Why are people going to believe the website? Its not like its been very accurate for months. For many of us its said “2-3 weeks.” An oversight of programming at Tesla? Doubt it.
As others have stated, Tesla produces on a quarterly basis, with production early in each quarter slated for overseas deliveries, followed by production for the eastern US and Canada, and production late in each quarter destined for the western US and eventually just California. This enables Tesla to maximize production in a given quarter to be delivered in the same quarter, which is good for Tesla's bottom line.
The trouble is that, for a period of several months, Tesla was specifying "2 weeks" as the delivery time for all US orders. This 2-week figure was fairly accurate for orders in the final month or so of each quarter, even for "fresh" deliveries from the factory. Earlier in the quarter, it would only be accurate if Tesla happened to have a car in inventory nearby, and that often required changing some detail, like the car's color. Thus, lots of people said that the 2-week delivery estimate was misleading, and there's some truth to that -- even if
some people got their cars within that window, others would not. Understanding Tesla's production schedule was -- and is -- key to predicting how soon you'll get a car that you order.
It seems to me that Tesla has taken the criticism of the "2 week" delivery estimate to heart and has updated their Web site. A few weeks ago, the delivery estimate for US orders jumped considerably, but it's come down since then. (It currently specifies 5-7 weeks.) I haven't tracked the figures precisely, but it looks like all these estimates are aiming for late December deliveries, which is consistent with what's happened in previous quarters. If
Tesla's Web site is to be believed, they have few or no cars in inventory in my area, and I'd guess that would be true nationwide, so buyers today can't count on getting a car from inventory quicker than the end of December.
My own prediction, which is worth precisely as much as anybody's paid for it, is that Tesla will deliver the vast majority of cars ordered (in the US) before the end of November by the end of December, and probably most of those ordered before mid-December, too. This is consistent with what's happened in previous quarters. Case in point: I ordered my car in mid-March (the 14th, I believe) and received it on March 30th. That's not quite within the 2-week delivery window Tesla was claiming at the time, but it's close enough. OTOH, the Thanksgiving and Christmas holidays may slow down production and delivery a bit at the end of the quarter. I have no idea what Tesla's production schedule is for the holidays. It's also conceivable that Tesla has a bigger backlog of orders now than they have at similar points in other recent quarters, in which case orders placed past December 1, or maybe even today, might slip into January, or conceivably even later.