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Tesla Receives 115,000 Model 3 Preorders Worth $115 Million In 24 Hours (theverge.com) 161

Posted by BeauHD from the spare-some-change dept.
An anonymous reader writes: Over 115,000 reservations at $1,000 each were placed for the Model 3 in the first 24 hours. This gives Tesla a little extra operating cash. If each tech-savvy enthusiast who preordered the Model 3 in the first 24 hours follows through with their $35,000 purchase, Tesla would make $4 billion in sales. Right now, they're sitting pretty with $115 million from the down payment required for preordering. It looks like Tesla may have a big hit on their hands.
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Tesla Receives 115,000 Model 3 Preorders Worth $115 Million In 24 Hours More

Tesla Receives 115,000 Model 3 Preorders Worth $115 Million In 24 Hours

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  • The hype train (Score:4)

    by Thanshin ( 1188877 ) on Friday April 01, 2016 @04:11AM (#51821617)

    Ultimately, the hype train ended up being an electric car. Who'd'a' thunk it.

    One more major electrical energy sink that will concentrate in a very small portion of the day.

    Time to invest in energy accumulating techs.

    • One more major electrical energy sink that will concentrate in a very small portion of the day.

      And also concentrate in a very small portion of smug owners.

    • Re:The hype train (Score:5, Insightful)

      by tibit ( 1762298 ) on Friday April 01, 2016 @08:24AM (#51822589)

      Very small portion of the day? Charging is typically done at night, when the demand for electricity is the lowest. It's actually a win-win for electric utilities, since they get paid for what amounts to unused capacity sitting idle and costing them money.

    • Re:The hype train (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Robotbeat ( 461248 ) on Friday April 01, 2016 @08:56AM (#51822807) Journal

      I have a Volt. It charges at night, and you can set the charge time to be whenever you want. If utilities simply charged for time of use (which makes the most sense as it'd be the closest to the true cost), then owners would simply choose to charge whenever the price was lowest. With a Volt, I have a relatively small battery, so while I can choose when to charge at night, I can't easily shift charging to other days. With a 215 mile battery, you can now choose when you want to charge, just like you can choose when you want to fill up, particularly if workplace chargers are installed. This has the effect of actually leveling out the peaks and troughs in supply and demand BETTER than no EVs at all, not concentrating it in a "very small portion of the day."

      Also, batteries are "energy accumulating tech." Tesla is building a Gigafactory (the initial portions of which are already operational) that will surpass the current global total Li-Ion production capacity. The Powerwall, and the utility-scale Powerpack (which is actually a big deal), beat basically all other grid-tied battery tech options available today. So if you want to "invest in energy accumulating techs," I suggest you buy Tesla stock.

  • $115M in operating cash? (Score:4, Funny)

    by darthsilun ( 3993753 ) on Friday April 01, 2016 @05:14AM (#51821773)
    I dunno about you, but for building cars, $100M isn't a lot of money.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]

    • They didn't sell the cars for $1000. That was just the reservation price. $35,000 * 115,000 = $4.025 billion, which is a pretty substantial amount of money.

      • Can I get that in binary?

      • They didn't sell the cars for $1000. That was just the reservation price. $35,000 * 115,000 = $4.025 billion, which is a pretty substantial amount of money.

        $4B is a lot of money. Or it will be if and when they sell those 115,000 cars.

        I didn't write anything about cars being sold for $1K. What I wrote (go back and read it) is that $115M is not a lot of money. It's not a lot of money when it comes to making cars. Anyone that's impressed by Tesla raising $115M is kidding themselves if they think that's a lot of money.

    • If you have to pay 1,000$ to say "yes, please", it gives them a realistic guess at how they should scale their operations. Maybe not all people who gave 1,000$ are going to buy them, or some may have gotten "in line" as an investment but it definitely shows interest. Even if they don't have the money as of now, they can surely tap some investors with this kind of pipeline.

  • What this means (Score:5, Interesting)

    by RubberDogBone ( 851604 ) on Friday April 01, 2016 @05:19AM (#51821787)

    A typical modern sedan auto factory making your average Camry or Sonata or Accord turns out about 30,000 cars a month. Sometimes more, sometimes less. And usually there are 1-2 months of downtime and maintenance. Figure roughly 300,000 cars a year.

    Tesla is saying they've pre-sold roughly four months of production, before people see the announcement and decide to order one and add more numbers to the list. They sold something like 25,000 MORE pre-orders during the reveal event. This is pretty spectacular by any standard, and more so considering Tesla's annual production rate for the Model S was only 50,000 in 2015. The S is seasoned design which they no doubt assemble fairly efficiently.

    This really mean they have sold the equivalent of two plus years of new cars, probably more like three because they won't be at peak output anywhere near the beginning of production. It may take a year to fully ramp up.

    To summarise: Damn fine sales, Tesla. Congratulations!

  • Score 101 (Score:5, Informative)

    by jez9999 ( 618189 ) on Friday April 01, 2016 @05:40AM (#51821845) Homepage Journal

    Good to see Slashdot finally take the leap to the digital age and do comment scores in binary!

    • I can now brag about my 15 digit /. ID.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by jandrese ( 485 )
        Some people got nice patterns in their UIDs today. The guy with 43690 suddenly has something kind of pretty.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by sootman ( 158191 )

      Good to see Slashdot doing proper geeky funny things for 1 April rather than posting links to one unfunny fake story after another.

  • "Over 115,000 reservations at $1,000 ... in the first 24 hours. ... It looks like Tesla may have a big hit on their hands."
    without comparisons with stats for other cars, their (and this) preorder amount and conditions(eg is it refundable?), etc all that is meaningless.

    also even if preorders are above others, that merely proves effectiveness of hype, since actual product is not available, only hype is, success will be judged after the appearance of product.
    same with some trashy/good movies for which people q

    • I was interested in this car until I saw that they turned the gauge cluster into a tablet in the center of the dash. I don't want to take my eyes off the road by looking sideways to make sure that my fast electric car isn't speeding. Especially since you don't get audio feedback of how many RPMs your engine is turning, etc.

      Mini putting the speedo over there was stupid, this is more stupid. Also, why mold the front to look like there should be an opening for a grille, but have no grille? Did they forget

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by jandrese ( 485 )
        Tesla has had that tablet thing in all of their cars. Unusually for an auto manufacturer, they actually update the software on the tablet and continue to maintain it.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by MS ( 18681 )

        I agree that this big touch-screen is not only awkward and ugly but also dangerous in case of an accident. But I am convinced that this is only a temporary solution.

        On the front bumper, where you expect the grille, there's the space for a license plate.

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by rhazz ( 2853871 )
      I agree a lot of it is hype, but apparently hype worth putting down $1000 for. As noted here [evobsession.com], the top selling electric vehicles are selling about 30,000 units per year. Four times that amount were pre-ordered and it hasn't even been a full day yet.

      This specific product isn't available yet but their other products are, and people like what they see. This isn't like Google Glass, the demand is real.
  • As the adage goes, never buy version 1 of anything. And especially don't plunk one grand down on something which won't even see the light of day for a couple of years.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by chill ( 34294 )

      Tell that to Tesla Roadster owners, which would be "Version 1" of the car. Expect to be looked down on as a jealous insect not worthy of notice.

      Follow that up with the purchasers of the Model S who started $5,000 pre-orders in, what, 2008? Delivery started in 2012.

      Lots of Tesla owners to disprove that old adage. They might even whip out the old Aesop fable about the fox and the grapes in return.

      • The model 3 is not magically exempt from the norms of vehicle production. New vehicle designs always suffer glitches, deficiencies and bugs that are rectified over its production lifetime. If early adopters are lucky they will be relatively minor and if not it might even mean recalls. I see no reason to gamble money to find out. Let some other sucker find out.

  • Does that mean that the down payment is actually $8?

  • As I understand, the $1000 deposit is refundable, so we'll see how many of those turn into actual sales.

  • And (Score:3)

    by Ol Olsoc ( 1175323 ) on Friday April 01, 2016 @07:28AM (#51822229)
    The hatefest on Slasdot goes into defcon 5
    • The hatefest on Slasdot goes into defcon 5
      Normal readiness? You do know the scale counts down to 1 with 5 being the least severe right?
  • Why would anyone help crowd fund a car from a well established for-profit company? Do you just like gambling with your money? Here's a tip people: when the thing is actually finished, it will still be for sale.

    • Comment removed (Score:5, Informative)

      by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Friday April 01, 2016 @09:44AM (#51823209)
      Comment removed based on user account deletion

      • Reserving one of these cars now increases the likelihood that your car will be eligible for the $7500 tax credit. As I understand it, this credit only applies to the first 200,000 qualifying vehicles sold by a manufacturer. At last estimates, Tesla sold about 100,000 or so vehicles which leaves about 100,000 credits left.

        I reserved mine last night. The deposit is fully refundable. At the very least, I think I've got a shot at getting the federal credit.

        It's not a bad deal.

        Note that only US sales count against the 200k limit. Based upon some knapkin-scratch computation (I got to an estimate of 175k by end of 2017), the 200k figure (assuming 50% of sales are in the US and 50% annual sales growth) seems likely to be hit about the end of 2017, which is when the Model 3 is supposed to start shipping. It's not a sure thing, as sales over the next two years may be depressed by the Model 3 announcement (as iPhone new model expectations depress sales of existing models), and Telsa ha

        • The rebate doesn't immediately disappear when the 200K number is hit, it gets phased out.

          • The rebate doesn't immediately disappear when the 200K number is hit, it gets phased out.

            True, it gets cut in half for two quarters, then gets cut in half again for one quarter, then it's done. It phases out dramatically and rapidly.

  • I won't lie... I would love to own a Tesla, but when the vehicle costs so much more (just a little more than double, to be specific) than what I would have otherwise been comfortable paying for a car, it only means that if I am to get financing and try to keep the terms to reasonable levels, I would be spending more each month paying for the car than I would on financing for a regular car PLUS gasoline, and that means it would take that much longer for the extra expense of not having to use gasoline to pay

    • Comment removed based on user account deletion

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by mark-t ( 151149 )
        I thought so too, until I read this [choa.bc.ca]. Page 20 is where installation costs are mentioned.
        • You picked the most expensive scenario and didn't continue reading to the part where the government will cover up to half of the cost. This is also for a communal charging station of which the strata would be expected to cover, so you would only pay your portion of the cost to the strata

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by mark-t ( 151149 )
            Sure, but if nobody else in the strata actually *HAS* an electric car yet, then nobody else is going to be chomping at the bit to offset your own costs. Thus, nobody can really afford to be first, and it never gets any cheaper.

    • WTF, you're complaining that they made a car that doesn't cost $17,500? Isn't that just about every car? Do you go to BMW forums and say "well, it looks nice, but really I wish it cost about the same as a Toyota Yaris?

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by mark-t ( 151149 )
        As I said, they are $50k here. Obviously I wouldn't expect a car like a Tesla to go for as little as a Yaris does, but I *would* expect it to not cost so much more that after financing I'd be spending twice as much on the car as I otherwise would on financing and gas combined.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by mark-t ( 151149 )
        Oh, andI was never comparing the costs of a tesla to a Yaris anyways. I wa comparing it to what I would suggest are otherwise similar classes of vehicles that are available for well under $30k cdn. I would not expect it to be comparable to cars that are under $20k.

    • Actually, I own a Volt and I live in Canada. The Volt is much cheaper and has a large enough battery that will make it electric for most average trips. I've gone whole summers without gas. Best of all when you actually do want to go cross-country you have a gas engine to make the trip. Personally I wouldn't trade my Volt for a pure EV, it's far more flexible.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by mark-t ( 151149 )
        Much cheaper? No.... the Volt goes for more than $40k... although this is half the price of the model S, it is still not much less than what Tesla Model III will go for in Canada.
  • Comment removed based on user account deletion
  • I wonder how many potential purchasers in the US are aware that once Tesla passes 200K vehicles sold the Federal subsidy will phase out over the following 12 months. With 90K+ on the road already, not counting Model S & X sales for two years, I think the pre-orders put them over the top. Best guess is subsidy eliminated by the start of 2019 (assuming no delays in Model 3 release, which are expected).

    I hope the production costs will decline with experience to replace the subsidy.

  • This money cannot be used by Tesla, there is zero operating cash acquired by people pre-ordering a product.

    When (and *only* when) the cars are actually delivered, depending on various accounting rules and commercial regulations, Tesla *may* be able to profit from any interest made on these payments. These payments express interest and are an excellent way for Tesla to factor real production needs (more than just adding your name to a list), but the actual monetary value to Tesla in the short term is nil.

  • I read the title as:
    "Tesla Receives 115,000 Model 3 Predators Worth $115 Million In 24 Hours"

    Where do I sign up?

  • I still find it odd that a lot of folks considering an EV completely forget about the Volt. The new 2016 model has about 50 miles of range on pure electricity and switches over to gas when you run out completely eliminating any range anxiety or need to wait for the car to charge. In actual practice, I have the older 2013 model and so far it has served me well for years now. I end up running completely gas free summers and only burn gas in the depths of winter or when I decide to make a cross-country trip

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