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Tesla wants $100 to reserve a car, so I'm sure that's why the value was picked. If their buyer backs out and the model is popular, they can always get full price on the car as configured anyway.

It's because you can reserve with your credit card and the OEM is responsible for the transaction fee. 10% of MSRP is like $4,000 and 1-3% of that is $40-$120. When saving 1/4 of a cent is crucial at scale, you wont be happy giving up 40-120 bucks.

10% is a bit high. Would take a lot of nads to drop 5k on a car that may or may not come out in a few years.

$1000 feels more like the sweet spot.

This car is already out; they started shipping them last year.

The last sentence of the guy I was replying to was speaking generally