Way to strawman.
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/apr/04/tesla-motors-sells-10bn-model-3-two-days
April 2016.
https://www.theverge.com/2018/7/10/17556948/tesla-model-3-orders-now-available-north-america
July 2018
I'm not sure on what basis you assert that most of these people already have their vehicle, let alone all of them as you initially asserted.
As I said, given this past experience, I am curious how many people are dumb enough to give another interest free loan to the company based on marketing hype so they can enjoy their car in 2022.
Sure, I think you missed some context there.
November 2017:
Tesla invites the first non-employee reservation holders to order the Model 3
At this point the first non-employees are able to order their car, since Tesla gave priority to previous Model S, X, and Roadster owners these invitations only went out to previous owners.
February 2018:
Tesla invites the first wave of non-owner reservation holders
In late February, Tesla invited the first wave of non-owners. At this time only one configuration of the car is available (long range RWD). Several more waves of invitations went out every week or two.
May 2018:
Tesla will enable orders for new Model 3 versions next week
This was for reservation holders only, and not all reservation holders. As they started production they started allowing people with reservations who had already been invited to configure to order this configuration, based on priority and the time of reservation. I think that many people who had later reservations could still not order any configuration of Model 3 at this point in time (as they had not been invited to configure yet), and the vast majority of people who had been invited but had not ordered yet also did not get to order AWD or Performance AWD, the two new configurations introduced this week.
June 2018:
Tesla opens up ordering to all reservation holders
Tesla opens up ordering of all available configurations (LR RWD, LR AWD, Performance AWD) to all reservation holders.
Then in July, as you posted, they opened up orders to everyone. I don't think that makes the reservations "meaningless" as you say. As I mentioned earlier, this time they didn't hold back ordering of the SR to reservation holders so maybe they are meaningless now, but given that no one has received an SR Model 3 yet we don't know if they are going to prioritize deliveries to reservation holders.
Also, I think it's super weird how you seem so, uhh, obsessed with Tesla, but don't seem to have a dog in this fight at all, aside from like, sheer hatred or something? I kinda think Elon is an erratic CEO, but I think you have to give the man his props, he saw the convergence of many different technologies were going to make electric cars viable, and he went and executed on that, and here we are - his company is several years ahead, as when you compare competing cars from legacy manufacturers that are still a couple of years out to what is available from Tesla today and they are actually inferior in many (most, even!) respects to the current Teslas. How many electric car startups from the time that Tesla started are still around? It's kinda like Steve Jobs, I'm not a huge fan but give the guy props for betting that people would be willing to accept less than one day of battery life on their cell phones if it meant a lot more functionality in a time when cell phones only needed to be recharged every few days. Honestly there are lots of things that I don't particularly care for but I try not to go into threads about them to shit them up, I think life is too short for that...
And honestly, since you've made it clear in other threads that you don't actually care if the cars are good or not, I don't think you will ever understand why people choose to defend Tesla.