Tesla Model 3 Review

September 24, 2018

I’ve been driving a Tesla Model 3 about 60 miles a day in Silicon Valley for the past few months.

My conclusion is the Tesla Model 3 is the best car you can buy today.

I’m glad that it exists and I can drive one.

That doesn’t mean it comes without compromises, but they seem worth putting up with for the advantages.

All Electric

I last purchased a car in 2007. Part of putting off buying a new one was that I was determined to get an electric vehicle rather than buy another combustion engine.

Hybrids seemed like more trouble than they were worth – maintaining a gas and electric engine? Also, when the Prius came out and hybrids were ascendent, they seemed lame. Everything felt compromised to make the “specs” work – efficiency, cost, luxury, design.

It appeared to be a car for people that hated cars.

Similar issues with most of the pure electrics – tiny, small range. They looked and seemed a bit like compact go-karts

Tesla changed all that with the Roadster and then the Model S.

The Roadster was highly impractical (and out of my price range at the time of launch.) The Model S is great but too big and boat-like for my tastes so I was never really tempted by it.

The Model 3 is the first Tesla that is practical for someone like me who doesn’t want to drive a tiny sports car or a giant luxury sedan.

Range and Charging

The Model 3 with the “long range” battery (which is the only one you can get in 2018) can drive 310 miles on a full charge according to the specs.

This tends to quiet any concerns (rational or otherwise) about range.

Between that and the Supercharger network, it doesn’t feel like you’re giving up on using your car for road trips or other less frequent but important uses.

Doing the electrical work to install a proper fast charger where I live is challenging at the moment, so I’ve been relying on standard 120-volt AC. Tesla documents state you can get about 3 miles of range per hour of charge this way, but I’ve gotten more like 4 or 5. This means charging it overnight is enough for my commute, and I use other chargers or leave it plugged in over the weekend if needed. It hasn’t been an issue for me, but your mileage may vary.

Also, you never have to go to the gas station. Given that gas stations have gone from being a high touch service outlets to a self-service ad-fueled hell over the past 30 years, this is not just convenient, but makes life more pleasant and saves you time.

The point is – with over 300 miles of range, an increasingly large network of Tesla and other chargers, in 2018 getting a Model 3 feels like just getting a car, not some complicated short-range electric short-hop vehicle you’ll need to contort your life around.

Acceleration & Handling

I appreciate cars, speed, control and like to drive, overall. I don’t really think of myself as a car person though?

These things are something of a matter of taste and experience, I don’t claim to be an objective expert here.

Caveats aside – this car feels fast.

Amazingly fast. In a good way.

The first time I drove one and really punched it I felt giddy.

The specs say it goes 0 to 60 in 5.1 seconds, but regardless, the acceleration feels incredible. And not uncomfortable, just good.

Handling, turning, and responsiveness all feel tight in the right way.

It’s fun to drive. It feels like a car made by people who love to drive and love cars.

The performance models are even faster, but weren’t ready when I bought mine. I’ve been a passenger in one, and it’s, uh, really, really fast. If I still lived in the midwest and wanted all-wheel-drive, I might spring for it to get all-wheel-drive (although you can get AWD without performance too.)

Regenerative Braking

Fast acceleration is one thing to get used to – in most cases if you’re coming from a small sedan like a Lexus IS, BMW3 or similar, this will be faster unless you got the super faster sportier version.

The deceleration takes some getting used to.

A gas powered car will “coast” a lot more as you switch from gas pedal to brake pedal to slow most of the time.

You do a lot more “one pedal” driving on the Tesla – slowly easing up on the accelerator pedal (it’s called that in an electric vehicle, because there’s no gas) to attenuate the speed.

Getting used to this took me a couple days. Driving it like a gas powered car leads to a very jerky experience.

Once I got used to it, it felt pretty nice, and actually more convenient than gas-powered cars.

Dashboard

This is one of the most polarizing aspects of the car. Instead of a traditional dashboard, everything is presented on a single iPad-like mounted screen in the center of the vehicle.

This seems strange at first, but if you look at the way most people are mounting and using their phones while driving, it appears more like a continuation of that and paving that natural pathway.

As someone who tends to loathe replacing perfectly good, physical controls for the messiness of touch screens, I was prepared to hate this.

I was surprised how much I liked it after a few days. Having a giant map to help navigate is great. The “design by subtraction” in the rest of the cabin, eliminating all the rest of the visual noise and just focusing on presenting the key things on one screen is actually refreshing.

Climate control, audio, connecting a smartphone, navigation – all of this seems perfectly at home and comfortable in this paradigm.

The downsides tend to be “infrequently used” customizations that have direct physical effect like mirror and steering wheel adjustments. These two require going into multiple levels of menu, setting a mode, and then the two small physical controls on the steering wheel adjust them.

This is annoying, but infrequent.

(For these in particular, what I want to happen is after you adjust the seat, the internal camera should just recognize the position of your face and adjust steering wheel and mirrors to a “recommended” position that then you make adjustments to.)

Overall, I’ve become a fan of the dashboard experience.

User Experience

Beyond the dashboard, there’s a bunch of things that “just work” that make life more pleasant.

After downloading the Tesla app to your phone, your phone acts as a key. You just walk up to the car, and it unlocks. When you walk away, it locks. It works the way you’d want it to.

After you set up a garage door, it can automatically open it when you approach, and close as you drive away. It’s great, and again, works just the way you’d want it to.

There’s a lot of attention to detail to make frequently used actions like this “just work” without paying attention to them anymore. You can set an “easy entry” profile that adjusts the seat and wheel to make entry and exit more pleasant, and the car switches to it when appropriate.

When these things work well, it’s the very best of the no-ui paradigm.

Tesla isn’t the only car company doing this, but I think they may be doing it better. And their willingness to update the software over the air to fix bugs, add features, and improve the experience, seems significantly different than the rest of the industry.

I think people may be discounting how challenging it is to do that, at scale, on a frequent basis. I don’t think anyone else is coming close and it means Tesla can continually improve, where others are stuck on annual or slower cycles.

Interior

It’s nice, but much like the Model S, doesn’t feel quite as luxurious as I’d like given the cost.

Aesthetically I am very happy with it. Materials are good, things feel nice. Some earlier owners complained about fit and finish issues or gaps – I haven’t noticed any issues with mine.

The seats (in particular the head-rest) don’t feel as plush or pleasant as I’d prefer.

The back seats are quite comfortable for adults.

There is a huge amount of space in the trunk and front trunk (frunk). Turns out not having a giant combustion engine frees up some space.

Driving Feel

Beyond the previously mentioned speed and acceleration, the handling, turning radius, and over feel are great. The car is responsive and the suspension feels tight.

The only real downside for me has been that suspension is perhaps too stiff, particularly in the ride feel on bumpier roads. As Consumer Reports notes in its road test – The Model 3’s ride is overly stiff, like many sports cars, and it struggles to absorb bumps with any grace. It’s bigger sibling, the Model S, has a far superior ride.

This is something you’re probably fine with coming from a sportier vehicle, but coming from a cushier suspension Lexus, it took a bit of getting used to.

Autopilot

I paid extra to get “autopilot” - which is really adaptive cruise control combined with auto-steering. It’s not true “self-driving”, which is promised to come at some indeterminate future time.

On a highway or similar road, it does a perfectly good job of following the lines, slowing and speeding up with traffic, and basically taking care of itself.

In slower moving traffic or stop and go traffic it still feels a bit “jerky” in its acceleration and deceleration in comparison to a human driver.

We’re at a weird point in the development of self-driving cars and smartphones where distracted driving is increasingly problematic. My guess is distracted driving with autopilot on is probably a lot safer than most people’s non-distracted driving, but we’re not quite ready for that legally or socially yet.

Also, the idea that you have to be able to use autopilot and “take over” at any second is just not reflective of how our minds work.

But it’s all sort of burying the lead. This is a car that can (for many commutes) drive itself 90% of the time. You probably won’t use it that way, but you could.

Cost

$50-60k, depending on what you get.

Could you get a good car for less money? Yes.

Could you get a great electric car that has 300 miles of range, amazing acceleration, and drives itself for less money? I don’t think so. The Chevy Bolt can’t compete in terms of design, speed, or awesomeness, but it gets ~200 miles of range, and is cheaper.

In my opinion the only real competition are more expensive Teslas (or similarly priced used Teslas.) That should change in the next few years as Jaguar, Volvo, Audi, and others get fleets of long range EV’s on the market but for now if you want what’s best about a Model 3, you probably need a Model 3, not a competitor.

Conclusion

The Tesla Model 3 is great.

It’s a 310 mile range EV that goes 0-60 in about 5 seconds and can drive itself. It’s fun to drive. It’s beautiful. It has amazing technology.

It’s not perfect – I’d appreciate a softer ride, or at least some better padding on that headrest.

But driving it is one of those experiences that doesn’t just make me happy – it reminds me how fortunate I am to live in an amazing time of technology and progress. It’s exciting.

That I could buy an American-made electric vehicle, designed and manufactured a few miles away from where I live, which is the pinnacle of current automotive technology, feels really good.