Tesla’s new Model Y order backlog in China is less than half of what was reported

Rumors about a large order backlog for Tesla’s new Model Y in China are inaccurate. Demand for the updated vehicle is not near what some people claimed.

It’s still too early to say whether it will enable Tesla to grow its best-selling vehicle program or not.

Since the launch of the new Model Y in China in January, there have been a lot of rumors flying around about Tesla having received a massive backlog of orders.

We reported on rumors from China claiming that Tesla got over 50,000 orders on the first day.

Since then, rumors widely propagated by Tesla fans and shareholders on social media have claimed that Tesla received more than 200,000 orders for the new Model Y before starting deliveries.

Some of the biggest Tesla influencers are even stating it as fact, like in this tweet seen by over 200,000 people:

The problem is that there’s no evidence to support this. We have already highlighted how it’s unlikely to be accurate, based on the fact that when Tesla started deliveries of the new Model Y in China, you could place a new order and get one within two weeks.

A similar situation happened with the launch of the new Model 3 in China a year prior. The same people who are now starting the rumors about Tesla accumulating a big order backlog for the new Model Y claimed that Tesla received over 30,000 orders for Model 3 on its first day.

However, it took Tesla 4 months to deliver 30,000 new Model 3 vehicles in China despite production far outpacing that and inventory being available.

Therefore, the only way that would be true is if Tesla received 30,000 orders in the first and none for the next 4 months, which is improbable.

Troy Teslike, an analyst closely tracking Tesla deliveries, might have found the reason behind these misleading rumors.

Some of the people starting those rumors are basing them on the reservation numbers that Tesla assigns to new orders, but that’s not an accurate way to estimate new orders without some significant corrections.

Troy explained:

Let’s say someone in China orders a Tesla and receives a reservation number. Shortly after, someone else orders a Tesla and gets a reservation number that’s 224 units higher. At first glance, you might think Tesla received 224 orders in that time, but that’s not the case. The reservation numbers appear to be twice as high as the actual order count. In this example, the real number would be 112 orders. However, some customers cancel their reservations, typically about 12 out of every 112, so only around 100 will take delivery.

Based on his calculations, the backlog based on the reservation numbers would add up to closer to 89,000 orders, and that would also include Model 3 vehicles since the same reservation numbers are used for all orders.

This would represent less than 2 months of deliveries for Tesla in China, which also happens to match the current delivery timelines for new Model 3/Y orders.

It’s also worth noting that the main account on X that started some of those rumors, ‘tcm1907’, is now listed as “suspended” on the social media platform.

Electrek’s Take

In short, it’s way too early to say if the new Model Y is going to be a hit or not in China. So far, it is basically tracking like the old Model Y last year, but without the same incentives, like 0% financing.

If or when Tesla brings back incentives on the new Model Y should be a pretty good indication of whether the new version of the vehicle is selling well or not.

If you want to have a good idea of Tesla’s production and deliveries, I highly suggest that you follow Troy on Patreon (not a paid advertisement). He consistently estimates within 3% of the results, and it’s because he is great at seeing through the noise and focusing on the data, like in this example.