Tesla Model 3: there’s a way to see where you are in the queue, check it before Tesla finds out

Tesla confirmed having received over 400,000 Model 3 reservations since its unveiling in March 2016, but after adjusting for a few cancellations and a bunch of pre-orders removed under suspicions that they were duplicates, the automaker updated the number last month to 373,000 Model 3 reservations.

The interest is higher than Tesla or almost anyone else expected, which is why the company updated its production ramp up plans to 500,000 vehicles in 2018 (Model S, X and 3 combined) instead of in 2020, but even then, CEO Elon Musk said that someone would need to place a reservation soon in order to get a Model 3 by the end of 2018 – implying that it is virtually sold out from its expected launch in Q4 2017 to the end of 2018.

Also, in the US, people hoping to reap the full benefit of the $7500 Federal tax credit will want to get theirs early because the credit drops in half once Tesla sells 200,000 cars of any type.

It makes your place in the Model 3 reservation queue especially important. So far Tesla has been only issuing non-sequential reservation numbers which don’t mean anything as to where you are in line and the company said that the Model 3 will ship (or more precisely will be available for configuration) based on when you pre-ordered it, but now we might have a way for you to have a better idea of where you stand in the queue.

To be fair, Tesla’s reservation process for the Model 3 is quite complex. Even though there’s no Signature version (limited edition), like there was for the S and X, current Tesla owners are said to have priority in the queue, as well as Tesla employees (which is a first at the company) and even SpaceX employees.

Those factors, combined with Tesla’s plan to deliver vehicles in batches based on regions starting with the west coast then expanding east, make the process difficult to predict and if Tesla says to base your expectations on when you placed your reservation – that’s probably your best bet.

With this said, if are among the 373,000+ people who placed a reservation and you want to get another perspective on where you might stand in the queue, you might want to check this out.

This is a screenshot from ‘My Tesla’ page. It’s where you find your non-sequential reservation number. In my case, RN1078XXXXX. I’m redacting a few numbers, I don’t know what someone could do with this, but I’m not taking any risk – so other numbers will be redacted in this post, but you will still get the point.

From this page, you can access the source code by pressing Ctrl+U or right clicking and then ‘view page source’.

In the source, you want to look for the ‘reservation id’. You can launch a search (Ctrl+F) and type ‘common_reservation_id’:You will find a 6-digit value attached to reservation id. Based on early data, it looks like this number could be a sequential reservation number worldwide starting from the value of 300,000 or maybe 350,000?

For example, I reserved minutes before the Model 3 unveil event started on March 31st and my number is ‘412,XXX’ and by the time the presentation was over, there were ~130,000 reservations.

An even better example, my publisher Seth reserved two Model 3 in-store during the 31st. It was hours before my reservation and he got two in the 380,XXX with only a value of 15 between them.

A thread on TMC (hat tip to smythey who found the hint) is comparing everyone’s ‘common_reservation_id’ numbers to see if we can find more correlations. Find out what yours by following the instruction above and post in the comment section below with your date and time of reservation to see if we can confirm it. Though I would hurry because Tesla could decide to hide the id from the source code.

Update: Someone created a public Google Doc for Model 3 reservation holders to enter their ‘common_reservation_id’. There are now over 350 entries and it looks like the sequential reservation number theory makes sense with a starting point at around 350,000.

Update #2: It looks like Tesla changed the source code of the ‘My Tesla’ page and the ‘common_reservation_id’ number is not accessible anymore.

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