Comment by partiallypro | Hacker News Reader

Comment by partiallypro | Hacker News Reader

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The $1000 is 100% refundable. A person that can afford a Tesla can afford to put down $1000 with no risk. Heck, even a normal middle class person could probably foot $1000 at no risk.

Reservations are not sales. They are just something to tout to shareholders. If they wanted real numbers they'd make it non-refundable and up the down payment. The stock trades at an absolutely insane valuation (it's actually valued not too far from massive manufacturers like Ford and GM), the company will have to take on more debt to fulfill the reservations putting the company at liquidity risk. If the orders don't come through and you have increased debt burden, you're gonna have a bad time. This isn't something I'm making up, even the analysts at UBS agree.

> Heck, even a normal middle class person could probably foot $1000 at no risk.

Huh? What "middle class" are you talking about? In the USA, 2 in 3 people can't afford a $500 car repair or $1000 emergency room visit [1]. My guess is that people putting $1000 down on a car are either pretty rich or pretty serious about buying it.

1: http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/63-of-americans-cant...

That article is not about the middle class, and the target audience of Tesla is generally going to be someone that has disposable income and an education (which your own article alludes to having increased savings.)

>If the orders don't come through

This is absurd. Do you seriously think that Tesla wont have every single Model 3 sold the moment it comes off the line? People were waiting in half mile long lines for days to pre order a CAR.

I never said that they wouldn't get a single order, that's ridiculous.

> Reservations are not sales

Straw man. No one has said that. What they've said is Tesla just got a couple hundred million in free financing.

Most of this thread is people telling me that people put in $1000 so they are going to buy the car, which is ridiculous. That's not a straw man, that's people equating a refundable reservation with an order.

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