For Techies: What size server, etc., will TM need to handle Model 3 reservations?

[Electroman]

+1

1000 on day 1 would be a great start

 

[aronth5]

But how many of those people are going to put down a $2500 deposit that first night and not get to test drive the car or see one up close, know what options it will have, or even know what the final price is going to be, for probably two years?

A lot of people might want one, but aren't crazed about it to make that kind of upfront investment in something fairly intangible and on faith that it will be delivered in two years.

I think the only people willing to do that are already Tesla owners, or Tesla fanbois that want a low VIN for bragging rights. IOW, not all that many.

For many it will be to lock in the tax credit, but in general your reasoning makes sense. A lot will depend on how much the deposit will be. If it was only a $1,000 would you think differently?

 

[HankLloydRight]

For many it will be to lock in the tax credit, but in general your reasoning makes sense. A lot will depend on how much the deposit will be. If it was only a $1,000 would you think differently?

How can it lock in a tax credit when there's no idea to know how many more cars Tesla will sell between now and then and if the tax credit is or isn't still available, or starting to taper down? I doubt that's a driving factor to the initial M3 reservers.

 

[aronth5]

How can it lock in a tax credit when there's no idea to know how many more cars Tesla will sell between now and then and if the tax credit is or isn't still available, or starting to taper down? I doubt that's a driving factor to the initial M3 reservers.

Guaranteed to lock in the tax credit, maybe not but based on the following information from dhansen865 very likely. I do believe that many will want to get a early reservation, maybe not the first day or first week but early in the game to maximize the chance of the credit.
http://www.teslamotorsclub.com/showthread.php/60264-Tesla-Says-Model-3-Will-Be-On-Sale-2017-Alongside-Chevy-Bolt/page11

 

[Crowded Mind]

How can it lock in a tax credit when there's no idea to know how many more cars Tesla will sell between now and then and if the tax credit is or isn't still available, or starting to taper down? I doubt that's a driving factor to the initial M3 reservers.

It is certainly a factor that is under consideration for me and friends that I have shared the tax credit phaseout with.

 

[EVNow]

These are I think the extremes.

I totally agree. I'm expecting somewhere around 50,000 reservations in 24 hours, 150,000 in a week, and 500,000 before the first car is delivered.

1000 on the first day, and that's a stretch.

Here is what happened with Leaf. 3 will be more than Leaf because of much better awareness now - and expected better specs too. I expect about 20k in the first week, probably 10k in the first 24 hours.

6,000 in the first 2 days @ 3,000/day
3,000 in the next 22 days @ 135/day
3,000 in the next 3 days @ 1,000/day
6,000 in the next 85 days @ 70/day.
1,000 in the next 28 days @ 35/day

 

[Electroman]

Leafs deposit was what, $100?

How much do you expect for M3? $1000 or $1500 may be?

Big difference

 

[HankLloydRight]

I just want to point out that the topic has skewed from "how big of a datacenter will Tesla need to provision to handle the crushing flood of reservations as soon as Model 3 is announced" to "how many reservations will Tesla receive in x days/weeks/months/years" -- they're somewhat different questions.

 

[EVNow]

Leafs deposit was what, $100?

How much do you expect for M3? $1000 or $1500 may be?

Big difference

We don't know how much the reservation will be - but I'm confident it will be low enough for Tesla to get a high # of reservations.

Remember, compared to when Leaf launched people are super-informed about EVs now. There are a large number of Leaf, S & Volt owners ready to reserve 3 the minute it opens. For most of them, $100 or $1500 makes little difference.

 

[Zhelko Dimic]

That's 35 transactions per minute, on average. And each transaction is just: Name, address, email, phone and credit card. Nothing special nor different than what they're already doing for Model X reservations.

This level of traffic is peanuts for a web infrastructure. Even if the first hour rush is 10x that, that's 350 transactions per minute, or 6 per second.

Still, peanuts.

I agree. However, considering back-end, let me share that payment providers suck. All of them.

Depending who Tesla is integrated with, I would not be surprised that their payment provider is not setup for that kind of load - 6 per second. Assuming transaction takes 3sec, they'll need at least 18 concurrent connections. Not that payment vendor can't handle it, but default setup may have limit on connections, throughput, attempt rate or something like that. Situation gets worse if Tesla uses auth+capture to store token, instead of just capture. And test environments of payment vendors are never even remotely replicas of their production environment.

Ask me how I know...

 

[ratsbew]

You have to factor in the F5 army that will be hammering the site trying to be first in line. There may be 5,000 people refreshing every 5 seconds. That would be 60,000 hits per minute.

 

[HankLloydRight]

You have to factor in the F5 army that will be hammering the site trying to be first in line. There may be 5,000 people refreshing every 5 seconds. That would be 60,000 hits per minute.

If they're just refreshing a static page waiting for it to open for reservations, that's nothing, even at those stated levels (1000 pageviews per second). Pages like that would be served from the cache or CDN anyway, causing very little real load on the server(s).

 

[Twiglett]

If they're just refreshing a static page waiting for it to open for reservations, that's nothing, even at those stated levels (1000 pageviews per second). Pages like that would be served from the cache or CDN anyway, causing very little real load on the server(s).

Yep, all of those F5 requests are going to be caught by the proxy in front of the servers anyway. The server on sees real requests.
Thats the same for most static pages, the server can be offline and the proxy will still happily serve all the cached static pages.
I would be very surprised to see the servers take a hit for any of this.

 

[hcsharp]

...Here is what happened with Leaf. 3 will be more than Leaf because of much better awareness now - and expected better specs too. I expect about 20k in the first week, probably 10k in the first 24 hours.

6,000 in the first 2 days @ 3,000/day
3,000 in the next 22 days @ 135/day
3,000 in the next 3 days @ 1,000/day
6,000 in the next 85 days @ 70/day.
1,000 in the next 28 days @ 35/day

In addition to 100x better awareness, Model 3 is a far more compelling vehicle. Also Nissan didn't allow reservations except from certain parts of the country where it was warm enough. They had no winter package the first year or two. Almost everybody knows about the "affordable Tesla" and a huge number of those people want one. I won't be surprised to see 10 or 50x the Leaf numbers for M3. Still I think the servers can handle it.

 

[HankLloydRight]

If the deposits are refundable, I think I may put one down on reveal night (I have an invite, but not sure I'll be going). I have no idea what our car needs will be in two years, but having a M3 option would be nice. Especially if they go with the Shooting Brake design I'm hoping for.

 

[tga]

6,000 in the first 2 days @ 3,000/day
3,000 in the next 22 days @ 135/day
3,000 in the next 3 days @ 1,000/day
6,000 in the next 85 days @ 70/day.
1,000 in the next 28 days @ 35/day

What's with the 22 day lull, followed by the 3 day burst of 3000 reservations? Anyone?

 

[dgpcolorado]

What's with the 22 day lull, followed by the 3 day burst of 3000 reservations? Anyone?

Perhaps more states were opened to reservations? The states were grouped in tiers and reservations opened sequentially by tier.

 

[Tedkidd]

The most recent version I was given is reservations will be traunched by day. This will determine configurator invite priority. Configurator completion, plus delivery region, options, employee/owner/newbie, will all factor into final delivery order.

So being first in line doesn't matter, getting your order in on the first day might.

I'm going to try to get to Toronto - anybody from central NY headed up? My car can't make it that far...

 

[Bankroetlama]

we'll know soon!

 

[TheCaptain67]

They need to take whatever email hardware they have and buy that X 100 for tonight.

Still waiting on email receipt from my purchase 3 hours ago.