I guess I'll chime in for the first time, and hopefully won't piss off anyone. I've had an S85 since March 2013 and love it though my wife wants nothing to do with it. We have five children from college to car seat, and have taken many 250 mile trips in the S including for skiing, etc., usually with 3 kids but as many as 5. I prefer not to take my wife's ten year old Odyssey but have to bribe 11 yr old to sit backwards on long drives so have been on the X list over a year (#12,800 or so). So my use case is primarily people moving, but I've carried bikes inside (I now have an Ecohitch and bike rack), and done Ikea and Costco runs, etc where the folded down space comes in handy (eg bed frames).
I never got an email with the X seats-flat photo or even saw it until last month, so I had no particular expectations. I was a bit surprised at the reactions but seeing that photo I understand how people like Nigel and Al would be disappointed and more importantly not able to fit the X into their personal use cases as-is.
As some have opined, my guess is that Tesla didn't intentionally blow them off. They just aimed for comfortable, safe, innovative seats that enabled easy rear seat access with car seats in place, and folding was the feature they couldn't solve for in that equation. But that doesn't help if your stuff won't fit. Perhaps they'll work folding into a future iteration or offer an alternative folding seat in future.
I hope you guys will maintain Production reservations in the meantime. It also seems like some of the other voices proclaiming doom and gloom about shovels and lamps should wait and see how much can really fit in the car, especially in the 6 seat version. Sometimes this is driven by panic as they have Sig reservations to configure, but many have more time and some probably don't even have a reservation but are just piling on. Finally I ask that all add to their signatures a point about not allowing quoting outside the forum. Not a panacea but could help reduce the noise leakage.
