I’m 100% bullish on Tesla, and I do believe there are real customers behind most of Model 3 orders, but your numbers don’t mean what you seem to believe.

If 96% of customers ordered 1,

3.5% ordered 2,

<0.5% ordered more than 3,

Then:

96% could be only 9600 customers who bought one. That makes 9600 real customers orders.

3.5% could be only 350 customers who bought 2. That makes 350x2=700 more real customers.

0.5% could be 50 customers who each bought more than 3, which could be any number: they could have booked the vast majority of Model 3's, possibly 400,000 minus (9600+700)=389,700: the remaining 0.5% could have booked 389,700. Some of them 10000, others 50,000… Maybe only 1 bought the whole 389700 remaining.

Although this is very unlikely, your numbers do not exclude this at all. And you are fortunate your “< 3" orders percentages included a comma, because with 1%, one could say there were only 96 real customers who ordered 96 Model 3’s, and 1 who ordered 399,904. You get the idea. Your numbers don’t prove anything.

And once again, I consider this scenario to be highly unlikely. All I’m saying is, your numbers do not allow to draw the conclusion you are drawing at all. This article is therefore pointless.

(I made the global number orders exactly 400,000 because the exact number is evolving, and we don’t know it.)