Will Tesla “ever” give early Reservation holders priority over new S/X owners?

[Frank99]

JeffK -
Great quote there. That does indeed lend credence to the idea that buying a Model S today will move you up in the Model 3 delivery schedule. I'll stand by my statement that doing so won't impact anyone's delivery date by much - a couple thousand more people with priority won't make an impact when Tesla's building 5,000 vehicles a week.

 

[electracity]

I think many of the S/X owners in the queue won't configure immediately when their turns comes up either. Some don't have an immediate use for the car. Some know that the early cars will probably make a 1980's Fiat seem well built.

 

[ummgood]

Honestly at this point if someone is in the market and they end up pulling the trigger on a Model S I really think very few will pull the trigger on the Model 3 a year later. If they lease the car will be available before their lease is up. If they buy and then go to sell they will take a huge loss on the resale value vs. what a new one cost.

The only that might convert to Model 3 purchasers will be those that have enough cash to buy two Teslas. Frankly right now for my family if I bought a Model S now I wouldn't have the means or desire to purchase a Model 3. It also wouldn't work for a second car for us because we need a much larger car to replace our Honda Odyssey. Even the Model X isn't adequate for us because the 3rd row isn't practical on the Model X for regular use.

So I am not too worried about existing owners getting in front of me in line. As long as I can still have my car in time to get the full tax rebate.

 

[aronth5]

Aren't the employees the ones to figure out all the flaws, keep it behind closed doors, and then get great cars to market faster than a regular launch would have allowed? Employees can access the internal feedback system much better than buying customers would, I'm sure. One thousand employees would get som many bugs out within the first few weeks...or the whole employees first thing is an utter fail.

Of course and there is no question they get priority. I'd like to see their cars tagged as "builders" edition which others have brought up before.

I noticed that once again the alt news continues that some X and S owners probably won't get Model 3 purchase priority due to a future or past cutoff date. That is pure speculation that no one in authority at Tesla has ever even suggested.

Agree no one at Tesla has ever suggested this so this is not alt news. The question being asked is will Tesla in the future change change the policy so that early reservation holders don't get bumped after waiting 2-3 years? Not saying they will but do you believe it is reasonable to think the day will arrive when they have 200k cars delivered and just buying a new X/S still you in front of the line?

 

[Jason S]

As an existing "left coast" owner who helped out with the 3/31 event from the beginning, I purposely signed up in the afternoon rather than the morning as an attempt to delay delivery by tens of thousands of cars. And the Model S has been a very nice car so far.

At 5000/week, my delay of 6 hours prolly only slowed delivery by a couple weeks. The OP is delayed even further, if all previous owners are in front of him. We'll see if that is a blessing in disguise.

 

[strider]

JeffK -
Great quote there. That does indeed lend credence to the idea that buying a Model S today will move you up in the Model 3 delivery schedule. I'll stand by my statement that doing so won't impact anyone's delivery date by much - a couple thousand more people with priority won't make an impact when Tesla's building 5,000 vehicles a week.

The key word in your post is TODAY. There is an ordered list of current owners that have a 3 reservation. Let's call this the "P" list. Then there is an ordered list of 3 reservations by non-owners. Let's call this the "G" list. In general, the P list will be completely delivered before the first of the G list.

As of now, an owner that makes a 3 reservation will be added to the end of the "P" list which means they will be delivered before anyone on the G list. A few months before Tesla expects to being production of your car, they will contact you to configure and sign a contract. At that point the above lists no longer matter and you are in a production queue.

So the answer to the OPs question is that when G list people are asked to configure then the P list is gone. An owner who makes a 3 reservation is then added to the end of the G list because that's the only list that exists. Now the actual date depends on who quickly Tesla ramps 3 production and retires the P list.

 

[kzod]

Nobody knows how it will work, but what are you going to do about it? If someone buys a Model S and are given priority that is Tesla's choice. KInda like slipping the Maitre D a $20 to get a table. Might not sound fair to you, but that is the world we live in. But fear not, I can't imagine that there are many people willing to buy a Model S just because they really want a Model 3.

 

[JeffK]

So the answer to the OPs question is that when G list people are asked to configure then the P list is gone. An owner who makes a 3 reservation is then added to the end of the G list because that's the only list that exists. Now the actual date depends on who quickly Tesla ramps 3 production and retires the P list.

No, it's been stated multiple times that there are regional queues. Each region will have it's own P and G list.

 

[strider]

No, it's been stated multiple times that there are regional queues. Each region will have it's own P and G list.

I was simplifying but I believe my logic stands.

 

[azred]

Although we are just speculating about details, we have been told by Tesla about "regional queues." Is there a geographic definition of the regions? For example, I live in Arizona but have no idea what other states are in our region.

 

[gregincal]

Not saying they will but do you believe it is reasonable to think the day will arrive when they have 200k cars delivered and just buying a new X/S still you in front of the line?

I'm with the people who say "who cares". There are probably a reasonable number of people like me who bought a Model S a while ago and now want a Model 3. But do you imagine there are many people who never previously bought a Tesla and now suddenly want to buy a Model S/X and a Model 3 at the same time? I can't imagine it makes the slightest bit of difference. So yeah, I could see them always giving priority to existing owners, because if somebody does want to buy 2 Teslas at once, why not?

 

[Kira]

Below is a quote from Tesla website. Last I checked Canada is part of North America and my home town is Vancouver is on the West Coast.

When will my Model 3 be delivered?
Model 3 production is scheduled to begin in mid 2017. At this time, the delivery estimate for new reservations is mid 2018 or later, depending on country of delivery. Once production begins, we will begin deliveries in North America starting on the West Coast, moving east. As we continue to ramp production, we will begin deliveries in Europe, APAC and right-hand drive markets. As we get closer to production, we will have more details to share with you.

I've been wondering about this as well and I likely missed this being discussed and speculated on in one of the threads - but if Tesla is lumping the West Coast of Canada in with the West Coast of the US - will that shift anything in terms of @Troy 's Tesla Model 3 Delivery Estimator or was the estimator configured with that being the case?

 

[Troy]

Hi, @Kira. Here is a quote from Tesla's blog post:

Model 3 production is scheduled to begin in late 2017. When production begins, we will begin deliveries in North America starting on the West Coast, moving east. As we continue to ramp production, we will begin deliveries in Europe, APAC and right-hand drive markets. It is not possible to ship to all regions simultaneously because regulators in each part of the world have slightly different production requirements. Staggering deliveries in this way also allows us to provide the best possible customer experience.

Canada cars have different hardware than USA cars because of regulations. See this topic: How are CDN/US vehicles different?. Therefore, I don't expect Canada deliveries to start before East Coast. By the way, there is a thread about the estimator here: Model 3 delivery estimator. You can ask future questions there if you want.

 

[shrspeedblade]

Hopefully our Canadian friends (and possibly European, too!) will see a bunch of deliveries in December of 2017, both for their benefit and for ours!

 

[Kira]

Hi, @Kira. ...Canada cars have different hardware than USA cars because of regulations. See this topic: How are CDN/US vehicles different?. Therefore, I don't expect Canada deliveries to start before East Coast.

Thanks Troy - that makes sense, I'd forgotten that our cars have to be produced with some differences. Back to my regularly scheduled waiting, then.

 

[ModelNforNerd]

Not a chance.

Your second question doesn't apply... see answer 1.

someone who takes delivery in Q1 2018 didn't help fund the design, engineer, or manufacture the Model 3 up to that point.


They will, I suggested in another post in another thread how they could do this fairly while also not over burdening the service centers. In addition, current owners make up a small percentage of res holders.

There's not going to be one cut off date... likely many cut off dates. For example March 31st alone has enough reservations to keep them busy for months. March 31st probably also had a few Model S/X or Roadster owners. It wouldn't be fair to fill all West coast reservations for the past year before moving East. That would backlog the service centers for deliveries and would be unfair to everyone else. My thought is that it will go in waves. (employees, March 31st owners on west coast, March 31st non-owners, March 31st midwest owners, non-owners,... etc) That and April 1st is enough to keep them busy through January.

I think if they cut it at April 2, 2016 at 23:59 PST (because Elon was tweeting out stats that day), they should have enough to keep them busy through the end of Q1 2018.

I believe the res numbers were around 357K that day....obviously they picked up more since, but also lopped a bunch off, whether from cancellations, or duplicates.

So the 1st 3 full days of orders would seem to be pretty fair to hold the line on their announced prioritization factors. We'll see what they actually do.

I'm sure they're taking into account things like supply chain, production ramp, "the race to 200K US cars delivered", Brexit, Right-hand drive vehicles, new markets added since Model 3 reservations started (i.e. India), etc etc etc etc.

It's probably pretty exhausting.

 

[Vistan]

There seems to be an unchallenged argument on this site that early Model 3 production will have lots of problems, and that it's good that Tesla employees will be the beta testers. Some posters even assume that these employees will somehow keep their problems close to their chest, informing only Tesla management so that the production line can be "fixed". I think that both lines of thought are wrong. Fairly early production, during the ramp up, may produce some of the best cars, because they may be the most inspected, most sent back, most QCed, of all Model 3s. Tesla employees are presumably loyal, but they are also consumers, and they will want and expect a good car, not a company test project.

 

[JeffK]

Fairly early production, during the ramp up, may produce some of the best cars, because they may be the most inspected, most sent back, most QCed, of all Model 3s. Tesla employees are presumably loyal, but they are also consumers, and they will want and expect a good car, not a company test project.

It's great that you feel this way, however, both the past performance and Elon disagree with you. It's just the nature of manufacturing and there's not really anything anyone can do about that.

For Model X, it took months before they finally got a defect free vehicle off the manufacturing line. (and this was AFTER the falcon wing doors thing)

So, I mean, we have some internal milestones that I think we've achieved thus far that I'm pretty excited about. Friday at 3 a.m. we achieved our first flawless production of the Model X, where we went through the whole production process and had zero issues. That was a great milestone.
-Elon from the Q1 2016 earnings call in May

Keep in mind there were even 200 vehicles that went out the door in 2015 not to mention all the cars that went out in Q1. Many of these had defects fixed by hand and some even had some defects missed in QC. Once found, then sure, the defects can be corrected, but the point is they had defects coming off the line.

Most inspected doesn't mean defect free. We actually want the inspections to seek out and find as many defects as possible but not simply to fix them on that vehicle, instead to correct the manufacturing line and to make sure the line is producing defect free vehicles.

 

[stefan.bc]

For Model X, it took months before they finally got a defect free vehicle off the manufacturing line. (and this was AFTER the falcon wing doors thing)

Well, one year later some are still pretty bad.

 

[JeffK]

Well, one year later some are still pretty bad.

I haven't heard any complaints of manufacturing defects recently other than stuff that goes wrong later with all Teslas.