Since I specifically brought it up in this thread first (I believe - if not then I at the very least contributed to it), I wanted to provide the "bottom line" on these "mysterious" 100 cars or whatever. A poster on the same article claims to have contacted Tesla regarding these cars, and here is what he posted:
Ford Prefect 1969:
OK update.
I have spoken with Tesla on the subject of these vehicles offered for sale in Europe without the normal reservation lead-time.
Disregarding the private sales and vehicles that have been purchased by independent dealers, and focussing only on the 13 from Tesla.
These are described as customer configured vehicles that were reserved at some considerable time in the past. Whereby the customers private circumstances had changed between time of reserving the vehicle and the time of delivery such that they were unable to pay for the balance of the vehicle.
As described, this is something that could happen in small numbers in future, for example during a 4 or 5 month waiting time causing the forfeiture of the deposit and the offer for sale as configured in this manner.
In this instance owing to the extremely long lead times relevant to the first deliveries to Europe then a fair number of cars were undeliverable due to non-payment.
I am awaiting a call back to get some further granularity on the question of some of these vehicles being loaners.
As for the second part. The representative I spoke with agreed that constructing a campaign-style case for collapsed demand via Seeking Alpha in direct contradiction of official guidance was wrong and could be of interest to General Counsel. I am given to understand the matter will be referred.
and his second post:
Update 2
I have now spoken with sales. The used vehicles listed are described are ex demo as opposed to loaners. These are vehicles that they have used for test drives and can be expected to appear for sale in this fashion as an ongoing feature.
The representative reiterated that the balance of the new vehicles were cars for which the customers had been unable to make payment for personal reasons.
In a more general sense sales in Germany were described as going very well. This representative was from the Frankfurt store and stated that not a day goes by without making sales. Naturally he was not able to disclose total sales figures and I did not press him on it.
I asked him about the media in Germany and commented that I had read the comments of all of the 2014 European car of the year adjudicators concerning the Model S placing 3rd (journalists in the main) and noted that they did not seem to 'get it' in a way that was unavoidable in the US. His reply was that in Germany Tesla was primarily driven by positive customer sentiment and positive reactions to test driving the vehicle.
I asked about Autobahn tuning and was told they were still waiting for that to be completed and rolled out over the air. He further commented that when the first Model S demonstrators came to Germany, german's typically commented that the American-tuned suspension was not set up as firm as they would like it and this was adjusted accordingly. Later the more firmly tuned vehicle was sent to the UK for review and test drives and UK commentators thought it was too harsh. Indicating a lot of variability in regional preferences.
Very fascinating to me - I asked about the AWD model S. I was told that this is expected in 2015 around the launch of the Model X. Most interestingly - that the AWD functionality is expected to be available as a retrofit to the current 2WD Model S.
So hope that puts this to rest. All of this has been a lot of he said, she said... so you are all welcome to try to reach out to Tesla Germany for further information, but I as I commonly read through these comments, I have not seen the poster: "Ford Prefect 1969" post anything that would indicate he would be making this information up.
- - - Updated - - -
Something else that I think is a good sign for the upcoming Q1 results and should help put some of the other recent FUD to rest
Tesla Model S crushes all
This is Norway sales data. Most people tried to jump on top of the fact that January sales were low in Norway, and even trying to claim Feb sales were down as if people didn't want cars in the country any more now that a lot of the subsidies have dropped (side note: have they actually pulled out all the subsidies for Norway? Or is it just another one of those things where you have to wait for the stuff back on your taxes, so people try to fit it in in December so they can get it in time?). Anyway, Tesla is back to being number 1 on the market share for Norway, and the total sales for the year is now up to 1,110 (and with this article date of 18 March, that is another 13 more days of possible deliveries to get that number up even higher before the end of the quarter).
So, in my opinion this reinforces the "supply constrained" line of thinking which concludes that Tesla is sending these cars where they need to, to try to alleviate their highest backlogs. So one country or area gets a heavier focus during certain times than others do. I think this also leads to "slow" months seeming to pop up, because they would be trying to ship out most of their end of Dec/early Jan cars to foreign countries so they get there in time for the end of Quarter sales. With them intentionally holding back 1000 cars this time around, hopefully we will see this start to even out now, and it will be less "bursty". I think this is also why it would not be helpful for Tesla to at this time push their Monthly sales numbers or specifically break down where certain cars are getting delivered to since neither of those pieces of information actually tell the story of demand (for now)