Tesla has 373,000 Model 3 reservations as of May 15, after 8k cancellations and 4k duplicates

Through its SEC filling for its recently announced capital raise to finance the Model 3 production program, Tesla confirmed that the company holds 373,000 Model 3 reservations as of May 15, after 8,000 reservations were cancelled and 4,000 were removed by Tesla under suspicions that they were duplicates. 

The company writes in the offering prospectus:

“On March 31, 2016, we unveiled Model 3, a lower priced sedan designed for the mass market, and as of May 15, 2016, we held deposits from about 373,000 customers who had made reservations for this car. This reservation total is a net number after customer cancelations of about 8,000 and after about 4,200 reservations that we canceled on the belief that they could have been duplicates from speculators.”

It compares to “some 400,000 pre-orders”  Tesla CEO Elon Musk referred to during the last week of April. Tesla claims it could increase the number of Model 3 reservations if it wanted to:

“We have obtained this level of reservations without any advertising or paid endorsements, with only a few social media posts leading up to the March 31 ^st unveiling, without anybody but those who were in attendance on March 31 ^st having had an opportunity to test drive the car, without yet publicly disclosing numerous features about the car, and with almost no attempt to drive customers to make Model 3 reservations since the week following the March 31 ^st unveiling. If we wanted to, we believe that we could further increase the number of Model 3 reservations with minimal effort, but believe it is better to guide customers to purchase products currently in production.”

The automaker also added that it’s still on track to achieve volume production and deliveries of Model 3 in late 2017. During a conference call earlier this month, Musk said that Tesla could deliver as many as 200,000 Model 3’s in late 2017 and have a combined production rate (Model S, 3 and X) of around 500,000 cars in 2018.

Here’s our report on Tesla’s new public offering of about $2 billion and on Musk exercising 5.5 million of his stock options.

Featured Image: Beautiful pictures of a Tesla Model 3 prototype in the Marin Headlands [Gallery] –  with permission courtesy of Joseph Neuman.