Tesla Model 3 pre-bookings keep climbing

Since Elon Musk’s Tesla had revealed its latest car Tesla Model 3, only once did the auto maker disclose the number paid reservations the Model 3 managed to garner. Elon Musk had earlier, little over a month after the reservations for the model began, revealed that the company’s newest model had around 400000 pre-orders. After that, Elon Musk has been adamant not to reveal any actual reservation number. He is under the impression that revealing a number might cause too many rumors and speculations.

During the recent Q1 earnings meetings, Elon Musk was asked questions about that mysterious number. Though he did not reveal anything this time too, he did not hesitate to answer the question.

Elon Musk, without revealing anything, answered that despite no advertising on the part of the automaker and attempts to anti sell the Model 3, reservations of the model continue to be rising on a weekly basis.

These were the exact words as told by Elan Musk. “No. Here’s the problem. If we do that, then people run off and make all sorts of conclusions based on that, that really have — that are not predictive of the future. Because there are no — you can’t test drive a Model 3. If you come to [Tesla stores] and you want to buy a Model 3, we — you might either buy a Model S or X instead. We anti-sell the Model 3. But I mean, that’s reservations continue to climb week after week. No advertising, anti-selling, nothing to test drive, still grows every week.”

While nobody would be able to guesstimate the numbers, we can still try to arrive at a fairly close one. Starting with the original number of 400000, if every week had there been a continued growth, the final figure would still be very huge. Even if a considerable amount of the early adopters had dropped out, the weekly growth should ensure that the number is still close to the original number.

Tesla’s balance sheet also carries a separate figure for customer deposits. But the problem is there is no model based breakup. One may not be able to discern whether the deposit is for the Model S or Model X or the Model 3. But one thing for sure is, the demand for the automaker’s electric cars is not going to see any fall soon.