This would be a horrific use of cash, and perfectly antithetical to Elon's comments on the most recent earnings call when he talked about reducing time from production to delivery as a key source of cash. I think he said each day's reduction adds $70 million to the balance sheet. And, we all know that the vast majority of Tesla store employees are less educated than those on this forum.
Probably true, but this (nor any other) forum do not represent the vast majority of buyers. Forum communities tend to be very informed, passionate, ehem... "vocal"... but they do not usually represent "joe / jane buyer" very well.
Joe / Jane buyer want to go down to a "dealership" (store) take a test drive, buy a car and leave with it. Joe / Jane buyer usually do not order cars... unlike many people on forum communities for many brands.
Tesla needs to be able to deliver cars in a week or less to really capture joe / jane buyer. Ideally, they would get a car about as fast as they get an amazon order.
Tesla doesnt have lots of place to store cars, so they really need to get to the point where they get VERY good at anticipating demand, and have the cars in the general area that the buyers want them in. Every "option" they add reduces the ability to just "make the cars", and match them to people later without too much wait.
So, having some "inventory" is ok. In this specific case, I believe its better for tesla to have overshot and produced too many cars right now (end of year tax incentive) than not be able to meet demand. Not meeting demand would have become a HUGE story, even if it was peoples fault for waiting till the last minute. Much better to have some inventory right now, and encourage people to buy now.
If I were tesla, I would probably have another price cut on the Model 3 long range / P model of the exact amount of the tax cut, sometime late january /early february to try to keep the momentum rolling.
