Tesla has taken in well over 300,000 preorders since it unveiled the mass-market Model 3 vehicle just about a week ago.

That's epic, and the frenzy to get in on the latest Tesla — at $1,000 a pop, and with a potential wait of several years before your car can be delivered — has led to some hyperventilating about what the electric-car maker has accomplished.

Yes, 325,000 deposits on an as-yet-constructed automobile is unprecedented in the auto industry. It might be unprecedented in any industry. (The only thing I can think of that comes close would be that time Led Zeppelin broke the internet when the band staged a one-off reunion in 2007, and seemingly every music fan on earth wanted a ticket.)

Tesla has every right to celebrate, and possibly panic. The carmaker so far has built 50,000 cars in a year. In 2016 it is aiming for between 80,000 and 90,000, but it isn't off to a good start. And those 325,000 Model 3 preorders, and counting, represent about 200,000 more Teslas than are on the road globally.

But there's a bigger problem than not being able to build the Model 3. Tesla may have repeated a mistake it made before, just on a much larger scale.

Fooled you once

When the Model S sedan launched in 2012, it had been under development for quite a while, and it had been designed and engineered in a world that had seen SUVs fall out of favor. The hangover of gas at $4 a gallon in the US was still fresh. It wasn't clear then that SUVs would stage a comeback.

View photos Tesla Model S P90D 33 More

But stage a comeback they did, persuading many buyers to return to these most American of vehicles. Tesla had always planned to create a vehicle with more utility, having unveiled the Model X in 2012 (but not launching it until 2015). However, for three years, as SUV sales bounced back robustly, and it started to become obvious that the family sedan might be in terminal decline, Tesla wasn't selling a ute.

All-wheel-drive was added to the Model S in October of 2014, but that was mainly to make the sedan more appealing to customers in the US Northeast and northern Europe.

With the Model 3, Tesla has indicated that the vehicle is actually a platform, a base on which other types of cars and trucks can be constructed.

But the 3 unveiling mirrors Tesla's past: The original two-seat Roadster was followed by a large four-door sedan, and that sedan has been followed by a smaller version.

Given the state of the US market especially — and for now, the US is largely where Tesla's sales are concentrated — it might have made more sense to skip the midsize sedan version of the 3 and roll out a compact SUV as the mass-market product.

In theory, if Tesla's platforming strategy works, it shouldn't make that much of a difference: An SUV or crossover could be built of the same underpinnings as the Model 3 sedan.

But the optics aren't quite right, and it makes matters worse that Tesla just launched the Model X, whose birth was difficult but whose arrival shows that Tesla can create a spectacular vehicle. That's a tough act to follow.

View photos Tesla Model X More

The problems keep coming

There's another problem: The Model 3 preorder customers won't be able to configure their vehicle for some time. It makes sense that Tesla will have between now and 2017 or 2018 to develop a Model 3 crossover, and many customers may choose the truck over the car.

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