Understanding the meaning of Deposits

pgrovetom · Mar 10, 2009

There are three levels of deposit or reservation levels:

1) $5K gets a reservation

Refundable but a $100 fee?
What if the 10 days passes and your change mind before deposit, what does that mean?
What exactly does "reservation" mean?
Do you get in line for a canceled car if others of higher priority pass?
That is what I believe I heard from sales.
The agreement says nothing one way or the other.
What if Tesla is bought or goes bankrupt?

2) The remainder up to $60K gets a production slot and estimated time

Has anyone actually gotten this returned?
What does this mean toward taking a canceled order car? High Priority?
Locked in pricing? or not?
What if Tesla is bought or goes bankrupt?
Has the production schedule slipped for anyone?
Has the price gone up for anyone?

3) The remainder of total price gets a production slot and estimated time

What happens if you cancel and they sell your car easily? Money back?
Locked in pricing? or not?
What if Tesla is bought or goes bankrupt?
Has the production schedule slipped for anyone after phase 3?
Has the price gone up for anyone once in phase 3?
How long has phase 3 been lately?

Anyone actually purchased a canceled car?
How did it work?
Did they give you 48 hours to pass or take it?
How are priorities done?
Does the deposit level of $5K get canceled access?

thanks

Tom

Tim M · Mar 12, 2009

Tom,

I think a lot of this has been covered in other threads, but I'll try to answer some of your questions based on my experience and knowledge.

# 2) Yes, I have had my 60K returned. I don't think that canceled cars are available to new depositors. Sales told me that when a car is canceled, everyone behind moves up. Pricing is not locked until your car goes into production and you pay the balance (for the 2009 model). It was made clear by Elon in a town hall meeting that deposits were NOT safe from bankruptcy (although earlier he had said he would personally refund deposits if that happened). I think production schedules have slipped for many. They have delivered a lot of cars out of sequence. The pricing on options made the car I wanted to get very much more expensive than I had expected.

#3) the 60K gets you a production slot and estimated deivery date

I think your information about people purchasing canceled cars is incorrect, but I'm obviously not the expert on that. I do know that a number of 2008's were available for purchase at a higher base price that the 2009, but they were to be delivered after all the other prepurchased 2008's.

Hope that helps. Please excuse the typos.

vfx · Mar 12, 2009

If the company goes under, you loose your money.

NEWDL · Mar 12, 2009

Point of view

Are you thinking about the situation where if you wanted to cancel your reservation after your car has gone into production but you have not yet taken delivery? Where now there would be a physical car that was spec'd to your ideals without an owner. I heard of this happen once and the rumor was that the car was sold literally with in hours of it being officially available.

Does this answer your question with regard to purchasing a canceled car? Or were you thinking purchasing a canceled production slot?

P.S. As a private company it would be very rare for tesla to be bought out. Especially considering the way they feel about the auto industry and the future...If they were a traditional public company then shareholders may view an offer as lucrative and force the company to take the offer. Private companies have to agree to the purchase. I do not see Tesla doing that.

graham · Mar 12, 2009

NEWDL said:
Private companies have to agree to the purchase. I do not see Tesla doing that.

Everybody has a price. I think it would be much more rare for Tesla to end up independent - but it will be interesting to see what happens.

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Understanding the meaning of Deposits

pgrovetom

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Tim M

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vfx

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NEWDL

R#350 R#1323, RWD LR 3, Perf3, 23 X LR (7th Tesla)

graham

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