If I order same spec today get same EDD of mid September so have I lost any advantage of ordering in March?
The EDD saga looks like a shambles to us. To Tesla, they may think it’s a flawless algorithm. Reality probably puts it somewhere in between.
Speculation: People think that Tesla build in batches. This probably isn’t too speculative because, from a manufacturing process, it only makes sense
to build in batches. Taken to the limit, if they “build to order” they would be getting, say, 300 orders per day with multiple different specs and building one, then the other, then another, in that same day, just wouldn’t make sense.
Speculation thickens: So they design an algorithm that predicts the number of orders they’ll get within any specific week/month/quarter (whatever it is). They base this off past performance and whatever factors they want to include (which will probably be many). So they may prioritise medium-spec relatively high volume/high margin cars at the beginning of the quarter (or month or whatever) and then aim to have the low-margin high volume cars towards the end. Then they may try to squeeze in the in between stuff too. People say they favour FSD and that’s probably true, but lets just say in any given period of time, they think only 50 orders of Red/Black/SR 3’s will be ordered and only 4 have FSD… maybe this “batch” is due to be built in the last month of the quarter. I don’t think they’re going to prioritise the 4 FSD orders because, it’s software they can simply add to the car after production. But lets say all 50 orders include FSD, then they may think that that’s worth enough to prioritise because it means more money sooner.
Thankfully, my order still says 26-30 June (though I know that could change at ANY time). But lets just say Tesla had already built a batch of 500 of the same spec car that I ordered when they opened up, and 498 of those they had orders to match in the UK. I come along on 1 May after a test drive that weekend and place my order. They now have 499 of that batch matched to orders…
The question is, why do some move and some don’t? That, nobody knows. And nobody knows whether the batch and match theory is true either. If I were to guess, in amongst all this batching, they know that at some point in the production cycle, they’re going to come back to making that same spec batch again. But with all the issues we’ve been facing this quarter, they may realise - only after some time - that that batch needs to be pushed back either as a reprioritisation exercise, or because they don’t have the parts arriving, or whatever.
The point is, nobody really knows. All we can do is piece together evidence in order to formulate theories that help us arrive at better explanations of the reality.
(edit: all of the above doesn’t even account for SHIPPING! So add that layer, and it’s clear why people’s EDDs are bouncing like a yo-yo!)
Good luck to all!
