A Shrinking Window and a Build Change | Voice of the DBA

A Shrinking Window and a Build Change

Last week I wrote about the date slippage in the delivery timeframe for my Tesla. The original date window that had actual dates was Aug 14-Sep 3. That’s slipped, but not as much as I noted last week. As I returned from vacation, I got a notice that the window was set for Sep 7-9. What’s more, I had a VIN assigned, so I’m guessing the car is in, or near production. My guess it got built sometime this week (Aug 30-Sep3) and then dropped on a truck to arrive in Denver.

That means from the earliest date, I’m slipped about three weeks and from the last date of that window, I’ve slipped a week. Not bad, and I’m definitely excited. The only downside is that I may be out of town on the 8th/9th, so I may have to schedule the pickup for Sep 13/14.

A couple days later, I saw the date move again: Sep 2-Sep 8, so the car was definitely built and scheduled in some way to make it’s way from CA to CO.

Then on Sept 1, I got an email saying that I could schedule the pickup. This was an automated tool, which only allowed me to schedule the 10th or 11th. Not the 9th, and not even the 13th.

Strange.

I reached out to the local Tesla store and told them I had a trip scheduled for those days. They ended up saying they do think the car will be there the 7th, and we scheduled a late afternoon pickup for that day.

Less than a week now.

The other item that changed was a notice when I signed in to check the date at the end of August. I got the statement that radar was being removed from this evolution of the car, which I’d see in the news. All of the Model 3/Ys built in late Q2 or Q3 (or most of them) would not have radar. A little disconcerting, but what do I know about the science of a self-driving, or assisted driving car.

I had to agree this was OK, which I’m assuming means that my car got dropped into the official build queue when I clicked that.

So far, I don’t know that I think about this, but I’ll see how the car drives and reacts in my care. To me, I’m mostly worried about tracking cars around me and deer/wildlife out in the country. I’m not expecting or looking for full self driving, nor do I plan on adding that for the time being. If I take road trips, I might try out the monthly subscription and see, but for now, I’m really looking to just enjoy the acceleration when I need it and the cool features of driving a big computer around.