That being said, there's no reason to harbor hard feelings toward Tesla. I suppose it's easier for me to say this, as we were able to order our dual motor 3 last week and we're waiting only about five or six months beyond our initial, hoped-for delivery timeframe.
You bet there's good reason to harbor bad feelings towards Tesla if you're a non-US customer! Like you say, it's easy for you to be lenient towards Tesla because they put their US customers over all others, even if the latter have been showing support for the company and the vehicle for much longer.
Do you think Tesla would have been able to impress Wall Street with those incredible inital reservation numbers if it had been for the US market alone? And who do you think account for the majority of all those cancelled reservations that Tesla published? I think it's safe to bet it is not US customers.
Think of it another way. Tesla p***ed off every reservation holder outside the US/Canada by their behaviour. That massively destroys goodwill.
And it's not just like some US forum community members here tend to say "ok, cancel then, makes me get my car earlier, ha ha". It's far more dangerous to Tesla than people in the US seem to realize.
At a time where all the competitors are now focussing their efforts towards bringing to market competitive alternatives to Tesla's cars, and asap at that, any advantage Tesla had is rapidly diminishing. Showing all markets outside America that they don't really care for them certainly doesn't help Tesla's case.
Same with the SC network. It might have been a huge bonus over the competition, being widely available, fast, and above all, "free for life". But at least in Europe (and I'm sure especially China will be going the same route), new ultra-fast charging networks are being built out at this very moment that make the SC specs blush by comparison.
By the time cars like the Porsche Taycan (the artist, sorry, car, formerly known as Mission E) come to market (as well as others that use the same charging technology) next year, the network will be more than just rudimentary, thus making the SC network seem like a nice yet certainly not dealbreaker amenity. Especially as it is no longer free either, negating another huge plus it had in the past.
Summing up, Tesla will face far more competition by the time the Model 3 (or even Model Y) will finally become available here, making good sales numbers in future even more unlikely than they are already. Now add to that the fact that over here, potential BEV customers feel that Tesla is a company that can't be trusted to keep their promises and doesn't care for markets other than the US, the drink can turn very sour very quickly indeed.
Just for "fun", look at the sales figures for the Model S in Germany 2018 versus 2017:
Jan: 45 versus 96 (-53%)
Feb: 124 versus 163 (-24%)
Mar: 304 versus 457 (-33%)
Apr: 71 versus 124 (-43%)
May: 112 versus 206 (-46%)
Before 2018, it was almost contiuous growth year-on-year.
Numbers for Model X look similarly bad by the way, except for February, which was slightly higher in 2018 than in 2017.
Does that look like happy potential customers to you? At a time when one would expect that sales would be gathering momentum now that ever more people know of Tesla and the awesomeness of their cars.
No, it graphically shows, and I also get that in all conversations I have with potential BEV buyers, that people over here have growing distrust towards Tesla. I also know of several people who cancelled their Model 3 reservation because they were fed up with how Tesla treated (and "communicated") the problem. And it certainly is a problem when a company whose very survival is so dependent on the success of one model, fails to deliver big time - especially after having been (overly, as per usual) optimistic about getting it right at least the third time round.
Delays concerning the Model S, being their first real mass production offering, were to be expected.
Delays concerning the Model X, being overly and unnecessarily complex, as Elon himself admitted, were to be expected as well.
But delays concerning the Model 3, being already reduced to the max (sometimes more than what is beneficial) and streamlined for optimal production output, were certainly not to be expected and each further delay announcement is another disappointment, and not just for jittery Wall Street - which I don't care for one moment by the way.
