It's here on this very forum though...."you could still buy one of the MY cars that were on the boat to the UK" - I'd be very surprised at that, do you have a source? In my opinion, Model Y will be more popular than Model 3 in UK. Many people who wanted a Tesla have a Model 3 already if the saloon was ok for them. The Model Y is a hatchback SUV, better form factor for many, so people waited. Going forward I think Y better than 3 for most people.
Tesla can't MAKE enough cars, no point in selling cheaper ones than they can sell UNLESS those cars are higher margin. SR will presumably be LFP (especially after patents expire outside China in April), so batteries are cheaper, plus CATL are trusted by Tesla to make battery packs (a huge compliment to CATL). However, I stil think margin on MY LR is greater than a MY SR. Even more so when MY LR uses 4680
Restrictions on supply are (probably in order for now)
Until 1 & 2 are sorted, there isn't a good reason for LFP / SR for the UK market. I personally think it will be 2 years before MY SR are available in UK, but that's an opinion/guess. I can see ways in which a glut of LFP batteries are used in preference to 2170 in Berlin.
- Manufacturing capacity (better to make high margin cars) - Berlin, Austin, further expansion of Fremont & Shanghai (Berlin & Shanghai most important for UK)
- Chips (better to make high margin cars) - Tesla is most flexible, best customer, but still struggle especially when sub-systems (airbags?) are supplied by 3rd parties like Bosch
- Batteries (better to make high margin cars, but if 1 & 2 allow, some lower margin cars). Elon/Tesla have said that batteries will not be a constraint in 2022, maybe 2023
I probably take umbrage at the "drive sales" phrase. Tesla don't need to advertise, much of the sales are organic, word of mouth. Having bigger demand doesn't help Tesla much except by being able to raise prices to capture possible buy/resell immediately at higher prices situations (like sport/concert tickets) and prevent insane backlogs. Every Tesla sale begets further orders.
People ordering MY on website with May delivery date but actually, still availability on the inbound boats and getting March deliveries still
Same for M3 buyers actually, website showing Aug but getting delivered in March too