Here's Why the Tesla Model 3 Performance Is the Best Tesla Yet

this is a brand new tesla model 3 performance which means it's the sporty version of the entry-level tesla model 3 sedan the model 3 performance is the best tesla yet and today i'm going to show you why i've borrowed this model 3 from a viewer here in orange county california and i'm going to start with a brief overview as you probably know the model 3 is tesla's latest vehicle it's an entry-level sedan with a starting price of around 35 000. now i've already reviewed the model 3. i was one of the first reviewers to get my hands on one almost exactly two years ago right after this car first came out so why am i reviewing it again because the model 3 performance makes some substantial improvements over the regular model 3. the most obvious is horsepower the regular model 3 has 280 horsepower this has 470 horsepower which leads to a 0-60 time of 3.2 seconds that's faster than a bmw m3 and almost as fast as the fastest highest performance version of the bmw m5 but pricing is nowhere near the m5 the model 3 performance starts around 56 000 which is a bargain given its speed and the performance also has more range than the regular model 3. a base level model 3 has about 220 miles of range but this can travel about 310 miles before you have to charge it up and there are some other updates too which i will show you in this video so today i'm going to take you on a tour of the model 3 performance i'm going to show you all of the interesting quirks and features of the best tesla yet then i'm going to get it out on the road and drive it and then i'm going to give it a dug score and for more of my thoughts on the model 3 performance click the link below to visit autotrader.com oversteer where i've also rounded up a list of the cheapest electric cars currently listed for sale on autotrader all right time for the quirks and features of the model 3 performance now since i already did a very long and in-depth tour of the model 3 when it first came out i'm not going to cover every single thing in this car instead i'm just going to focus on stuff that's new and exciting and i'll cover a few other quirk and feature highlights but i'm going to start with the new stuff and for the model 3 performance one of the most interesting new items is track mode now no one denies that the most powerful tesla models are seriously fast but they've had some problems on the racetrack and that's why the model 3 performance has track mode go in to the all-knowing center screen and you can select track mode and it does a couple of things one is it improves the cornering by adjusting the breaking in the suspension and actually helps improve the handling for when you're on a race track track mode also helps to improve cooling because one of tesla's problems has been that their cars seem to be built more for straight line acceleration and they overheat when they go to the racetrack but if you put it in track mode you have slightly better cooling so you can get a few more laps out of your model 3 performance and next up a feature that i absolutely love in this car is sentry mode now if you look around this car you can see there are cameras all over it you have a camera on the sides you have a camera in the front windshield a camera in the back and they're not just to help you see when you're backing up instead they can monitor what's going on around you more cars should have this but right now only tesla does and it works in a really cool way you turn off your car lock it walk away forget about it but the cameras remain vigilant hence the name sentry mode so someone comes up to the car like this crazy person you can see the cameras detect it and the lights flash to let them know hey you're being monitored but it goes further than that the screen also changes to show that the car is in sentry mode and your actions are being recorded so if you peer inside to see if there's anything valuable you can steal the first thing you'll see is that screen saying hey you're being recorded and obviously that's going to make this car a much less desirable target when you walk away sentry mode still records for another 30 seconds or so and then eventually it turns off and continues to remain vigilant in case someone else comes up a couple of other interesting things about sentry mode if it detects more than just motion on the outside of the car like for instance a glass break it will actually send an alert to the owner's cell phone saying hey you better check this out something is going on and another cool feature when you get back in the car after sentry mode has been active one of the first things that pops up on the screen is a little alert letting you know how many times sentry mode noticed someone approaching your vehicle pretty cool and next up another fantastic feature of this car is something called dog mode let's pretend you want to run into a store and leave your dog in the car obviously if it's even slightly warm you can't do that because it'll get really hot in the car but you can go into the climate control in your tesla and turn on dog mode and then the climate control will keep the interior nice and cool even though you've locked the car and walked away and it will continue cooling the interior until it gets down to like 20 percent charge so it can do this for hours i guess if you want to do it now this still presents a bit of a problem because if you leave your dog in the car even if it's nice and cool in here people will see your dog and freak out thinking that it's going to die because it's heating up in your interior because they don't know that dog mode is on but that's another brilliant use of the screen in this car when dog mode is on and you've walked the car and walked away the screen actually says that my owner will be returning soon it shows a picture of a dog and it actually displays the current temperature inside the car so theoretically if someone freaks out thinking your dog is in here maybe they'll look inside and see that and they won't be so worried and another impressive new feature is something called tesla theater which allows you to turn your screen into an actual theater you go into the tesla theater and you can see you can select netflix you can select youtube and you can watch stuff while you're just sitting in your car now it's important to point out this only works in park so you can't watch netflix or youtube while you're driving along which is probably best for safety but you can think of a million ways this can be useful for example if you're in your car waiting for something or someone you can just pop onto the tesla theater and watch a couple of youtube videos or a netflix show or a movie while you're sitting and waiting that is a really cool idea now those are some of the more useful new features in the tesla giant center screen there are also some less useful but still exciting features one of which is the tesla arcade okay check this out you go to this little arrow button on the bottom then you look over and to the right there's something called tesla arcade you press that and you can select a game to play and you can choose between many different arcade style games that you would have played like in the 80s and that is just so so cool so just to give you an example of how it works i'm going to choose asteroids and if you choose asteroids you can see it explains how you play over on the right and it says that you use the steering wheel that's actually true all right check this out now i'm in asteroids and you can see i am using the steering wheel to move my little spaceship you press the left steering wheel button to accelerate your spaceship you turn the steering wheel to turn your spaceship and it is just the coolest thing obviously i'm not very good at this while i'm trying to film with one hand and steer and fire with the other hand but let's see how good i am when i have both hands available to me and the answer is i am still not very good now it's worth noting you don't only have 1980s style arcade games to choose from here there's also a racing game called beach buggy racing two you go into that and then you choose a character and you choose a track and then you can actually race a beach buggy in your tesla and of course the way you do that is you use the steering wheel and the pedals to drive around your race car while you're sitting in your tesla once again of course this can only be operated when you're in park but if you're bored you're waiting for something or someone or you just want to go into your garage to get entertained you can do that and you can race around in your beach buggy racing game within your car and here's one unbelievable thing about this while you're moving the steering wheel in the game the wheels of the car are also moving in real life so you're moving the steering wheel around to control your beach buggy on the screen but you can see the wheels of this model 3 are actually moving as i move the steering wheel so there's a little bit of real life coming to the video game here it is absolutely crazy and speaking of fun and cool features in this car there are quite a few other new kind of easter egg features you would not find in any rational normal car to access them you go into a little item called toy box you click on toy box and then there's all these icons that pop up and you can check them out we'll do it individually there's one with a fire you press that and then the entire screen turns into like a fireplace fire which looks very nice but also it turns on the heat in the car so it gives you a warm physical experience and you have this nice warm image of a fireplace on the infotainment screen and next up another image in the toy box is elon musk's tesla roadster being driven through space for some reason we click on that that's the drawing program and you can see you can use this to draw on your infotainment screen i am writing out my signature phrase but you don't just have to write you can also change the color of what you're doing and then you can draw something for example right now i am drawing you a nice picture of a dog that has been possessed by satan i think i will now sign my masterpiece i don't know when this will really come in handy but if you wanted to draw on your car infotainment screen you can do that here and next up another one of these items in your toy box is this planet that would be mars and if you click on it it turns your navigation screen map into the surface of mars and it turns your vehicle into the mars rover now i mentioned that some of these more fun little updates are not particularly useful this is probably the best example of that since you know you're not actually on mars so you can't really tell anything in your navigation map not particularly helpful but kind of a cool little thing to show your friends and next up another interesting item in the toy box there is a whoopee cushion in there and that is fart mode you click on the whoopee cushion it goes into fart mode and you can have the car play various farting noises the first interesting thing that happens here is you can place them so if for example you want to make it seem like one of your rear passengers is making the fart noises you can place the focus of the sound there and that's where the fart noise will come from which is kind of funny you can also change the type of fart noise that is coming out with this little drop down menu there are quite a few options take a listen [Music] and another interesting item with fart mode is that you can also configure the fart sounds to happen on demand so when you press the steering wheel button on the left a fart sound will happen but i actually prefer the other option which is it comes on when you put on the turn signal so every time you put the turn signal on you get the fart sound which is also just ridiculous but it's kind of funny my very favorite thing though about this entire fart mode experience is the fact that they call it emissions testing mode i think that is absolutely hilarious and also i think it's kind of a jab at volkswagen that volkswagen's emissions testing mode is this cheating system to improve their emissions tesla's is just a joke on a screen next up a couple of other interesting items in the toy box one is this reindeer that puts it in like a christmas mode you press that and then the picture of the car on the screen turns into santa's sleigh and it plays christmas music that one is especially not very useful but i guess it's kind of interesting the last one is cowbell mode which is probably the most bizarre if you put that on then when you're driving along using the auto steering system you can press the auto steering lever four times in quick succession and then the screen will show your driving environment as rainbow road from mario kart and it will play a lot of cowbell sounds this is so bizarre but here it is in practice and one other interesting new feature is a karaoke system in the infotainment system which tesla's calling karaoke and you can select a song and then you can sing along as the words are displayed on the screen just like you would have karaoke in a bar it's absolutely ridiculous that this exists and again not particularly useful but indeed it does exist and another interesting quirks feature if you go into this bottom screen that allows you to choose between various different options one of those options is call which of course you can do with a bluetooth phone that's been synced the interesting thing here though is if you hold down call it changes the description from call to ahoy hoy which which i guess was alexander graham bell's favorite telephone greeting and mr burns used to say it on the simpsons you can hold it down again and it goes back to call but you can switch between the two and your call icon can say ahoy hoy if you want it to and next up another new feature in this car of debatable usefulness is something called smart summon now the way this is supposed to work is if you're in a parking lot and you're far away from your car on the other end of the parking lot you can actually summon it to leave its parking space and come towards you now in the past it would back out of the parking space but several vehicles do this now it will actually drive around avoid obstacles and come towards you to reunite you with the car so you don't have to walk all the way to your parking space now there are several videos on the internet of this being used and not going so well the car is smashing into something the car is not seeing an obstacle i am talking about it right now without having used it i'm going to do that next you can see the results right here as you can see the car turned the wrong direction but before i blame this on tesla i should note the phone i was using had the gps displaying the wrong location which would have also affected uber or google maps or any other app that uses your location it was really a phone problem still hilarious once the phone got my location correct summon worked just fine and i even went on the other side of a row of parked cars and the tesla came to me although as you can see it doesn't do it very gracefully still it works i guess and next up another cool feature of this car is an improvement to the autopilot system called navigate on autopilot it's no secret that tesla has a great auto pilot system that will do a lot of the steering and driving for you but now if you have navigate on autopilot it will also do more than that for example if you have your navigation system on you're coming up to an exit the car will automatically lane change itself over to the exit and then actually take the exit if you have regular autopilot you have to put on your turn signal then the car will move over and you have to kind of tell it to go into the exit but if you have navigate with autopilot it will do all of that stuff for you which is a really really impressive step up in tesla's already impressive world of autopilot and next up another improvement to tesla's autopilot system is the graphics that appear on the screen to show you what's in your vicinity in the past it was these sort of amorphous blobs that kind of resembled cars and trucks and lane lines now you can see it's been dramatically improved much nicer higher quality and better detail in this screen which is a nice look and next up another improvement made since i last reviewed a tesla is a new supercharging system now one of the benefits of having a tesla is that you can go and find a supercharger near your house and it will charge your car a lot quicker than anything you can get at your house well now there's a new supercharger system that tesla is calling v3 and it's much faster than the current one it can add 75 miles of range to your car in just five minutes so it can fully recharge you in something like 15 or 20 minutes which is obviously really impressive one other benefit of the v3 supercharging is that you no longer have to share your charging with the vehicle parked next to you each v3 station will have dedicated chargers for each individual vehicle and next up some non-tech related updates to the model 3 since i last reviewed it one relates to the back seat some reviewers complained that the back seat was a little too flat in the model 3 so tesla added a little bit more padding and some kind of ridges and you can see it's not quite as flat as it was which should make it a little bit more comfortable on longer drives another update that happened in here is that the interior now no longer uses any leather at all in the past i guess they were using synthetic leather for the seats but the steering wheel still had leather in it well that's gone so now the interior of this car is 100 leather free and i have to say you can't tell if you actually look at the seats if you feel them touch them sit on them it seems just like leather obviously this decision was made with animals in mind to try to spare cows from being used for their leather and i'm sure there will be some people who say i can tell the difference and i want that cow stuff back but i can't it really really feels very similar looks very similar you could tell me this was real leather or fake and i would have no idea now that's most of the new stuff with the model 3 but i also want to go over some of the most interesting quirks and features with this car since it's been like two years since i've reviewed it and since there are a lot of quirks and features so i'm going to start in the giant center infotainment screen that controls everything now if you press the little car icon in the bottom left it pulls up all of your controls and the very first default screen that pops up is your quick controls this is where you'll see like your headlights your mirror adjustment your steering wheel positioning adjustment and your display brightness adjustment pretty standard stuff what isn't standard is how this stuff adjusts all right check this out you go into the mirror adjustment and it tells you you can use your steering wheel controls to adjust the mirrors and indeed you can there's this little button dial on the steering wheel that you can use to move the mirror up or down or left or right and position it exactly how you want it to be done and you can do the same thing with the mirror over on the other side now that's not particularly exciting except you go into the steering wheel adjustment and guess what now you can use that button dial thing on the steering wheel to adjust the position of the steering wheel so it's multi-purpose you move it up or down here and the steering wheel goes up or down you move it left to right and the steering wheel goes in or out so that little button dial on the steering wheel can change what it does depending on what you're doing now if you have the radio on or you're listening to music it's the volume control you move it up or down and then it will change your volume but that is an excellent idea it allows you to cut down on the number of buttons on the steering wheel because they can have different functions depending on what you're doing at any given moment now next up continuing into the infotainment system and going into the driving tab one thing i love is the names of the drive modes you have sport and chill instead of just sport and normal normal is called chill because when you want to chill you put it in chill and another interesting item in the driving tab if you go to the bottom you can see that there's a configurable item called creep if you turn that on it will allow the car to creep forward when you take your foot off the brake like most cars with an automatic transmission if you turn it off the car won't creep forward it's unbelievable that that's configurable that's something we've all gotten used to in automatic cars for so long in this thing you can choose whether or not you want it to creep and next up another interesting item here in the model 3's giant center screen is the fact that it has an internet browser and actually quite a large one and quite a good one i'm going to go to my own website right now and you can see it's loading i'm in a basement so it takes a little time but if you give it time look there i am crushing an audi all road one of my crowning achievements you can use this internet browser however you want to go on various websites in your model 3. and next up here's a crazy feature in the infotainment system if you go into the climate tab and you go to this little button that looks like bacon it pulls up your heated seat controls now the front heated seats have easier controls than this there are little menu items that you can just tap that are always available on the screen so you don't have to actually navigate to this screen every time you want to turn on the front heated seats but for the rear heated seats you do have to go in here and here's a crazy thing this car has a heated middle rear seat i've never seen that before you often see cars now with heated rear seats on either side but a heated rear middle seat is crazy never ever seen it and you can control all the seat heating using this little screen menu one other cool thing about the heated seat controls in this menu is that there is an all off button so if a passenger gets out of the car and walks away and their heated seat doesn't turn off in the back you don't even have a button to turn it on or off then you can just press all off and it turns off from this menu which can be very convenient and next up i want to talk about the general operation of the infotainment screen and specifically the fact that it is very fast very very responsive screen and when i drove this car for the first time two years ago i was blown away by how quickly it responded to touches as you can see moving the map basically everything but it is important to mention that within the last two years other automakers have caught up to this responsiveness mercedes-benz bmw porsche volvo their systems are all pretty much this responsive now and so tesla doesn't have the advantage that it once did in this area this is still a great infotainment system very intuitive but other automakers have made huge strides at catching up and personally i think a couple of other brands even have better infotainment technology than tesla now since i'm talking about the map one cool thing here is if you look at the map you can see the location of all of the tesla superchargers and you can see that some are bright red and some are dim red so why is that well the reason is it's displaying which superchargers are within this car's current range which is obviously really cool those are the ones you can actually make it to which will help you plan your trip if you want to go somewhere i can't make it to vegas right now but i can make it to baker's feel now since we're on the subject of where stuff is in this screen i have to say that as much as i do like this one screen that encompasses everything and the relatively minimal interior i do wish there was a heads-up display in this car your speed that you're traveling is displayed at the top left of the screen which is about as close to your field of vision as it can get but it's still not right in the middle which is where you kind of want it it would be nice if this car had like a little heads up display right in your field of vision that showed a few important items your speed maybe whether your turn signals are on your wipers maybe what song is playing that sort of thing i think that would be an improvement to this interior and something else that would be an improvement to this interior would be cooled seats the model 3 does not offer cooled seats in any capacity in any trim level no matter how much you pay and it's the same story with a heated steering wheel doesn't matter what you spend it's not available i find this to be odd this car has a built-in racing game that you can control a cartoon beach buggy using your steering wheel and yet they can't give you cooled seats it seems so ridiculous but indeed that's the situation and next up i want to talk about getting in now if you are the owner of this car you sync your phone to the car and the car recognizes your phone when you approach it just unlocks the door and you get in no key needed at all now because this isn't my model 3 it doesn't respond to my phone so the owner gave me this little credit card looking thing that says tesla that you can use as a key if you walk up to the car you see right now it's locked the mirrors are folded in but you hold the little tesla key up to the b pillar between the doors and it unlocks and then you can get in same deal if you're walking away you want to lock the car just hold this little key card up to this area it will lock the doors and then you can walk away and next up once you've unlocked the car with the key card and you're inside you can't just get in and start driving away instead there's one extra step you have to take the key card and place it in the center console in a specific area between the center storage and the cup holders and then you can actually put the car in gear and drive away and you can see on the infotainment screen it actually directs you to do that it's basically saying you can't go anywhere until you put the key card in that spot and then it will recognize you and drive away one other interesting quirk of the model 3 since it's an electric car it doesn't make any engine noise which means you could startle or surprise pedestrians or cyclists who don't hear it coming since it's silent from the outside as a result tesla adds a little sound to this car at low speeds to make sure people can hear it coming and they're not surprised by it the sound is very unusual take a listen [Music] and so those are the quirks and features of the tesla model 3 performance now it's time to get it out on the road and see how it drives all right driving the model 3 performance i'm just going to oh holy crap wow i wasn't expecting that you know one of my problems with the model 3 is even the performance model now is faster than like anything it's like the speed of an m5 competition super cars are this fast but it still looks like a kind of a crappy little you know like somebody's electric car you know that's like all that special so as a result you kind of underestimate it you get in you're like yeah whatever for it but then oh my god it's like wow that is that is that's the surprise of the year for sure i mean you get a mclaren which is you know mclaren's a little faster than this and it's like yeah well i was expecting it because it looks like a crazy card it sounds like a crazy car oh my god what is this oh my god crazy wow the steering is actually pretty good too i put it in sport steering it's in sport not chill acceleration mode too the steering is actually not so bad it's quick is it m3 quick kind of just surprising i was not expecting that because the one i drove before was fine but it didn't feel as sporty as this now dynamically probably it is not on the same level as the m3 the it's higher and so i imagine the center of gravity might be how low it has all those batteries down low so that may not be true but i will say the steering the precision of the steering and the quickness of the steering is really impressive i do really wish that there was a heads-up display some model 300 are split about this and this is one of the big complaints about the car some people say they love it and don't care but i i think it'd be nice if you could see right in front of you that's the speed i'm going maybe if your headlights are on your turn signals whatever yeah it's not so bad i can't believe it they've actually been able to turn this into a pretty sporty little co oh my god well this this doesn't suck at all it does have more body lean there's no doubt that m3 does or something like that a really high performance european rival but not by much and i really think that the precision the quickness of the steering may actually be quicker than i was not expecting this at all i sort of assumed there's such a crowd of tesla people and i just sort of assumed that it would it would be good but there's no way it could be that good and tesla people would love it even if it slapped them in the face while they drove but actually this is pretty good i'm not like a tesla obsessive person uh i just like cars and this is a pretty cool one that would not get old i mean it would get it would make you sick after a while but it wouldn't get old i can't believe how fast it is and i can't believe how well it corners i again the styling is what really gets me though the m3 i think i would still prefer just because it looks the part like it looks so cool whenever this just looks like an electric car it doesn't look fun or fast or anything so i guess maybe roadster is the car for me and so that's the tesla model 3 performance this car is a substantially good value with its 56 000 price and its 310 mile range and its performance and its technology when you factor in the price the performance the technology the equipment it's easy to see why this is the best tesla yet and now it's time to give it a doug score starting with the weekend categories and styling to me this is one of the model 3's biggest drawbacks it's just too dull and familiar and it gets a 5 out of 10. acceleration does 0-60 3.2 seconds and it gets a 9 out of 10. handling is very sharp not quite sports car sharp but excellent for a sedan and it gets a 6 out of 10. fun factor is good but not insane it's great fun to mash the gas pedal and even go around corners but with such a generic interior and exterior you do lose a little excitement to the european rivals and it gets a six out of ten finally cool factor and these are everywhere in major cities tesla makes a mistake by not improving the look of the performance version compared to the base model so it looks basically identical it won't turn any heads and it gets a 5 out of 10 for a total weekend score of 31 out of 50. next up are the daily categories and features this car has amazing tech among the best in the industry but then it's missing simple stuff like cooled seats and a heated steering wheel as a result it earns a 9 out of 10. comfort is normal for the class and it gets a 7 out of 10. quality is a mixed bag the interior just isn't that nice but it's reasonably well put together and reliability isn't chart topping but it's fine it earns a six out of ten practicality is normal for this segment a little better thanks to its two trunks and it earns a six out of ten finally value and this is where this car shines it costs way less than a bmw m3 but it's faster and it has better tech the value score is excellent easily and eight out of 10. added up in the dug score is 67 out of 100 which places it here against relevant rivals in this segment and other electric cars the model 3 performance is excellent though you can see it loses out to the bmw m3 cs and the audi rs3 and weekend scores those cars are simply more engaging and better looking the model 3 also loses to the jaguar i-pace and the model x for daily scores as those cars are larger and more practical but on the whole in this segment for the money no car does it better than the model 3 performance it's the best tesla and it's also a fantastic car [Music] you

Channel: Doug DeMuro

Views: 3,853,483

Keywords: tesla model 3 performance, model 3 performance, model 3 performance review, tesla model 3, tesla model 3 review, model 3, model 3 review, tesla model 3 performance review, tesla m3, tesla m3 review, m3 review, model 3 performance tesla, doug demuro, demuro, doug de muro

Id: YvsnIL0AIAk

Length: 34min 10sec (2050 seconds)

Published: Thu Nov 14 2019

Reddit Comments

[u/CookieMonster42FL]

Nice to see him talk in detail about quirks and features of this car

[u/hoti0101]

I have my own scoring system for Doug's videos that is only based on the amount of white undershirt visible. I give this video a 4 out of 10.

[u/ehodapp]

tl;dw- Spent most of the 30 minutes going over weird stuff like fart mode, the games, and heated seat controls, then drives it around the block, gives it a weird score without really answering why it's the best Tesla. Strangely hung up on the lack of a heated steering wheel and cooled seats.

[u/mastre]

Doug is such a goofy clown. And I love him (:

[u/AlexanderAF]

He chose the exact same title as I did for my video a year ago!

Here’s why the Tesla Model 3 Performance is the best Tesla yet!

If I’m being perfectly honest, this is going to probably help my video...

[u/Edmonton_Canuck]

I also wondered why the model 3 doesn’t have one, especially since the model s has one and the model 3 is an ‘expensive upscale’ car.

I know you can just precondition the car, but people like me with bad hand circulation need that extra heat!

[u/dzcFrench]

I like him. You can hear the passion in what he's doing.

[u/onelovebraj]

I am very surprised Doug reviewed the performance model... back when the Performance was first released, Doug did not want to review it because he already reviewed M3 non-P and said the performance model wouldn’t be different. I see you Doug... 🙂

[u/wesowes]

The review was fine, but he didn't mention anything about over the air updates or autopilot which are crucial features for the Tesla experience and why we all think they are superior cars to German ICE models for example. Also I wholeheartedly disagree that the Jaguar I-Pace is more practical as it lacks the supercharger network (which he didn't mention at all) for longer road trips for example.

In conclusion it's a review by a car enthusiast instead of a Tesla enthusiast, which is fine, but he misses the things that makes Teslas so special