[antimatter]

One thing to note, I have a few friends who work at Tesla service centers. They cut A LOT of corners when it comes to service to show profits this quarter. For example, for the location that one of my friends works at (which happens to be one of the busiest locations in Southern California), they sold almost every single loaner vehicle as a used car.

[greglindahl]

While it's obvious that Tesla did whatever they could in Q3, it's worth noting that that's the strategy for loaner cars: they are supposed to be new, loaded cars, so that owners with a 2-3 year old car are tempted to upgrade.

Given the new sensors, they need to update the loaner fleet.

[angstrom]

Right, I don't think that's dishonest. These were vehicles essentially already paid for by Tesla in previous quarters. The fact that they could still sell them is a good sign.

[mikeash]

I'm pretty sure they do that every quarter. It's pretty well known in the owner community that loaners might be hard to come by around the end of the quarter.