Right, on pretty much every metric. So do you think that the Motorola Razr was a better product than the iPhone because you could buy an extra battery and swap it out? I remember well when the first iPhone came out and people waited in line for hours to be able to buy one. It was just so different than any other phone available at the time. I don't really feel that applies to Tesla, and I think most consumers (not people who read and report for Bloomberg News, but the silent majority of people who are actually buying cars and keeping these companies in business) would agree. Yeah, it's cool and it's battery-powered. I get it. But pretty much every new car now is loaded with technology and can reliably get you from point A to point B. So the main differentiator is that it runs on a battery. Is that enough to get people to move en masse to Tesla?

65k cancelled reservations out of over half a million total, with net reservations increasing rapidly... what of them?

I think that's the question I posed to you. Doesn't seem like there's a good answer for it.

Why do you keep comparing to middling dumbphones? Compare the iPhone to contemporary high-end smartphones and you'll see that the iPhone was behind on pretty much every metric. The big exceptions were:

1. UI.

2. Web browser.

3. AT&T unlimited data plan.

It turned out that those three metrics were really important, and that being ahead on a few really important metrics is better than being ahead on a bunch of less important ones, but it's just not the case that the iPhone was ahead "on pretty much every metric."

> I think that's the question I posed to you.

Can you be more specific? I don't know what you're actually asking. Are you asking why anyone would cancel? That's because sometimes people change their minds, especially when it involves giving a $1,000 interest-free loan. Are you asking if the cancellations are a counterpoint to the idea that the Model 3 will sell well? The fact that the cancellations are a small proportion of the overall reservations, and net reservations are still rapidly increasing, suggests the answer is "no." Or something else?

Because the middling dumbphones are what comprised the majority of the market, the market that Apple completely took over. How many people were using smart phones as a % of overall market in 2007? The only real players that I can remember were Palm and Blackberry, and both those were terribly executed in comparison to the iPhone.

And yeah, more than 10% of reservations were cancelled but that couldn't possibly be because people don't actually want the car at a large scale, could it? I tend to pay attention to what people do and not what they say, and the fact is that consumers purchase ICB autos at orders of magnitude higher numbers than EV. When push came to shove, 65k people who actually made the conscious decision to spend $1k to reserve a car suddenly decided they no longer wanted it. But your only reason is that "sometimes people change their minds." To me that's a nice way of saying a lot of people don't want to spend $35k on this car.

If you intended to say that the iPhone was far superior to the typical dumbphone of the day, then I can accept that. I was responding to what you wrote, though.

If 65,000 cancelled reservations translates to "a lot of people don't want to spend $35k on this car," then the nearly half a million remaining reservations must translate to "a shitload of people want to spend $35k on this car." No?

Not really. First of all, they are reservations, not purchases. And the outstanding orders represent everyone who follows this company the most closely and who are the most enthusiastic about these cars. Once that demand is exhausted, can we be certain that the demand will continue?

I'm not saying that it's certain that it won't, but it does remain to be seen. In the automotive industry, a half a million cars just isn't a lot. Certainly not enough to proclaim that "a shitload of people" will want one for many years to come. Ford sells 750k F150s each year. That's just one model. And those aren't reservations, they're sales.

I think you need to make up your mind here. If 65k cancelled reservations is a lot, then so is nearly half a million remaining reservations. If half a million remaining reservations aren't a lot, then 65k cancelled ones aren't relevant.