This paper demonstrates the role of pre-product user experience (UX) in product design. For automotive companies, questions concerning how users will experience not yet available products is pressing - due to an increase in UX design for products, combined with a decrease in time-to-market for new products. Conventional UX research provides insights through investigating specific situated moments during use, or users’ reflections after use, yet cannot provide knowledge about how users will engage with not yet existing products. To understand pre-product UX we undertook a netnographic study of three people’s experiences of expecting and owning a Tesla car. We identified how modes of anticipation evolve before using the actual car, through online social interaction, creating a pre-product experience. The study offers a foundation for theorizing pre-product UX as socially generated anticipated UX, as well as insights for UX design in industry. © Springer International Publishing AG, part of Springer Nature 2018.