The Tribune

DEMAND for Tesla’s new Model 3 has been extraordinary, with consumers pre-ordering about $13.7 billion worth of the electric sedans nearly two years before they go on sale.

Yet experts are not yet ready to proclaim it’s a tipping point for mainstream America to move from burning gasoline to charging batteries.

Most of the 325,000 people worldwide who put down $1,000 deposits are tech-savvy, environmentally conscious early adopters who see Tesla as an innovative brand that meets their needs. The $35,000 price tag and the Model 3’s 215-mile range are important, but the brand’s tech image and CEO Elon Musk’s success in cars, rockets and solar panels are the main drivers.

Researchers say other automakers’ electric cars haven’t caught on because their range is limited to around 100 miles. And even General Motors’ Chevrolet Bolt, which will go more than 200 miles per charge and is priced similarly to the Model 3, won’t attract a frenzy of buyers because Chevy doesn’t have Tesla’s tech image, they say.

Surveys by the University of California Davis Institute of Transportation Studies and by Carnegie Mellon University show that the Tesla brand is well-known in the US, even among those who don’t plan to buy electrics. Tesla buyers always have rated cutting-edge features - huge touch screens, freeway autopilot and over-the-air software updates - as paramount, said Tom Turrentine, director of electric and hybrid vehicle research at UC Davis.

Early electric cars didn’t have those features, although the new Bolt will have some of them. “There’s a big overlap in people who think about the future and green technology,” Mr Turrentine said. “Tesla is really sitting right on that.”

“Winning over the enthusiast is just fundamentally different from winning over mainstream consumers,” he said.

All automakers face a “chasm” that must be bridged between early adopters and the public for electric cars to be in every driveway, Mr Turrentine said. It will take years of influence from early buyers to change a country in which gas-powered pickup trucks are the top-selling vehicles, he said. Also needed will be more battery breakthroughs for lower costs and continued government incentives, he said.

There are other problems that could make it hard for Mr Musk to satisfy his orders. The surprising volume of orders will be difficult for Tesla to produce and the $7,500 federal tax credit for electric car buyers, which could reach its 200,000 limit for Tesla buyers and be phased out before many of those who ordered can get it.

TOM KRISHER

AP Auto Writer