Let me know if you have better numbers, but this article from back in January suggested 10k cybertrucks to be filled in 2023. Let’s say there are 10k potential scalpers, and 1M potential long-term buyers. That doesn’t mean the 10k trucks will get scalped by the 10k scalpers, it means we would expect 100 to be (again, individually) scalped, and the other 9,900 trucks to go to long term buyers
I am thinking that the proportion will be, at least at the beginning, more in favor of scalpers. Not that every cybertruck would go to them but I think that the first batch would go to scalpers and other people who want it just for a variety of reasons but will not be a long term buyer.
In the end my idea is that Tesla want to make sure that while the production goes to capacity, all the cybertrucks (or nearly all of them) is sold to long term buyers. That even assuming that like you said, the problem with the scalpers exist in the first place.
I think that’s an ok assumption, but the question is more about the number of people who would act so outrageously. It seems very odd to me that there would be so many people who hate Mush and are ok dropping $50k and have the bandwidth to resell, in such numbers that they significantly match or outnumber long-term buyers.
They don’t need to match the long-term buyers, they just need to be able to get some and then sell them to people who maybe is on the waiting list for a late 2024 delivery and it is enough fanboys to accept to pay a higer price now instead of the right price in a year. And if only the 10% pull the stunt, haters will have something more to hate Musk (and Tesla) for or to point as a failure for EV cars or Tesla itself (in their haters mind).