$100 is a fair chunk of money for the average person. I agree some preorders were probably half hearted, but the $100 commitment definitely weeded out some the jokers for sure.

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kube-system 10 hours ago | parent [-]

$100 is a fair chunk of money for anyone who would have never been a buyer anyway.

$100 is also a trivial amount of money for a larper with half the budget required to complete the purchase. Or someone with plenty of money who just put in a reservation "just in case" they wanted one.

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alt227 10 hours ago | parent [-]

Thats not really fair, the $40k promised price is not that much higher than your average middle class car purchase. I think anyone willing to go to the site, sign up, and hand over $100 would be willing to to take on a payment plan for a $40k car.

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kube-system 9 hours ago | parent [-]

The average buyer in the US can't afford a new car of any kind. The average car sale is a used car. Used cars outsell new cars 3 to 1. And the average used car sells for $27k.

Entertaining the idea of a new car purchase is an upper-middle class thing, and a fully-refundable $100 is impulse buy territory for most of them. Yes, many of them would have been capable of taking on a $40K purchase, but $100 is not a serious indicator that they were serious about doing it. People who have this money are doing relatively well and blow $100 on much more inane things that aren't refundable.

A traditional dealer would ask someone with much less money looking at a used Nissan Sentra to put down $500 to hold a car.

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alt227 9 hours ago | parent [-]

> $100 is not a serious indicator that they were serious about doing it

OK, but I think it is. So can we agree to disagree, is that ok with you that I have a differing opinion?

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kube-system 9 hours ago | parent [-]

You are fully entitled to your opinion but the data shows very little overlap between the groups of people who buy new cars and the groups of people for which $100 is a significant amount of money.

If you want to hold reserve a damn Toyota the dealer is going to ask you to show up in person, put down $500-1000 and fill out a credit app.

Tesla knew the $100 reservation was too low to show serious commitment, and this was intentional for two reasons:

1. to float an interest free loan

2. to manipulate investors

	▲	alt227 9 hours ago \| parent [-]
		> You are fully entitled to your opinion Thanks very much, have a great day! (Didnt read anymore of the post as it was unnecessary)