Are you honestly going to say that the vast majority of people bought the P85D for added mileage? Nobody even knew, let alone sniffed a hint, that AWD might add efficiency. NOBODY. People were waiting for AWD because they felt they needed AWD for weather conditions where they live. A small segment of 'performance buyers' bought it for insane mode. Even fewer bought it based solely on added efficiency, which apparently is coming.
There's no one reason why people chose to buy this car. That whole line of questioning is irrelevant. Fact is, Elon made a claim, and some people (including me and others in here) factored that into their decision to purchase.
I haven't been complaining much about the range issue, but it most certainly is an issue that is of great concern to me and my wife. As such, it may be of interest to you, Krugerrand, as to how we came to our decision to purchase the P85D, because you are both right and wrong in what you wrote above, at least in how it relates to us.
I knew almost nothing about Tesla before the D announcement. I certainly wasn't even thinking about purchasing a Tesla. I've also never owned any kind of real sports car. The car I'll still be driving some of the time, that the P85D is "replacing" is a 2004 Acura TL. My wife drives a Subaru Forester. She'll also be driving the P85D, on a regular 100-mile round trip to work.
Before the D announcement in October we had half-heartedly looked into electric vehicles a little bit. I liked the Honda Accord plug-in. In my mind, that was probably the front-runner. And when I say "looked into" I mean "researched online." I doubt we had spent more than an hour on it. It wasn't a serious endeavor.
I also had known for years that the next new vehicle I bought would have to be all wheel drive. Shortly after buying the 2004 Acura I bought a house with a long, steep driveway. In the climate I live in, coupled with my driveway, I need AWD.
I had heard rumors of what was to be announced at the D announcement, and watched some of it live (I believe--I remember trying to find a live stream), and then read more and watched more the next day. I was really interested, but not in a "I might buy this" kind of way. It was just a really cool car that I wasn't ever going to have.
The thing was that I became kind of obsessed with the idea of having one, and kept reading more and watching more. The autopilot stuff blew me away! I don't know how it happened, but at some point I decided that I actually wanted to own one of these things. Even more crazy was that I somehow convinced my wife that we should buy a Model S. I'm really still not sure how I pulled that off, but I did.
So at that point we're buying a model S, and it's definitely going to be a D. Fine.
Part of me--a big part--wanted to have the top of the line. The best of everything. Of course I was looking at the P85D. I saw that it had --SLIGHTLY-- less range than the non-P version, but I decided that wasn't a big enough issue for me to not get the top of the line car. I knew I didn't in any conceivable way need 0-60, 3.2 acceleration, but I had seen it and now I wanted it. But then came the issue with the wheels. I had read about the 21 inch wheels, the issues those caused with going through tires quickly, the issues with damaging the wheels on the rough roads, and I made the practical decision that we needed to have 19 inch wheels on our Model S. I got in touch with Tesla to ask if they'd be offering a 19 inch wheel option on the P85D. I was told they would not be. I made the difficult decision to go with the S85D. I told myself it's the only sensible thing to do. The increased range wasn't even a factor at that point. To be honest, neither was the lower cost. It was all about the wheels.
Configuring cars on the site, which I had been doing over and over and over again--it's a good thing Tesla doesn't charge for that--I had also realized I wanted the Next Generation Seats, in grey. They were not available yet on the S85D. It was pretty clear to me, though, that it was probably only a matter of time before the seats would be available, and we were not in any rush to order, since the S85D wasn't going to be available for a while anyway, so we decided to wait and see what happened.
One morning I woke up and read on this forum that the P85D was suddenly available for ordering with 19 inch wheels, and with grey Next Generation seats! I called my wife at work, and we wound up ordering the car that morning! And again, the slight difference in range between the models was not a factor.
Like everyone else here, I am hopeful that the software update Musk tweeted about will, in fact, make the range difference between the P85D and the S85D the slight difference that was initially shown on the website. But if it doesn't, and if the range difference winds up being very significant, then it really will be an issue for us, as we really may have made a different decision. We were all set to go with the S85D if we had to just because of the wheels. We certainly would have done so for a major difference in range.
Does that make sense?