GAB and Others - Sorry for the miscommunication. The 'something big' isn't test drives for non-reservation holders - as all have relayed some version of these have been opening up for months. The big is the whole thing. I have visited showrooms 4 times in the last 15 months, there is a palpable difference to the experience. 15 months ago, people wandered in and asked 'what is it' questions. The engagement today has ramped up an order of magnitude, we have moved from curiosity to fascination, big time.
When I asked the staff member 'how many a day do you sell from here?', I was thinking 1/week. He said 1-2/day. I said, 'wow' and he replied, 'that's nothing compared to the California stores'.
So I'm doing the math and thinking there are 29 NA galleries, 13 Europe, 3 Asia/Pacific. 1 per day as a low estimate, so 16K reservations/yr. in the worst case scenario where we take a lowball and apply it to everyone and exclude all else. If it's 2 it's 32K/yr. If California stores are smoking, how many more are they doing? How many simply online? (My wife and I ordered her X from the touchscreen our S. The Denver guy said someone ordered an S from the touchscreen on their test drive! Do you think Porsche doesn't envy the hell out of that? They should!!!) How many in 2 years when there are 100 galleries (my WAG)? How many when Model S 2.0 comes out and is better than the cars we're all driving? YIKES!
So, something BIG is happening, can't wait until the next quarterly conference call to get new numbers...