Pre-selling is still crowdfunding, even with investors. Take a look at Cinder, as an example. They're YC-backed, crowd-funded, and are missing their promised ship date by several months.
Like Tesla? :D
Not at all like Tesla. There were commercial electric cars in the late 90s before Tesla was even founded. They weren't inventing anything, they were making it cheap enough for mass marketing.
They also didn't need pre-orders to deliver their first cars, and it hasn't been a staple of survival. They're still around because they've raised absurd amounts of VC (over $2B).