Our fastest 0-100km/h time yet! (Tesla Model 3 Performance 2024 Review)

I'm Tom Baker this is chasing cars and today I'm going to be conducting a full review and test of this the new 2024 Tesla Model 3 Performance this is of course the current topspec model 3 in facelifted Highland guys it's a little bit quicker than before and we're going to be testing that today with an independent performance test on Chasing Cars we're going to be doing a range test and we're also going to be seeing what the model 3 Performance is really like to live with we know it's fast we know it should break well but is this car fun and satisfying to drive every day well Tesla has changed the hardware in a number of important ways for the refresh of the performance so it should be better in every way the interior is certainly nicer so everything is shaping up for this vehicle to look like tremendous value for money it's still less than the luxury car tax here in Australia about 89 Grand driveway as it sits in Ultra red so you're talking about 30,000 to 40,000 less than something like an ionic 5n half the price of something like a BMW M3 you're talking about base model BMW I4 pricing is this one of the best vehicles in the world we're going to find out today but before we get started hit subscribe Chasing Cars honest reviews of your next car brought to you by the model 3 Performance that I'm testing is finished in the pretty Lush shade of ultra red outside over the black interior now the model 3 Performance interestingly picks up a a totally different seat to the regular car and that's a good thing because while the standard model 3 seat is okay it's never been the last word in lateral support this is a car that can pull some pretty amazing G's in virtually any direction the tires in particular on the performance are very grippy you can take Corners fast and we'll get to that soon so you want some support in the chair Tesla has delivered that now you can see that the side bolsters are very tall unlike a BMW you can't actually adjust how much of a cuddle that you're getting so you will want to go down to a Tesla showroom and make sure you actually fit in the seat now I've got a pretty narrow frame it's perfect for me but if you have a larger frame you actually may not find these seats particularly comfortable so go and try it out what you do have is 12 ways of electric adjustment including Lumar so you can really get into a comfortable position for long-distance driving if I could complain about one thing in the seat it's that unlike an M3 or an m340i you don't have a adjustable thigh length so those people with longer legs including me I started to get a little tired around that area after a few hours in the saddle you do get a kind of cool plaid logo in the top of the seat and like the standard model 3 Highland it does have both Heating and Cooling which is good because this is not leather so naturally it wouldn't be super breathable but it's got perforations It's got active cooling no problem so even though we have to sit under a default glass roof wish Tesla would make that optional because it really does heat up the cabin still even in the middle of winter here in Sydney you can stay cool thanks to really good air conditioning and ventilated seats further a field in the cabin we've got a almost round steering wheel kind of a subtle flat bottom I like that it's not too chunky I like the wheel and you know what for whatever reason my brain is wired in such a way that having the indicators on the steering wheel is actually not a problem for me I just get accustomed to that but I realize people have different opinions that is okay it used to have stalks maybe that was better but I'm kind of fine with what Tesla has done probably a little bit less so is the shifter which is now in the screen you put your foot on the brake you do that to go forward you do that to go back I believe it's kind of meant to guess what you want to do this car isn't really doing that now occasionally I've accidentally swiped up to reverse maybe because a gear shifter in most cars goes up I don't know again it's about your neural Pathways isn't it I got to redo mine to get on with this car you do have some redundant gear shifts up here plus your hazard light redundancy that's a little bit less convincing to me but again it's it's fine now you do a lot of your interaction with any Tesla through the central screen it's 15 in in the model 3 and by and large it's pretty easy to understand you can now go full screen graphic of the car which turns into full screen like autopilot sensor display while you're driving or you can split it with the map what you can't do which I would prefer is Go full screen map because frankly I find it a bit distracting looking at all of the models of cars driving around you just in normal commuting I'm not not on autopilot I don't actually care what the car can see right now I just want to see my map but you can't make it any bigger got heaps of inbu apps in this car though from your Spotify Apple music title Apple podcast audible Netflix while you're charging arcade games when it comes to the software game Tesla are still either at the front or very close to it and it all works as you'd expect but no Apple carplay or Android auto Tesla are so proud of their system that's all you get one thing they really should be proud of though is the stereo this car has one of the best stereos of any vehicle on the market and I've tested cars with super super expensive high-end optional audio systems this is so well-tuned warm easy to listen to enjoyable to listen to loud clear awesome stereo so if you're an audio file this car could well suit you couple of other nice touches dual phone charges although my iPhone Mini sort of slides around and doesn't charge properly if You' got a bigger iPhone or Android or whatever you should be okay most of the materials are actually soft touch and yielding and feel reasonably expensive in this car certainly better than early Teslas in terms of perceived quality but this car's got a rattle we've only got 8 or 900 K on the clock but sadly over course chip something up there in front of the passenger has a resonance to it which doesn't feel up to 90 grand driveway so that could just be this car of course but it was annoying me when I did my road test storage big bin here cup holders another deep been there as well big flock line door bins love to see that so all in all not really much objective to complain about in here lots of good points but not perfect shall we check out the back seat let's go moving to the back seat of the model 3 Performance it's pretty decent at 4.7 m in length the model 3 is firmly midsized and you'll get two adults back here without too much trouble probably why these things are pretty popular as Ubers and even taxis in Europe maybe not in performance guys but you know you have a good amount of space in this vehicle I'm 6 or 183 cm and you can see that I've got sufficient Headroom beneath this enormous rear windscreen that extends right up to this Center Bar here now Tesla does not sell an official accessory sun shade for this roof but there are aftermarket providers who do so and in a hot country like Australia you'll definitely be wanting to fit one of those there's also plenty of leg room behind my driving position although tow room is a bit pinched by the sports seat which is a different seat than the standard model 3 in terms of leg support it's okay you've got to spay your legs a bit but it's certainly better than some other EVS out there and I think it's more comfortable in the back of a model 3 than in something like a Pulstar 2 there's also more room than in a BMW I4 back here amenity is a pretty good back here we do have a enormous sort of flip down armrest thing which is soft and padded with cup holders there which is good soft materials and ambient lighting continue into the back which is nice and a big upgrade for the model 3 Highland was the addition of a pretty amazing crisp screen back here in the second row that you can use to control your rear climate there are some vents back here it's nice and cold you can also watch Netflix play games look at the music that's playing in the car all pretty incredible except for the ergonomics because it's very low so you've kind of got a crane down to use it I'm not sure how many people are actually going to want to watch content looking down I think people are more likely to just use their phone or their iPad if this is a family car the screens would have been better up here but I get it this is a model 3 not a super luxury sedan and definitely an odd and nice feature to have jumping out of the model 3 Performance now and heading around the back it's worth noting the design changes to the performance they are subtle if you know your Teslas you know your model 3s you will pick it apart in traffic but I think Tesla's goal was to make the performance a little bit subtle so that your average bystander does not realize this is one of the very quickest cars on the road full stop at the front it gets a unique apron which I think looks really nice the 20-in wheel design is also unique to the performance and then round back is perhaps where the biggest giveaways are cuz you've got this carbon lip spoiler here now I know that Tesla struggled a bit in the past with the adhesion on this spoiler hopefully that's now fixed with the facelift you're also going to notice the Plaid badge down here plaid badge yet this vehicle is not a plaid we sort of thought it might have been called the model 3 plaid or ludicrous but Tesla just stuck with plain old performance there are some Rumors abounding in the Tesla community that they're actually might be an even higher end model 3 coming later but for now this is it this is the performance we still get a power tailgate even though this is a traditional sedan big boot gets up and out of the way and reveals 594 L of space so a sedan's go this is one of the most flexible out there the aperture is kind of narrow if you want it to uh be easier to load stuff in probably go for a model y or something like that you do get extra storage under the boot floor one thing Tesla could fix up to make life easier in future is remote tabs to fold down the back seats you got to go around the side to do that but they do fold 60/40 then you've got a control there to close your power tailgate as well but the storage space does not stop there so it's got a big boot but coming back to the front of the model 3 Performance we need to talk about the frunk because Tesla's packaging is insane this is one area where Tesla are still well ahead of other Rivals even though they are catching up ground on things like efficiency and driving Dynamics for EVS look at this gorgeous Lo front end it's handsome I think with the facelift of the model 3 design and yet somehow this exceptionally low Bonnet houses a really big frunk it's also worth mentioning the digital key so it uses NFC on your phone iPhone or Android you can control a bunch of functions from your climate locking and plenty of other things including opening that frun it unlatches and then all you have to do is pull it up nice elegant design that opens up and you got 88 L of sealed space right in there so you will get another cabin bag in there you get a couple of soft bags in there you could put your cables in there this is a much bigger frunk than virtually any of this vehicle's Rivals if not the biggest just giving you some extra storage options there nice servicing the Tesla Model 3 is done on condition-based intervals the car lets you know when it needs maintenance the warranty is poor for the class however 4 years or 880,000 km on the vehicle 8 years or 192,000 km on the battery in the Drive Unit and what's warranted there is a minimum of 70% battery capacity after that period next up we need to discuss the real world range and charging situation with the model 3 Performance Australia's EV charging infrastructure is getting better at quite a rapid clip but it's still important to know exactly how far a car will go when you need it to now the model 3 Performance has a 75 kwh usable battery so reasonably big although not massive Tesla says it will use 14.2 kws per 100ks for a 528 km range wltp bit worse than last year's model 3 Performance we found that it gets close although it doesn't actually meet those numbers so Urban test we got 15.3 Kow hour per 100ks for an urban range of 490 km certainly not bad out on the highway it's a little thirstier 16.2 KW per 100 km for a highway road tripping range of 463 km but of course this car has ride of Entry to all of Tesla's supercharg here in Australia it has a type 2 CCS Port rather than KNX but it can charge at up to 250 KW which will replenish 70% or so of the battery in under half an hour which is pretty impressive so this car among EVS is certainly one of the easiest to road trip with and the efficiency is incredible given the performance on offer but if you really want an efficiency Superstar the low-end model 3 rear wheel drive continues to be the goat of this car's lineup all right all right so let's go for a drive in the model 3 Performance first thing we're going to do is launch it we've performance tested about 300 cars at the Chasing Cars test track we don't really do supercars so there's no reason this vehicle shouldn't score the PB now it's pretty easy we just go to the dynamic settings we hit insane there's really nothing else we can do apart from plant the boot there's 100 3.16 seconds later repeatable performance the model 3 Performance hases become the quickest vehicle Chasing Cars has ever tested still looking for a car which will break the 3se second barrier we haven't done you know 911 Turbo S's and stuff like that and you can't get Model S or model X plaid here in Australia it will happen one day but for now what that should illustrate is that the model 3 Performance delivers sports car slaying acceleration times at a price that is just way more affordable than virtually anything else which gets near before just one one moment ago the PB times here at this facility for us were 3.26 seconds which is a record shared between the Audi rson GT and the Mercedes AMG eqe 53 sedan and those vehicles are multiples of the price of the tessla model 3 Performance now making electric cars go quickly in a straight line is certainly interesting particularly when they're this quick but it's less important to me for my subjective preferences than chassis tuning but the simple thing is Tesla's also been giving that area some attention as well and in particular the new model 3 Performance has quite a big suspension change in that it goes to Adaptive dampers which have three modes and you're able to select those modes between standard Sport and track now we haven't done a track evaluation of this car I would like to I've concentrated on what many if not all owners are going to do which is stick to the road there is a passionate subgroup of Tesla Model 3 Performance owners that do hit the track and I do want to see what that's all about but this review was a road review so I stuck to the standard and Sport modes and what I found was that actually like a lot of German luxury sports sedans standard mode is really all you need for the dampers because there's so much mechanical grip and there's so much body control already engineered into the chassis of the model 3 that sport actually just becomes a bit stiff and unlivable on Aussie roads anyway which are not particularly well maintained on back roads in region areas which is where you're going to want to take the model 3 Performance to exploit some of that pace and some of that handling and you have the range to do so as well because the efficiency manages to be quite acceptable despite the massive performance on tap naturally if you start doing constant launches you will drain the battery quite quickly and every run for our instrumented testing was using about 1% of the battery which is kind of crazy when you think about it so you've just got to remember that if you're showing off the acceleration to your mates but the thing about showing off acceleration is it kind of gets a bit old and even the model 3 delivering 3.16 seconds Z to 100 times quite easily honestly it starts to lose its excitement fairly quickly now you know if you're a subscriber you might know that I'm a bit cynical I'm a bit jaded and acceleration just doesn't really do it for me the model 3 is excellent brakes stopping from just over 34 M from 100 to zero again repeatable with little fade that's really impressive but what about the connection between driver and vehicle not everyone cares about that as much as I do I guess if you could plot a kind of curve where like your Mazda and your Porsche are right at the top of really wanting that sort of laser connection through the steering wheel between the captain of the drive and what the car is actually doing Tesla is not quite at that level now they're not totally hands off even though they are committed to developing full self-driving not available in Australia at this point they probably are not as committed to making sure the car is talking into its driver quite as much in its reactions through the chassis and that is what you get in the model 3 Performance even though the chassis is very capable very good body control very good front end bite and turn in lots of grip through the tire and through the body this car will actually do what you ask it to it stands up to real punishment and Fast Pace on a country road no issue it is not one of those cars which actually makes it really fun to string Corners together and where you feel yourself falling into an intimate rhythm with the car it can do it it's satisfying to drive I do want to drive this car but it doesn't cry at you to take it out every opportunity just to to to pretend to have to go and get some milk from the supermarket you're not looking for every possible opportunity to Hon this car in fact in some ways what the model 3 Performance is best at is actually pretending to be a base model 3 because it just it just poodles around so comfortably and in such a refined way way and yes it can deliver insane bursts of power at any moment but the chassis you know it doesn't do a huge amount of talking to you as a driver it certainly doesn't want to shake its rear end unless you put it into track ESC then it will do what you want but that's not really what you want for onroad use the steering quite digital quite artificial virtually no Road feel at all through the steering rack so what it does is what Audi RS cars did you know around the turn of the New Millennium they go go very quick they stop very well and the handling they deliver is extremely clinical extremely surgical extremely precise it does what it says on the tin you just might not be giggling as a result this car is like that in that it can absolutely deliver but as a driver it just holds you at a distance while it does so I think a lot of people want that I think a lot of people want point and shoot and they don't want to get scared by their car which of course is a byproduct of what happens when a BMW M3 wants to fish tail down the road in EST sport not everyone wants that but some people want that slight element that there's a higher Plateau that you can reach with the car a level of communication and connection that you can build over years of honing your expertise in one vehicle and the Tesla just doesn't want to be that right now what it is is really refined quite comfortable okay in terms of its build quality nice in terms of its features in the cabin and capable of just devastating Pace when you ask it through the loud pedal it is so good at that stuff and when it comes to safety well that's a bit of an open question we know that the Tesla's crash very well but when it comes to evaluating the safety features of the press Vehicles it's a little bit difficult I can tell you the lane departure system does work on this particular press car the cruise control is not working for some reason I'll show you what I get on the screen had to do all of our Highway range testing driving manually in this car which did get a bit old we don't have FSD in this country yet can't really test out the enhanced autopilot on this car because again the cruise control sensors aren't working on this one so I can't really give you too much commentary by way of the operation of those features in this case so I just mostly drove this test manually and found the car you know pretty enjoyable from behind the wheel at the end of the day so what's my final verdict on the new Tesla Model 3 Performance well there's the objective and the subjective objectively this is one of the best cars on the market particularly at this price well under $100,000 Australian dollar there's really nothing that can touch the model 3 performance's overall package amazing acceleration great brakes decent Dynamics a salubrious interior good efficiency in range and a great charging Network backed up by Tesla Supercharger access Tesla's product planners ought to be congratulated on the deal that they have agreed to and reached in terms of the price of this car it is so fairly positioned it is a bargain at this price but then there's also the subjective the model 3 Performance is not going to be the perfect car for everybody there's still some quality niggles that loud rattle in the dashboard I mentioned is less than perfect at this price but then there's also the question of soul and character and whether you even care about that if you're a numbers person the model 3 Performance is absolutely delightful even beyond the numbers it is satisfying and competent to drive in the tradition of say an Audi RS car from a decade or two ago it is so fast it is so clinical it does exist exactly what you ask it to do amazingly well what it doesn't have is a character which really wants to let loose and communicate a bunch through the chassis as you drive on regular roads of course you can go to track mode at a private facility and it will start to entertain a bit more but compared to options like a golf r a BMW 330i at a similar price although much slower cars a hyai ionic 5n at 30 to 40 Grand more expensive and then way more expensive options like an M3 C63 RS4 for instance or a tyon this car is not quite as willing to let its hair down and really give you that sort of sense of connection as a driver but again you either care about that stuff or you don't when it comes to the satisfying when it comes to the competent when it comes to the objective the model 3 Performance is virtually unbeatable at this price point and that is a massive achievement very keen to know your opinions Down Below in the comments while you're there hit subscribe and the notification Bell and as always thank you for watching Chasing Cars

Channel: Chasing Cars

Views: 45,723

Keywords: Tesla, Tesla Model 3, Tesla Model 3 Performance, 2024 Tesla Model 3 Performance, Tesla facelift, Tesla update, Tesla Model 3 review, Tesla Model 3 Plaid, Tesla Model 3 Ludicrous, Tesla Model 3 Long Range, electric car review, quickest car, fastest car, 0-100km/h, Chasing Cars, Chasingcars

Id: xX8Woq6XrRE

Length: 22min 2sec (1322 seconds)

Published: Wed Jun 19 2024