1,000 reservations @ $250k means they can pay for 5% of their new gigafactory, and that's just the founder's run. If that means they can scale better, I'm all for it. And I say that as someone who won't be able to afford a car like this for a looong time, if ever.
It works because they're using a stack & roll approach to financing the corporate build-out.
In two years they'll have a new thing to take deposits on. Stack the pre-orders, roll to the next announcement, deliver the last thing, then do it all over again. They're floating a lot of cheap financing this way.
In the meantime, the approach of announcements & pre-orders keeps their stock charged, which they can also abuse for financing if necessary.
It's precarious and dangerous (inevitably stock market decline & recession), and it works extremely well while it works.
Of course, but what I mean to say it's a not-insignificant amount of short term (2y?) cash.
More generally, my point was that producing a high-end vehicle with (most likely) much better margins for the company than, say, the Model X, would subsidize advancements in their more accessible options.
