Point #2 - exactly. If the car was available now - in production - I think a lot more people would of put the 1k down. I myself, my lease runs out March 2017 - I can't not have a car waiting on the Model 3 to come out. I'll have to wait for the next round.

You can't extend your lease?

Ford makes status-symbol cars, so that's irrelevant. The important question is, could Ford produce a car, status symbol or not, that 200k people would put down even a refundable $1k deposit on, sight unseen?

Going back to the F-150 again, it's a status symbol for some people. I could probably go down to a dealer today and grab one with with most/all of what I want, or wait a little bit and get what I want.

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.

I'm not sure #1 is meant to be a counter argument but so is/was the iPhone.

The deposit is also 100% refundable.