My second reservation on 12/31/2012, Lucky #17,711 invited at 11:22 am PST 1/29/2013, a mere 29(!) days post-reservation.
I'd cancelled #4,491 - my 8/01/2011 reservation - on Sat. 1/26/2013 and received email confirmation of that yesterday, 1/28/2013.
I'm waiting for the Tesla Model S Leasing Program announcement so I can write-off my business vehicle lease payments, as I do with my 2012 ML 350 Bluetec SUV. (It just takes too long to depreciate a purchased sedan.)
I am annoyed as a future customer by Tesla's actions. IMHO, they are clearly leveraging their price increase to try to force my hand to lock-in my Model S Performance order by Feb. 26th BEFORE they will give me ANY details about their forthcoming leasing program (money factors, residuals, etc.). This is *way* before they need to know my precise configuration to submit orders to their Material Requirements Planning System (MRPS):
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Material_requirements_planning
IMHO, Tesla is simply pushing everyone who configured under "old" pricing to sign their MVPA before the end of Q1 to avoid "new" pricing. This makes their $5K non-refundable, which allows Elon to announce during his Q1 conference call:
"We have a backlog of N firm orders for Model S."
As a TSLA investor, that's great. However, as a customer, being leveraged by the $7,500 price increase on S Performance to finalize earlier than necessary for the production schedule before I know the leasing program details, or even if the leasing program will be available when my Model S is ready to be picked-up, leaves a bad taste in my mouth.
I'm seriously considering just skipping Model S altogether to get production serial number ~60-70 of the Model X Performance AWD ~June 2014. I expect the Model X will be available at introduction with an optional safety package that includes at minimum: adaptive cruise control, parking sensors, and maybe even blind spot detectors.
I'll email George my concerns directly to see what he says...
Russ