Now, if we go back and assume that 50% of the reservations were made in the US, and we also estimate that half of them are waiting for the SR version of the car, we end up with 110,000 cars that we would expect need to be delivered in the US.
All these numbers line up kind of perfectly between what we know and what Tesla has said.
Based on that, to come up with my estimate I'm pretending like AWD production started officially and is running at 5,000 a week this week. (It didn't, but the production numbers before that are relatively negligible, and it seems like RWD numbers have dropped to almost nothing lately).
For you first-day reservation holders, which was approximately 25% of the overall reservation number (this pretends no one canceled, by the way), your AWD cars should be made in the first three weeks and delivered after that. That would be in production this week through the first week of September, delivery early September to mid September.
The reservations of the first week was announced at 325,000. Let's pretend that means that 75% of the reservations were made at this point. Subtracting the first 25% above, what would mean six weeks of production to satisfy that demand. Production would start second week of September and would completed for this group by October 19th, with all cars delivered by the end of October.
Reservations like me who were later will start after that and should be about three more weeks. Therefore, ending November 9th, with all cars ordered will be produced, so I can expect my car no later than the very end of November.
Which lines up silly good with their production estimates.
So that's where I think everyone sits.
Having said that, a few other things...
1) They have obviously already produced some AWD cars. They will also obviously produce some more RWD cars. This will shift the numbers a bit.
2) If we assume that the reports that about 25% of the original orders canceled, and the 420,000 reservation number is from later reservations, it moves all of the dates up by a bit. If we assume equal reductions, first-day moves to early September, first week moves to mid-October, and later reservations move to... Well, they don't since we don't know when the "new" reservations came in.
3) The batching of cars does alter this data, as you essentially end up in a potentially shorter line. One week of red production for instance would probably satisfy *all* red reservation holders, regardless of where they are in the line.
4) An increase in production lowers the waiting time by an equal amount of time. If they increase production to 6,000 average per week, that is a 20% increase in speed to delivery. That moves the final week of calculations up by just over two weeks. That puts a car like mine at the latest at mid-November.
If instead we assume they average 7,000 since the analysts recently saw an easy increase to 7-8,000, that is a 40-60% increase in production, moving everything up even further.
5) There *will* be exceptions to all of the above. There will be some first day reservation holders who don't get their cars until later. There will be others who reserved after me who will get theirs sooner. Having said that, I wonder if some of those are legit? It seems a pretty easy way to rile up a bunch of people if you show up and say that you just reserved and got your car a week later. Makes fans start really questioning things... But some of that will be legit. That isn't them trying to deliver them any less, or even working against their promises, just how things shake out when you have 60,000+ data points.
Along with that one, it's worth pointing out you're more likely to post how excited you are to get your car earlier, woo-woo, then post you got it when you expected it or later.
With all that I have said above, I don't *expect* to have my car until mid-November. Based on the other factors, specifically potential cancellations and production increases, I have hope that I will see the car in early October.
Of course, I WANT IT NEXT WEEK, DARN IT.
Hope this helps people wait a bit and estimate realistic delivery times a bit.
