Based on the estimate in the article, Australia had 60k reservations. That's a 9m initial loan. Probably not significant for Tesla, but not nothing! If you bought Tesla stock with that money, spread across 2019, that'd be worth nearly 200m now so I guess that's a good estimate for what Tesla got out of this?

I think if you followed the money you’d find that it would be such a small amount as to be a ridiculously dumb scheme if it was meant to be one.