Let's say a month ago they had 6,000 people in the VIN queue and now they have 9,000. Looking at this increase people might think that the backlog is getting longer but absolute numbers are misleading in this context. If the production rate was 2,000/week a month ago, then 6,000 people would be equal to 3 weeks of production. If the production rate is 3,000/week now, then 9,000 people would be again equal to 3 weeks of production.
Therefore comparing the current number of people in the VIN queue to past numbers is misleading. There is a similar situation if you look at the VIN chart below. The gap between the green line and the orange line is getting wider over time but this is perfectly normal and it is supposed to be like that. They are acquiring NHTSA VINs a few weeks in advance. In the past, a few weeks meant 2500 units when their production rate was low. Nowadays a few weeks means 10K units. The gap didn't change in terms of time. Therefore this is actually an excellent way to estimate current total units.
Tesla collects $2,500 USD when people configure. If they collected that from let's say 10K people, that would be $25 million which is less than 1% of their $3.4 billion revenue in Q1. It's not important.
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