Those who insist only 10-20% of pre-orders will cancel are being highly (and overly) optimistic. 2+ years is an extremely long time to wait for anything, let alone a car.
Among reasons that probably up to 50% or more of reservation holders cancel;
- Use the deposit for an alternate vehicle. This may or may not be a Tesla product.
- Need the money (tired of waiting).
- Find out how much options cost (the Model 3 they really want is going to cost $50,000 not $35,000)
- Expiration of tax credits (possibly jump to vehicle that still qualifies like the Bolt).
- Tesla has any kind of production delay.
- Find out that their deposit in the great lakes area, east coast, Canada will take an extra 12-18 months vs west coast delivery... pushing their "early" pre-order to still not receiving the car till 2019.
My personal guess is that cancellations will top 50%. Those least likely to cancel are line waiters who waited in person to put a deposit down. Those who saw a story on CNN, MSNBC or Fox that Tesla had a lot of preorders and quickly did a preorder for two cars online while knowing very little about the car (due to excitement) MOST likely to cancel.