The price differential between BEV and ICE is worse than $10k. Let's say you live in the Mountain West and plan on frequently driving in the mountains during winter so you want AWD. The cheapest Model 3 with AWD is the dual motor at ~$48k, whereas you can pick up a Subaru Crosstrek for ~$22k. If gas is $3/gallon, the gas savings don't cover the higher price until you drive the Tesla 260,000 miles. That's 17 years assuming an average 15k miles/year. If you're FIRE and/or living a MMM lifestyle, say 3k/year of driving, then it would take 87 years to make up the difference.
Living in the mountain west, I'd suggest that most people would do exactly what we do (and most of the people I know do if they care about this sort of thing): Have one car for most of the year, and a truck with 4WD and high ground clearance for getting into the mountains in the winter. Most EVs have poor ground clearance, at best. It improves efficiency, so for the 95% of miles on dry or wet ground, it's a win. But it means that even with snow tires, you'll struggle to get an EV into the mountains - they just bottom out. But putting a thousand miles a year on a truck, the truck will last basically forever. Things don't rust here to any meaningful extent. So you keep a truck (or large SUV) around for the things that need it, and you drive something else the rest of the year.
But the per-mile cost of an EV is significantly lower than the cost of an efficient car, and radically lower than a truck. I figure the Volt is around $0.05-$0.07/mi to run, with energy/tire costs ($0.03/mi in power, $0.025/mi in tires, depending on the season). I casually budget my truck at $0.50/mi to run ($0.30/mi in fuel, $0.04/mi in tires, I don't have a bypass oil filter so that's $150/yr in oil, and any other parts have the truck tax applied). I just don't use the truck as a casual runabout very often.
Coastal California is worlds apart from the middle of the USA, with different values and concerns.
And an extra "0" tacked on the price of everything. A loaded Tesla is a good fraction the price of a house in very large chunks of the country.
Sure, there are green consumers in every state, but I suspect BEVs would be more successfully marketed in middle America by appealing to things like patriotism and energy independence, as a way to choke off oil revenues to regimes such as Venezuela and Iran. Alas, BEV == environmentalist is so deeply ingrained at this point that I don't see this changing in our increasingly polarized nation.
Do you actually know many "middle Americans"? You'd have far better luck focusing on operating costs as a cheap commuter, and keeping miles off the nice car. Import cheap Leafs into the central part of the country. Power is fairly cheap, roads are good, and the cost of operating a used EV is a fraction the cost of operating a nicer vehicle. The more you ignore the polarizing issues, the better. It's sad watching a large group use the "choke a red smurf until they're a blue smurf" sort of approach to EV uptake, not actually understanding the market they're trying to sell to. No, you're not going to sell a $100k Tesla to someone who lives on a gravel road in Iowa, but an $8k Leaf for running into town and back on less than a dollar of energy? That's far more interesting.
And, importantly, those operating costs are far, far less varying than gas costs. People know gas costs whipsaw around quite a bit, but electricity costs are quite stable in almost all of the country.