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PALO ALTO — For the first time, the general public can come see — and even sit in — a Tesla Model 3 in a company showroom, starting Friday at 10 a.m. at Stanford Shopping Center in Palo Alto.

Tesla held a private Model 3 viewing at the showroom Thursday night for existing Tesla owners. The public — including prospective buyers and those who have already put down $1,000 deposits for the car — will be able to see it, and check out the interior, indefinitely at Stanford Shopping Center and Century City Mall in Los Angeles starting Friday.

Thursday’s event marked the start of a gradual process to put Model 3s in Tesla showrooms across the U.S., a Tesla spokesperson said. The Palo Alto electric car maker would not comment further.

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Distribution of Model 3s around the country will initially be based on where the most reservations for the car have come from, and Tesla is planning to make the vehicle available for test drives at a to-be-determined time in the future.

The ritzy Palo Alto shopping mall where the Model 3 this week first hit a retail showroom had seen hundreds of people line up in March 2016 when Tesla first began taking orders for the five-seat vehicle, which has a starting price of $35,000 and represents the company’s bid to bring electric cars to the mass market.

In the Stanford Shopping Center showroom, the single vehicle on display is a $50,000 premium version with add-ons including a long-range battery allowing for an estimated 310-mile range, compared to the 210 miles for the basic car.

For holders of reservations for the production-delayed Model 3, the company’s move to put it on display may echo the Greek myth of Tantalus, a starving king condemned to stand with a bounty of fruit just out of reach.

Since the car first hit the market, nearly a half million cars have been reserved, according to Tesla, but far, far fewer have hit the roads, thanks to production problems.

In November, Tesla CEO Elon Musk announced that his firm wouldn’t hit its production target of 5,000 Model 3s per week by the end of December as promised, but instead by the end of March. On Jan. 3, the Palo Alto company said it wouldn’t make that target, but would by the end of June.

However, Tesla in its Jan. 3 news release also claimed “major progress” in addressing Model 3 “production bottlenecks” and suggested it was successfully ramping up production. Still, Tesla said it had delivered only 1,550 Model 3s to customers in the fourth quarter of 2017 — but the company added that it made almost 800 of the vehicles in the last seven working days of the fourth quarter, and in the final few days of the quarter had hit a production rate that extrapolated to more than 1,000 Model 3s a week.

Model 3 reservation holder Liz Lopez of Mountain View said because of the production delays she and her husband bought an electric Volkswagen e-Golf to receive a tax break — but the couple was still eagerly awaiting their Tesla.

“If we get another date pushback, it’d be disappointing since Elon is constantly over-ambitious,” said Lopez, a tech marketer. “But it’d personally work in our favor since we’re not in a hurry to purchase another car, and hopefully production issues will improve over time.”

Anyone ordering a Model 3 now will receive it in 12 to 18 months, according to Tesla.

Tesla has also imposed production burdens on itself, promising four new electric vehicles: a pickup truck, a semi, a new “Roadster” supercar and a compact SUV.

New research on the fuel costs of electric vehicles may help push consumers toward plug-and-drive cars such as the Model 3. University of Michigan researchers have just published a report concluding that across the U.S., the average annual cost of fueling a gas-powered vehicle is $1,117, while power for an electric vehicle costs $485. In California, the average gas vehicle costs an annual $1,407, compared to $580 for an electric vehicle, the researchers reported this month.