Tesla urges Model 3 holders to put capital where mouth is

When closing a critical quarter, the pressure was on Tesla to present numbers that speak of potential profitability. The company thus urged Model 3 reservation holders in North America to configure their car Bloomberg suggests. But there are more substantial numbers too.

In light of 420,000 outstanding reservations specified in Tesla’s latest production results it could indeed have an effect when reservation holders transform the deposit into an order – and pay another 2,500 dollars.

Say in Canada and the States only 10,000 potential buyers would have followed the call, Tesla had gained 25,000,000 dollars. Reservations are not broken down by region though.

Certain is too that shortly before publishing the production numbers for Q2, Tesla had opened the configurator to Canadian buyers and also added new options reportedly. With the new options came also a promise to deliver Model 3 with a Performance package faster and that again reigns in more profit. It is unclear if or how much of a difference it made for their latest results though.

What is certain is that Tesla has scaled up production, according to their own data. There are over 5,000 Model 3 leaving the lines per week now. Also circumstantial evidence from increased production rates at the Gigafactory suggest that Tesla is close on target (we reported).

Still, given the roughly 420,000 outstanding orders for the Model 3, Tesla is looking at a 19 month backlog at the current production rate. And, the electric carmaker expects to receive additional orders once the Model 3 becomes available to test drive at Tesla stores.

So far, Tesla or better Elon Musk has said nothing on how they intend to deal with wait times approaching close to two years or, order rates overtaking production at a yet to be seen speed.

Unfortunately, time lapses of Model 3s leaving the factory at Fremont such as below, do nothing to increase actual production rates although they are nice to watch indeed.

bloomberg.com (invite to order, opinion), electrek.co (backlog)