2. It's a 1k deposit. I just purchased a car last year, otherwise I probably would have put down 1k on the chance I do decide to buy a Tesla.

A deposit isn't needed. It's a silly comparison anyway as the Tesla is an entirely new thing, vs already established.

A better comparison would be if 5 years from Tesla announced a new major revision of the model 3 (similar to what ford did with the F-150 this last year) and got 200k orders immediately.

now all this being said, if Ford announced a brand new electric vehicle tomorrow with similar specs/price as the Tesla I really doubt they could get preorders like this.

It's far worse than that. The top phone manufacturers before Apple were Nokia, Motorola, Samsung, and Blackberry.

These transitions are wrecking entire fields of players. It's not enough to avoid becoming the next Nokia, you have to sprint like hell and pray to Jesus, Allah, and Vishnu that you can become the next Samsung.

And unless you have a major government behind you, odds are you're not the next Samsung.

All I'm saying is there seems to be a pretty big difference in whats easily and cheaply possible and what the status quo auto industry execs have been doing. A good example is every single car at this point should come with a touch screen head unit and a not-invented-here operating system on it. Traditionally all these execs believe that such a thing should cost thousands of dollars in upgrades either by model class or just the configuration itself. Few seem to realize they can easily generate 10x the revenue with software features and upgrades than they can with the hardware feature upgrade itself. The cost difference is pretty negligible... but the status quo gives them far less potential.