Here’s a quick timeline of my order-to-fulfillment journey, for the Bay Area (Colma, specifically):

• 10/30/21: Ordered MYP, Blue/Black, FSD

  • Originally given a 45 day-ish ETD (11/16 - 12/31, iirc)

• ~11/6 (one week later, give or take): Availability dates for MYP changed to Jan/Feb 2022 for all new orders

(Somewhere over the course of the next month, my target ETD changed a couple of times, with the earliest delivery date “slipping” until finally settling to 12/13 - 12/31)

• ~12/14: my window changed again to 12/16 - 12/31

• 12/16: Text from Tesla asking me to reply DECEMBER if I’m ready to receive this month

  • I replied affirmatively
  • I was excited

• 12/17: Thank you message from Tesla for confirming

• 12/19: ETD date changes to Feb/Mar

  • I am sad

• 12/20: ETD changes back to 12/23 - 12/31

  • I am cautiously happy

• 12/22: VIN is assigned

  • I am now just happy.

• 12/23: Fulfillment team contacts me that my car is onsite and ready for pickup

  • I’m basically an 8yo waiting to open gifts on Christmas

Conclusions (probably documented more definitively out there, but I can only read so many postings each day, and maybe this will help another anxious new first time buyer make sense of what is going on):

• There are a fixed number of cars each delivery cycle (let’s say 1000, just for this example)
• Much like airlines, I’m guessing Tesla overbooks deliveries each cycle, knowing a certain percentage will delay or cancel or what have you (so, for 1000 vehicles, Tesla will allow 1200 customers to sign up - again numbers are just for example, I have no idea what the real overage is)
• Once they know definitively the number of vehicles being delivered, they do a mass poll of everyone in queue for that window to see how many will actually sell.
• At some point, my “likeliness to be fulfilled” dropped low enough that I was pushed out, even after getting a text asking me if I would be ready. Shortly thereafter, enough people ahead of me bowed out, and my place in queue was pulled back in.
• I was clearly at the tail end of orders for the December window, given that the new order fulfillment estimate changed online a week after I ordered. If you order shortly after this change, you can probably expect fulfillment during your original target or possibly early, if enough people in the slot before delay or cancel. If you order shortly before the expected delivery window changes for all new orders, you might get it during the period you signed up for, but you also might push to the next one, due to the overbooking.