EU Signature Angst

[Right_Said_Fred]

I am sorry to repeat this but there never was anything from Tesla making me to assume "first delivery" for the EU signatures. The term "introduced to markets first" really can mean anything. I closely followed the first months of U.S. production. It became rather clear to me that Tesla did what they stated: reservation sequence number is your slot number for being asked to finalize. After that came the drama of batching for production and geographic delivery, which certainly stirred up things further.
Then Elon visited Norway this spring, and stated that Norway would receive the first cars in Europe. I don't remember if a reason was given. easier tax/toll regime, tremendous support there? If the latter, what's wrong with delivering the car to your biggest fans?

What completely escapes my mind is to complain that some general production cars might be delivered to Norway, while someone in central Europe is still waiting for their signature. As if that taints your car? That is a far-fetched, very strange concept to me. Nota bene, this is speculation and far from happening. Even the first Sig cars haven't been delivered yet.

Why are you constantly finding excuses for Tesla? I know you're a big fan. But I'm a fan too; I walk around with a Tesla cap and jacket. But I'm not providing them with excuses, like I did with Fisker when they announced delay after delay and kept me waiting for four years. How will a company improve if it its customers give it a free pass every time?

Elon said they would deliver the first cars to Norway, as a thank you, because they are the biggest market in Europe (not necessarily the biggest fans. Norway simply has the best fiscal policies for EV's which make the Model S popular, followed by The Netherlands). But Tesla could have settled for delivering several dozen cars first. It doesn't mean you have to build many hundreds of Norwegian P's, at least up till P1718, weeks before you build Sigs!!

You're right in observing that it doesn't taint your car if someone gets his P before your Sig. But it does mean that Sigs get built and delivered later than they could have been, since hundreds of P's are taking up spots on the production line. They could have used the European spots to build the 500 Sigs in 2 weeks, they chose to use many of those spots for P's and spread out the building of the Sigs over a period of at least 6 weeks. That doesn't make sense. You take away the one advantage of ordering a Sig. If you ordered a Sig two years ago and chose black, silver or white and it gets delivered at the same time or even later than a P (which is actually happening in Norway!), what do you get for putting up €30,000 upfront (money Tesla badly needed during those years) and paying a few thousand euro's extra: an inscription and maybe a few months of 3G. That is just plain wrong.

 

[dsm363]

Some possible good news that might make some feel better

Yet another statement from Tesla Switzerland (but this time I got the feeling that it might be correct - note that I didn't get a phonecall last week as promised, so I was calling them today):

The Signatures for Switzerland are on their way. They will not be shipped via the Netherlands or Norway. Instead they will come straight to Switzerland (of course via a port in the Netherlands, but without formally entering the EU). I didn't get an exact delivery date yet, because they only have 2 DS and 2 technicians staffed and all of them are very busy with events and getting ready for delivery (and of course there is the Swiss national day tomorrow and I guess there will not be much activity between the national day and the weekend).

My delivery window is between Aug. 13th and 27th. This is supposed to be the delivery window for all Swiss Signatures!
Tesla is planning to have a delivery event, where a few Signatures will be handed over to the customers, but no details are available yet.
I hope I reproduced the information correctly from my short term memory

 

[EU-P1422]

Why are you constantly finding excuses for Tesla? I know you're a big fan. But I'm a fan too; I walk around with a Tesla cap and jacket. But I'm not providing them with excuses, like I did with Fisker when they announced delay after delay and kept me waiting for four years. How will a company improve if it its customers give it a free pass every time?

Elon said they would deliver the first cars to Norway, as a thank you, because they are the biggest market in Europe (not necessarily the biggest fans. Norway simply has the best fiscal policies for EV's which make the Model S popular, followed by The Netherlands). But Tesla could have settled for delivering several dozen cars first. It doesn't mean you have to build many hundreds of Norwegian P's, at least up till P1718, weeks before you build Sigs!!

You're right in observing that it doesn't taint your car if someone gets his P before your Sig. But it does mean that Sigs get built and delivered later than they could have been, since hundreds of P's are taking up spots on the production line. They could have used the European spots to build the 500 Sigs in 2 weeks, they chose to use many of those spots for P's and spread out the building of the Sigs over a period of at least 6 weeks. That doesn't make sense. You take away the one advantage of ordering a Sig. If you ordered a Sig two years ago and chose black, silver or white and it gets delivered at the same time or even later than a P (which is actually happening in Norway!), what do you get for putting up €30,000 upfront (money Tesla badly needed during those years) and paying a few thousand euro's extra: an inscription and maybe a few months of 3G. That is just plain wrong.

I second that.
- SIGS have paid a huge deposit, most of them when the future looked uncertain.
- SIGS have paid a premium.

IMHO Tesla should honor that - they could have easily done so by not producing all these european P's but after the 'small' quantity of 500 SIGS
(again, let's no talk about exceptions ! )

I don't think the X-reservations will benefit from Tesla's policy.

 

[Eberhard]

I ordered my Sig 2 1/2 years ago. When I finalized 28th Jan, i got the delivery date for Jun/July. Later Elon stated, that production for Europe will start June. Then I expected to get my Model S not later then 31st. July being my birthday. Also my wife holidays starts, she is a schoolteacher. The only reason if can prove was, that production in June may hurt the 2nd quarter results, while > 500 Model S may be in transit to Europe. Now I got notification, that i will get my car 22nd August, but next day, i was pushed back by me DS for 4th of September. Close to my wife end of holidays.
All my birthday pleasure were destroyed, now i will suffer the lost of my holiday joy as well. Only because someone very high up wanted to shine 2nd quartes results. Being a long term invester i am not interested in short term pushing of share prices but getting my Model S as soon as possible.