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Comment by Animats | Hacker News Reader

"Pre-orders". This isn't a Kickstarter. Why should customers finance a billion-dollar business? Tesla can borrow at better rates than individuals.

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> "Pre-orders". This isn't a Kickstarter.

Right. Kickstarter, even when it offers the product under development as a backer reward, tries very hard to make the case that it isn't a pre-order.

Tesla, OTOH...

> Why should customers finance a billion-dollar business?

Mutual acceptable exchange of value: Buyer gets delivery priority they want in the future, seller gets unit commitment and cash now.

Unit commitment. Anyone can make a free reservation. Serious buyers put $5K up. It gives you better signals about what your production pipeline is going to look like.

EDIT: If you can't fork over the $5K, you probably should wait in line to get your Model 3 after priority orders are delivered.

Can you fork over 35K to get in front of the 5k plebs?

They might have a Signature deposit offering, where the 3 comes fully loaded in return for you fronting most of the vehicle cost upfront. This hasn't been announced yet to my knowledge, but was done for both the S and the X.

Sidenote: If you can't afford a $5K deposit for a vehicle, you probably shouldn't be buying a vehicle new.

How about putting up the money for the entire run to resell it at a markup to all the people who were willing to put 5K down? Surely they can afford more than 35K if they can let 5K sit around for the opportunity to pay another 30K to get the car when it is actually produced?

Would that get me to the front of the line?

Deposits are non-transferable. If you want to venture down some whacky scam to get around that, I'm sure you could try.

Ah, I mistook your first post as saying you could jump to the front in a previous offering. It seems you were only saying that you might be able to purchase from the more expensive pool.

Please accept my apologies.

No need to apologize whatsoever! I apologize if my tone came off as abrasive or combative.

Nope, not at all. I just didn't want to be ambiguous.

Car preorders aren't new. The new gen Camaro and the previous gen were offered as preorders.

http://www.vinereport.com/article/2016.chevrolet.camaro.rele...

> Why should customers finance a billion-dollar business?

Actually if you don't agree with it there is an easy way to show that. Don't pre-order.

It's not about financing, it's about getting priority delivery.

>it's about getting priority delivery.

A car seems like the sort of investment that I appreciate the bugs being worked out of first. Lining up to pre-order one seems odd.

Wouldn't they just get the same core software package the S and the X have?

Well, in the same way that all Android or Apple smartphones have the same core software package - doesn't stop individual variants having bugs.

They are cars not computers. The hardware is significantly more complex and more prone to failure in ways a software patch won't fix.

I would argue that a car with fewer than one hundred thousand moving parts is less complex than many pieces if software out there. I can't say whether they are more or less prone to failure, but they can be fixable.

Of course these things are fixable but not with an over the air software update. Getting your car fixed, especially if it takes a day or more is a problem I wouldn't want to deal with.

For the reason that gaming pre-orders used to exist: your name goes on a list and then you get one of the first off the line. They're not necessarily charging the full $35k for that either, and Tesla can use it to gauge demand.

> Why should customers finance a billion-dollar business?

They have the right not to, and Tesla have the right to ask them to if they think there's demand (I'm not a fan of Tesla myself but just saying).

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