Inventory or Custom Order?

[Imran145]

Hi Folks

Thinking about going for a Long Range model 3.

my question was whether ordering from Inventory stock was a bad thing or not? I.e. it’s not old/returned/bad stock or anything like that?

From what I can see the car was first posted on existing inventory back on 22nd January. (Long range/red paint/white interior)

Any advice appreciated

Thanks

 

[ACarneiro]

No, they’re brand new cars don’t worry.
Which means you should treat them with the same degree of suspicion as any other new Tesla car

 

[TheEVadvisor]

No there shouldn’t be any difference unless they are shipping the 3s directly from China which apparently have better build quality! All will be brand new unless stated pre-owned

 

[Imran145]

No, they’re brand new cars don’t worry.
Which means you should treat them with the same degree of suspicion as any other new Tesla car

Haha. True. Although I’ve been advised by Tesla it’s the Shanghai built one as it has the extra door detail. so should have Better build quality in theory.

do I need to worry about battery technology or anything like that? There’s talk of LFD batteries etc

is it a good time to buy? Or should we be expecting any price reductions etc soon?

bit of a dilemma whether it’s right time to buy or not

 

[Imran145]

No there shouldn’t be any difference unless they are shipping the 3s directly from China which apparently have better build quality! All will be brand new unless stated pre-owned

Thanks. That reassuring.

 

[Cardo]

Haha. True. Although I’ve been advised by Tesla it’s the Shanghai built one as it has the extra door detail. so should have Better build quality in theory.

do I need to worry about battery technology or anything like that? There’s talk of LFD batteries etc

is it a good time to buy? Or should we be expecting any price reductions etc soon?

bit of a dilemma whether it’s right time to buy or not

Only the SR+ comes with the LFP battery. Which doesn’t appear to have been as much of an issue as first thought, anyway.
I have one of the new MiC LRs, it’s great. The battery is the E5D, which is the LG Chem 77 kWh NMC chemistry, similar to earlier models.

I’d be surprised to see any price reductions any time soon. We’re coming towards the end of Q1, so there may be some incentives towards the end of March, however I’d be surprised to see money off on new vehicles.

 

[MrBadger]

A new inventory car should be brand new but possibly kept back from immediate sale as needing some remedial work - hopefully less of an issue with MIC cars. Or it may just be pristine excess stock.

 

[Tam]

...my question was whether ordering from Inventory stock was a bad thing or not? I.e. it’s not old/returned/bad stock or anything like that?...

There's a reason why it's classified as "inventory". If you are lucky, it's brand new with no difference at all. On the other hand, it might just be like what you said "old/returned/bad stock or anything like that".

 

[Imran145]

Thanks folks. Really appreciate all the comments. Really helps. Let’s see if any incentives are included as the month end gets closer.

 

[Tam]

Really helps.

Put it in another way, the only criteria for "inventory" is it must be legally brand new on paper (regardless of its real condition). That means legally, it has never been titled to anyone.

That legal brand new paper title may not reflect the real condition of the car: It could be untouched brand new or it could be display, test drive, orphan, accidents before delivery, and all other horrible conditions. Regardless of the real condition of the car, it's never been titled to anyone so you can still get any applicable incentive for a "new car" even when its real condition could be terrible!

 

[SR-Plus]

Watch the YouTube video by RS Symons. He did a side by side comparison of a MIC vehicle vs Fremont including sound test. In some cases there were no difference.

 

[nxsynjs]

My M3P was an inventory model with about 2K miles on it. Like the OP I was a little nervous about the condition, but when I got it it was perfect. panel gaps, paint etc all spot on. I suspect any issues had been resolved already. The main benefit was that it had FSD as part of the car, saving me over 8K in total over list. It also came with the full 4 year warranty, as well as the 7 day no quibble return thing.

 

[GeorgeSymonds]

Inventory stock can be a mix of stock. Tesla class even demo or showroom stock as "New" so be careful when looking. There are some "2021" model cars out there that are the last of the fremont production and don't have things like the heated steering wheel, you need a Made in China (MIC) car for that.

The advantage of Inventory is lead times should be quicker, it reflects the unallocated stock they have. A Custom order is not really a custom order, its stating a configuration that when they have inventory appear that matches your spec, they will match you to it. In the past that process have been clunky and appears to be manual, whats worse is they seem to publically release the inventory and then somebody matches custom orders to it but people have got in and ordered that inventory before custom orders got matched, in otherwords a custom order has taken longer. Speakev had a whole thread on this when the model 3 was launched and tesla-info was listing stock before even the tesla website even had an option to see model 3 inventory which enabled people to get cars quicker than custom orders. ev-cpo and tesla-info both list stock and provide more details than Tesla do, even things like manufacturing date available date can be shown which isn't readily visible on the Tesla website. Style wise those sites look very different to each other but worth checking them out. if you do decide to look at inventory as it will help ensure you're buying recent models.

 

[GeorgeSymonds]

Put it in another way, the only criteria for "inventory" is it must be legally brand new on paper (regardless of its real condition). That means legally, it has never been titled to anyone.

That's not true in Teslas case. Tesla sell ex demo and loan cars as New inventory and they have been registered and put on the road. The "New" definition they work to seems to be "not registered to anyone other than the manufacturer" which is the definition for the tax man to qualify for things like the 100% FYA allowance, and you get "new car ownership rights" with regard to rejection, warranty etc which is slightly different to second hand or CPO cars. Oddly, a CPO (Tesla sold used car) thats less than a year old actually has a better warranty than a new car as they extend the new car warranty by a year, as an example a 10k miles, so as a buyer a 3 month old 3k mile car would be covered for 4 years 9 months and 57k miles and not 4 years/50k miles. If you see my post above, some of those sites detail that detail which Tesla don't always make that clear.

 

[Tam]

...That's not true in Teslas case. Tesla sell ex demo and loan cars as New inventory and they have been registered and put on the road...

Q: Are Dealer plates ever registered to a vehicle?
A: No. Dealer plates are registered to the dealer, never the vehicle.

In the US, manufacturer/dealer plates are registered to a manufacturer/dealer and not to any particular vehicle.

They can switch the plates to any vehicle in their possession so those vehicles don't have to be registered at all.

Thus, Tesla can rack up the miles to thousands of miles and let them cars be really old in age but because those particular cars have not ever been registered, they are still considered as "new" as far as registration concerned.

 

[MrBadger]

In the US, manufacturer/dealer plates are registered to a manufacturer/dealer and not to any particular vehicle.

The rules are quite different for the users of this UK and Ireland sub forum. Whilst we have trade plates, they are not used to demo a new car which are registered as normal vehicles and recorded as such in the V5 document. So if you buy a demo car, you will be the second keeper, the garage being the first. Thankfully a huge discount normally goes the way of the purchaser - my last car I purchased 'new' I got over 30% off the 'new' price even though it had 4 miles on the clock and still came wrapped in manufacturing protection. The disadvantage is that second hand the car will be worth a bit less as it had an additional owner/keeper.

 

[Adopado]

Hi Folks

Thinking about going for a Long Range model 3.

my question was whether ordering from Inventory stock was a bad thing or not? I.e. it’s not old/returned/bad stock or anything like that?

From what I can see the car was first posted on existing inventory back on 22nd January. (Long range/red paint/white interior)

Any advice appreciated

Thanks

In a sense all the cars are inventory stock. Tesla don't make custom orders ... they make a batch of cars that are put on a boat and then the ones that match your "custom order" specification are assigned to you. If there's no car that matches your spec then you have to wait longer for one to arrive (unlikely because there aren't that many variations). Any remaining unallocated cars go into inventory and you can buy them relatively quickly but you'll likely be restricted in choice.