MORE than 200 Australians who put down a $1500 deposit on the hotly anticipated Tesla Model 3 electric car remain in the dark about when they will get their new sedan.

The early adopters, some of whom queued to get a slice of automotive history when Tesla began taking local orders in March last year, don’t know where they stand in a waiting list rumoured to be 400,000 people long.

The car went into full-scale production in the United States this week ahead of the first overseas customer deliveries by the end of the month. Tesla founder Elon Musk recently tweeted a photo of the car coming off the production line.

The Model 3 is billed as an electric rival to the BMW 3 Series on size, travels 350 kilometres on a single charge and will be priced from $46,000 in America.

But cars are unlikely to arrive in Australia before 2019, by which time Volkswagen and Mercedes-Benz plan to have electric vehicles on sale.

Electric car enthusiast Barry Minster, who lives in the Melbourne suburb of Collingwood and drives a Volkswagen Polo GTI, is yet to receive a delivery date for his Model 3.

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“I have some concerns. There is going to be a big hill for Elon to climb,” Minster says. But, he said, he was happy to wait until then.

“I’m not fussed. I’m an electric-car nut.”

Tesla puts down the wait to impending confirmation of right-hand-drive production, even though American owners are now being given firm timings for cars that will be built into 2019. The length of the wait has dropped dramatically since the “reservation” list first opening with dates out to 2020.

“The great thing is we’re showing the car is being produced, and on time,” says Tesla’s local spokesman, Heath Walker.

“We haven’t priced it locally yet. We’ll probably do it when we transition reservations into orders. At the moment it’s $1500 to put a reservation in, that gets you into the line.”

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Minster has not been able to discover his number in the Model 3 queue, despite insider access to a special website through his reservation, but believes more than 350,000 of the people in the line are from the United States.

“I went on the site over the weekend to see if there were any Australians and it only acknowledges the date of reservation. They have said nothing to us,” he says.

Minister was one of the earliest members of the Australian Electric Car Association in 1973 and has recently ridden in both the Model S and Model X. But he is prepared to move back in the queue for a Model 3 to ensure the car is right.

“I don’t want to pay silly money just to be the driver of an electric car. If they are going to build the car I want one after they’ve fixed the problems.”

Check out the new Motoring section in News Corp papers this week.