General Discussion: 2018 Investor Roundtable

[Waiting4M3]

Sounds plausible. You could come to a similar conclusion by guestimating that 10% will want a P, 30% will want a D, and 30% will want a SR. Of remaining 30%, half of them will want a white interior, which means that the current production only is acceptable for 15%.

The question is, what do we do with that information? Given that D production will start around july, the only conclusion is that the config Tesla chose as initial config was good enough to test the production ramp to 5000K/week.

This makes a lot of sense. Perfect timing to release AWD in July, just after everyone in North America had a chance to order the 1st production version.

 

[Sancho]

I’m waiting just for more interior color choices. Those of us who already have a Model S have little reason not to wait for exactly what we want.

 

[Starno]

Tesla No Longer Refurbishing Pre-Owned Vehicles, Leaving Owners Feeling Like It's a "Scam" | Zero Hedge | Zero Hedge

??

 

[TradingInvest]

Tesla No Longer Refurbishing Pre-Owned Vehicles, Leaving Owners Feeling Like It's a "Scam" | Zero Hedge | Zero Hedge

??

I think it's pretty safe to ignore ZeroHedge all together. I have never gained any value by reading an article on that site. Not once.

Life is short, if you want to achieve some goals in life, have to use your time wisely.

 

[mongo]

Tesla No Longer Refurbishing Pre-Owned Vehicles, Leaving Owners Feeling Like It's a "Scam" | Zero Hedge | Zero Hedge

??

Thread here:

CPOs are now mechanically inspected, but not fully refreshed.

 

[schonelucht]

I think a lot of people (like me) are delaying configuring until additional options are available.

Absolutely. My estimate is that the only model that is yet available only attracted 15% of reservers to actually order. Therefore a very large reservoir of potential customers still remains as Tesla unlocks different options over the next quarters. And then the virtuous cycle of cars on the road means more customers walking into the door asking questions is yet to start.

 

[bdy0627]

Absolutely. My estimate is that the only model that is yet available only attracted 15% of reservers to actually order. Therefore a very large reservoir of potential customers still remains as Tesla unlocks different options over the next quarters. And then the virtuous cycle of cars on the road means more customers walking into the door asking questions is yet to start.

Ok, got it. I think 15% for the current option available seems like a reasonable guesstimate right now.

 

[landis]

And then the virtuous cycle of cars on the road means more customers walking into the door asking questions is yet to start.

Exactly.
As a new owner, it was the first producton version I've been waiting for. ;-)
Plenty of time to rationalize that I want LR and PUP and don't need AWD.

I have lots of friends at work. church, and around home that keep asking when my car is coming. Ive been giving updates almost since waiting in line. My red Tesla jacket has been a great conversation starter. A number of these are current bmw 3/4 series owners.

Finally able to order 3 weeks ago, and expect it in May. I expect a few of these friends to turn into Tesla customers in the near term. The bigger impact though is likely to be opening more hearts and minds to participate in the comming disruption.

 

[Waiting4M3]

Ok, got it. I think 15% for the current option available seems like a reasonable guesstimate right now.

I think we also have to consider that there are also people who are waiting for other purposes, such as the previous lease to end, super-charger/service center build-out, test-drives. None of these would account for big buckets but they might all add up.

 

[Waiting4M3]

Tesla shareholders to vote on proposal to remove Elon Musk as Chairman

Seriously, someone can just buy 12 shares and put this on the table

An owner of 12 Tesla shares named Mr. Jing Zhao from Concord, CA put the proposal together. He is a well-known shareholder activist who has previously pushed other proposals at companies, like Apple and IBM.

 

[elasalle]

Note that we are talking North American reservations only. So using the 500k number is surely wrong. I account for that. Regarding your samepl : looks like it falls squarely into the numbers that you'd expect out of my analysis. There have actually been quite a few reported invitations since 4/10 : 777 to be precies. Add in half of the 4/10 cohort (we don't know were you are so we assume halfway) That's roughly 900 invites, representing about 20% of the reported invites meaning you are about 60% in the list. 160k out of 300k (NA reservations) isn't that far off. Thanks for confirming.

I think you are assuming 60% of total to be US.
So.
1st day, total 160K, of which 96K is US
total 500K, of which 300K is US

So If I (1st day line waiter was part of US 96K )and got an invite on 4/10 - how can 777 new invites(of which some are Canada??) account for 300K-96K (i.e almost 200K) ...

Edit. Also this invite list includes S/X owners who are not part of the 500K pre-orders among other things
Edit2. On other hand we also had some online reservation holders get invites prior to 1st day - so makes logic even more fuzzy (IMHO)

 

[bdy0627]

I think we also have to consider that there are also people who are waiting for other purposes, such as the previous lease to end, super-charger/service center build-out, test-drives. None of these would account for big buckets but they might all add up.

And perhaps some are waiting on a return to $320+ for the stock...

 

[elasalle]

And perhaps some are waiting on a return to $320+ for the stock...

We should also consider that due to possibility of expiring tax credits, as well as wanting a new shiny object - some people who signed on are actually willing to take the current config as is. Unless some one wants the bare bones 35K with no premium etc, if we do the math, taking the current config as is is not that different(accounting for expiring tax credits)

 

[SteveG3]

Canada is (as good as) fully invited to configure : 85% reported receiving an invite. US is also nearing completion : 80%.

Those numbers are biased in two ways : some people may not report having received an invitation or have not found out yet they are already invited. This leads to underestimation. At the same time, some people may be unlikely to report a mere reservation but would report an invite. This leads to overestimation. All in all, I think both biases will more or less cancel each other out. This makes the numbers above pretty plausible. Also, even though reporting creates a self-selecting bias for some statistics, it doesn't for estimating who got invited : Tesla does the invitation and presumably does not care for any factor that may correlate with the likelihood of filling in that form (ie, self selecting).

There are 500k reservations worldwide. Let's assume roughly 60% of those originated in North America (Canada+USA basically). That's 300k reservations. 80% of those is 240k. Tesla is still predicting a delivery time of between 4 and 6 weeks. That means it estimates being able to produce all invited customers that actually order within that time frame. Let's say by early june or 10 weeks into Q3, 1 week of shutdown makes production run for 9 weeks. At 2500/wk on average and 12450 already produced in earlier quarters we have a total production of roughly 35 000 Model 3s by then.

This gets me to a current take up rate of about 15%. Agree/disagree?

One other mechanism (not relevant for the above but maybe for further analysis) : I suppose most people will only fill in one report even if they hold two reservations. This is due to the way to input data works : the question for the second reservation comes only at the end of a rather long questionnaire. Many posters will be fed up or have skipped over the latter questions because they aren't yet relevant to them. At that point they may very will just want to get it over with and answer in a way that gets them finished in the quikest way (by not detailing their second reservation)

You are suggesting 80% of US reservation holders have been invited to configure?

Have we had confirmation of any US non-owner who didn’t reserve on the first day being invited to configure?

 

[schonelucht]

I think you are assuming 60% of total to be US.
So.
1st day, total 160K, of which 96K is US
total 500K, of which 300K is US

So If I (1st day line waiter was part of US 96K )and got an invite on 4/10 - how can 777 new invites(of which some are Canada??) account for 300K-96K (i.e almost 200K) ...

Edit. Also this invite list includes S/X owners who are not part of the 500K pre-orders among other things

Good point (although I took the 60% as both Canada and US but that doesn't change much). You are right, there are foreigners in the 160k as well. I suppose your invite arrived a little later than it should have because of being a line-waiter. Elon had to intervene himself to right this case.

 

[schonelucht]

You are suggesting 80% of US reservation holders have been invited to configure?

Have we had confirmation of any US non-owner who didn’t reserve on the first day being invited to configure?

Yes. 47 second day non-owners confirmed their invitation. 234 second day non owners did not yet. You can easily find them through the spreadsheet. 75% of the North Americans who reserved did so on the very first day. That dynamic is a likely different in other countries. Certainly Europeans tend to be more cautious in purchase decisions. With time zone differences being what they were, by the time online orders opened AND the reveal started to roll and really have an impact on people's minds, large parts of the world were already the next day (or asleep). Finally those who don't natively speak English possibly didn't get the energy and positivity of the reveal event (exclusively in English) at least a day later when local press reported on it (almost always extremely favourable).

 

[SteveG3]

Yes. 47 second day non-owners confirmed their invitation. 234 second day non owners did not yet. You can easily find them through the spreadsheet. 75% of the North Americans who reserved did so on the very first day. That dynamic is a likely different in other countries. Certainly Europeans tend to be more cautious in purchase decisions. With time zone differences being what they were, by the time online orders opened AND the reveal started to roll and really have an impact on people's minds, large parts of the world were already the next day (or asleep). Finally those who don't natively speak English possibly didn't get the energy and positivity of the reveal event (exclusively in English) at least a day later when local press reported on it (almost always extremely favourable).

Update: somehow missed Schone’s assertion that 75% of North Americans who reserved did so on Day 1. Makes this post pretty much moot compared to my next post re the 75% assertion (which appears almost impossible to be correct). Bottom line remains unchanged... I find Schone’s estimate of 80% US invited to configure extremely likely very very far off of the actual percent.

So, Tesla has only started to crack some day 2 non-owners and you are estimating 80% of US reservation holders have been invited to configure?

I get that this does not account for invites to employee reservation holders (though these may well not be part of the reservation counts that Tesla shared publicly), or owner reservation holders, but non-owner non-employees are a larger group than either of those by quite a large margin, and perhaps 30-35% of them have been invited to configure. The owner reservation holders would move the overall percent up some, but 80% seems far out of the range it would move up to. Maybe about 50% invited if we assume ~100K of ~500K reservation holders were owners (and we assume owner, non-owner doesn’t have any variation we know of in US vs outside US).

 

[Waiting4M3]

Yes. 47 second day non-owners confirmed their invitation. 234 second day non owners did not yet. You can easily find them through the spreadsheet. 75% of the North Americans who reserved did so on the very first day. That dynamic is a likely different in other countries. Certainly Europeans tend to be more cautious in purchase decisions. With time zone differences being what they were, by the time online orders opened AND the reveal started to roll and really have an impact on people's minds, large parts of the world were already the next day (or asleep). Finally those who don't natively speak English possibly didn't get the energy and positivity of the reveal event (exclusively in English) at least a day later when local press reported on it (almost always extremely favourable).

Elon tweeted that there were 253k reservations as of 7am on Apr 2nd. Assuming the 60% ratio for US+Canada, that's 152k. Using your 35k mid-June delivery estimate, that comes out to 23%. I don't know how to count owners placing oders much later and already taken deliveries. I'm also assuming that Elon is counting employees in his reservation count, seems to make sense from PR point of view, and Tesla always makes their own people pay up just like everyone else. Any other big bucket that I'm missing?

 

[SteveG3]

Yes. 47 second day non-owners confirmed their invitation. 234 second day non owners did not yet. You can easily find them through the spreadsheet. 75% of the North Americans who reserved did so on the very first day. That dynamic is a likely different in other countries. Certainly Europeans tend to be more cautious in purchase decisions. With time zone differences being what they were, by the time online orders opened AND the reveal started to roll and really have an impact on people's minds, large parts of the world were already the next day (or asleep). Finally those who don't natively speak English possibly didn't get the energy and positivity of the reveal event (exclusively in English) at least a day later when local press reported on it (almost always extremely favourable).

oops, missed your assertion that 75% of North Americans that reserved did so on the first day.

Where does that come from?

There were about 130,000 Day 1 reservations. Even if we maximize our assumptions to the most generous for your theory to the known falsehood that 100% of day 1 reservationists were US, that implies 173K total US reservation holders or, 35% of the total. That doesn’t come anywhere near the ~54% your numbers suggested before (backing out 10% Canadians from your 60% NA figure)... and that’s with the “all day 1 US only” assumption we know is very overly generous.

 

[TradingInvest]

I used to be slightly worried about Model 3 demand. Now that China is going to essentially remove import tariff on EVs, I don't worry about demand any more.