Thats a good article but you have to ask yourself a couple of questions and answer them because looking at the total, there only roughly 220,000 Small Lux Sedans sold world wide extrapolating by doubling US.
1) How the heck can Tesla sell 500,000 Model 3s if the market for these cars is only 220,000?
2) We have seen a drop in BMW and Daimler and Audi sales from those models over the last couple of years, but if it was the same people why wouldnt they have dropped even more while people held out for a Model 3 after placing a reservation?
3) What does all of this tell us about the 450,000-500,000 reservation holders?
I am not going to directly answer because I am interested in what others think. But in General I think what we are seeing with the model 3 it is filling a need in the market that had been there for a long time and has been pent up. Because 300,000 reservations happened basically overnight, it means that people bought in before even know what the car was. Most hadnt even seen it before putting down the deposit, which is a small thing because it was totally refundable, but still hundreds of thousands put down a deposit not knowing what the car even looked like. To me this points to a system wide pent up demand for a sexy, environmentally friendly vehicle. Hybrids were not good enough, they where not sexy and they where not fun to drive. They make you feel good about your efforts with the environment but they do not make you feel satisfied from a more animal like place where the butterflies in your stomach live. This screams to me as not being Small Lux Sedan customers. I dont think the lines at Tesla stores were filled with BMW and Daimler owners. I think they were mostly Prius and Leaf owners. There were certainly some people in the small lux camp, but I think the vast majority, including myself were not in that camp at all.
Now, once the car hits the roads in mass, I think it will start to impact that segment more and more. I think the first day depositors where pent up demand that came from every class of vehicle known to man, including small economical cars all the way up to BMW 5 Series, but not just people who typically buy cars in the small lux sedan class. Those customers are still ripe for the pickings and I think they will be picked off once Tesla has worked through the reservations in full and people are just ordering and picking up cars. This is good and bad. Its bad, because even I was touting how this would force BMW, Daimler and the like to move. In fact it might actually make them a bit complacent because I dont think BMW 3 series will drop like a rock for another year. Eventually it will fall, but not until people can just order and take delivery in a few weeks. I think the damage that Tesla will do to those brands is all but in the books already for the next year, those people already put off buying a new BMW 3 or C class while they waited.
What does this mean? I think it means that the Model 3s magic is that it means a lot of different things to a lot of different people and its wide appeal is something Tesla needed badly. Model S had broad appeal but the price and margins for the lowest end mode was not feasible for the millions of people who lusted after one. Now the Model 3 is, and most of those people are not small lux customers today, but will be because of the model 3.
The thing I never thought about before today was the fact that people waited in line and put down a deposit on a car they knew nothing about with he exception of the fact that it was going to be a mass market Tesla at a price more people could afford. It was not a bunch of Small Lux sedan owners. In fact, I would not be surprised to see the 5 Series and E class be hurt by the model 3 as much as the 3 Series and C class, which actually hurts those companies more because as you move up in class, the margins get bigger thus losing sales hurts them more.
This is why bears are confused and keep saying there is no way there are 450k+ reservations. They would be right in a world where people only stay in their lane and only buy the car they are supposed to. This is not reality, people are complex and are driven in many different ways. This is human nature and this is why we have Marketers that are able to go out and find people to purchase products. Tesla's marketing is the cars themselves and the word of mouth. This is why EVs had to be sexy to make them work. Econoboxes would have never worked, even if they were cheap, which is impossible until costs come down.
