Very nice.
Has anyone here on TMC plotted the growth of Model S reservations? Would be interesting to see how that rate changes in the second half of this year when the vehicle starts hitting the production numbers.
I apologize in advance for going off topic (I'll try to bring it back on topic at the end).
I have been tracking reservations. While I haven't had the time to put it in a graph, I can tell you this: the reservation rate since the Amped Tour is nothing short of jaw dropping, remarkable, [insert superlative].
Here are the official numbers announced at Tesla's earning calls:
2011 Q2: 5,300 Units
2011 Q3: 6,500 Units (1,200 Net New Reservations)
2011 Q4: 8,170 Units (1,670 Net New Reservations)
2012 Q1: 9,800 Units (1,630 Net New Reservations)
New reservations have grown in the first two weeks of July to over 800. Adjusted for the lag in tracking the Europe reservations (I was slow on reporting that European Signatures sold out sometime ago), there are conservatively over 700 new reservations in the first two weeks of this quarter. This two-week rate would translate into 4,200 net new reservations for the 2012 Q3. This is significant, considering the last two quarters resulted in 1,630 and 1,670 net new reservations.
Granted, this extrapolation is extraordinarily optimistic (re: unrealistic). However, the data reflects what many of us already know, as more people drive the Model S (re: Amped Tour) and see the Model S (re: retail store openings), there is a significant increase in reservations. Given this data, I respectfully disagree that
"Tesla is pushing severely overpriced product Tesla will have problem. And very soon. I guess that number of people who are ready to pay $100K for the car which should really cost twice less is very limited." Rather, there appears to be a significant number of people willing to pay between $75k and $100K for a Model S as more information is available (again, test drives, store openings, etc.). The data illustrates there are enough people to meet (if not exceed) Tesla's 2012 and 2013 sales projections.
I'm interested to hear what reservation number(s) Elon announces on the Q2 conference call. Given his history of releasing information prematurely (i.e., the Model S is 4G ready, Tesla will announce the Super-Fast Charging Network in July, etc.), I'd be surprised if he only announces the reservations through June 30th. My speculation is Tesla will announce over 13,000 reservations through July 2012.