Tesla Model 3 Performance | The Prima Donna

[Music] the tesla model 3 performance i've already done a video on the base trim level the cheapest one you can get now it's time to look at the best one with the most power that everybody raves about now tesla as a brand is a mixed bag we're going to cover the pros and cons of this car in this video but the other thing is they have no pr presence they do not do a good job of explaining their technical and engineering decisions so we have to go dig through this the other part i've had to rent another one of these actually two a performance model and one with the fully autonomous driving system which cost me over a thousand dollars so i've integrated some things here with omaze and some help of other people to bring you everything you need to know about this car and why it exists [Music] one of the creative ways i've been able to acquire difficult to review vehicles like the tesla model 3 performance is to partner with omaze.com again did it on the c8 video now this they have a new giveaway they're giving away a home in florida six bedrooms and five bathrooms you don't like that well they can give you a million dollars instead and for me if i want it i would spend most my time in the kitchen cutting up my arby's beef and cheddars and then disappearing to the zen master bathroom so the other part of this if you go to home.omaze.com savagegeese you can donate to potentially win that and get entered in also to win the tesla model 3 or some other prizes part of your donations will go to children's miracle network hospitals in orlando florida so if you like kids it's a win-win but other than that again hit up that link if you want to potentially win those prizes or continue watching the video to learn all the technical stuff about the tesla the interior of the tesla model 3 performance to me it feels almost identical as the base trim level i looked at and the base will set you back about thousand dollars now the top trim level which is this is fifty five thousand and if you wanna add the fully autonomous driving modes and hardware it's another ten thousand dollars to that so at thirty eight thousand what you get here is simplistic design minimalistic almost scandy navy and ask look to the front dashboard you have the wood grain texture across you have very basic plastics and kind of the speaker fabric that runs across the whole windshield the door panels feel really soft and plush the armrests are padded very well and the seats are ultra comfortable but when you get to the performance trim there's not a lot of bolstering you slide around a lot and if you want to pull lateral g's you're going to notice you're moving around in an excessive amount the next thing to talk about is while at 38 grand they do a great job in terms of feel and perceived quality what it looks like initially this car does not feel very well screwed together certain cars ship without clips on the door this car has rattles in the upper trim the plastics just even pushing on stuff you hear it creak and if it's just a slight push the vibration through the car amplifies this the second thing is sound insulation while they do use quality sound insulation in the doors it's lacking everywhere else and it's amplified by the fact there's so much glass in here the front windshield the side glass is just an echo chamber i can hear my voice reverberating on the cabin which affects phone calls it heavily affects the quality of the audio system even though the audio system tests well and it's something that you can't fix but for 2021 tesla has made some updates to the interior they've gotten rid of the piano gloss plastic which is unbelievable they listen to this they went to a matte gray the steering wheel texture has changed and they've added laminated glass to the front half of the car which will reduce road noise which this thing is definitely subjected to again the argument could be made between a 38 000 car and a 55 000 plus car if you're a tech focused individual that just doesn't care about cars in general you may not even notice this but if you're somebody coming out of a premium or a luxury car that has better build quality more sound isolation this is going to bother you and i'm telling you right now now the other part is cost cutting tesla was able to get this car out between 35 and 40 thousand dollars by engineering out a lot of the complexity the dashboard architecture for example they simplified the whole thing there's no movable vents there's no cup holders no no mechanics to it it's easy in easy out and cheap to manufacture same thing with most the materials in here the biggest thing they've engineered out the mechanical and electronic controls that aid in complexity of building this and designing it so all of the traditional controls that you would use get relegated to a touch screen which is powered can at this point in time by nvidia processors and this is something as a tech company they're looking at intel they're looking at nvidia they're looking at amd they're constantly looking at how to improve this but the main thing that they can do and if you're a tech person you're going to appreciate this if you have a fault or a problem with the car almost 90 percent of it can be fixed by over-the-air updates by software updates to fix or patch out bugs or improve the ui and that's something tesla is strong at but if you're coming from a car with traditional controls they definitely don't do a good job here there's not enough redundancies and commonly used controls that make more sense and more intuitive to the human body and hands and constantly having to interact with the screen that's where this becomes tiring and i think over time they're going to find a balance let's head into the shop and talk about all the mechanical things that make the model 3 performance good and then get out on the road and drive it and see how the fully autonomous version works i'm under another tesla model 3. this time the performance model with dual motors i talked about some of the changes tesla made to the 2021 and i'm gonna talk about some of the mechanical ones the basics are they added some different wheel options but the big thing here is twofold they've added a heat pump to all the tesla model 3s and they were starting to roll this out quietly to the 2020 model years but it's not something you can retrofit to your old tesla tesla car without some serious modification and the heat pump acts as a reverse almost ac unit and in cold temperatures this drained and zapped the battery to get heat into it so this heat pump is going to help in that case if you're in a cold environment like i am now the next thing is they've upped the battery capacity and along with electronic tuning of that so you go from a 76 kilowatt hour battery to an 82 kilowatt battery and the cells are still the 2170 panasonic so this is not a new formulation they haven't got rid of cobalt and all that stuff yet so it's just a bigger version of the old pack but the big change is you get 30 miles of range on the extended range model with dual motors which bumps it up to like 353 miles range if you're in ideal conditions now the software tuning to go along with that has some performance improvements as well like the performance model here gets just an a bit better 0 to 60 and some of that is the power some of it is the electronic tuning of the motor units so let's get into this traditional car when you look at this on the front you're like oh okay it looks kind of like a mid-level luxury car which this model 3 was built to a price point they needed to get it around 35 to 40 thousand 000 make it a volume seller so engineering wise they had to cut a lot of things out that lowered the price down so they're carefully taking things out some places and putting them in the other the suspension is a huge highlight because this gives them scalability for better performance you're putting a lot of power and torque to these wheels so the double wishbone in the front helps you have dual lower ball joints all really beefy aluminum components but everything else is really steel the subframe carrier that you would find in most cars is here so it's a hard point for all the suspension bolting but it also has to act as a motor cradle so the subframe has to fit this giant electric motor here in the front and there are motor mounts that are included in that you have coolant lines that run through there and with the motor unit in the front it is a single reduction gear it just looks like an open differential and that's exactly what it is it's an open diff and some cars have limited slips or elsd's the concept here is the open diff's cheaper if you have slip on one wheel this will not transfer power to the other but because of the power of their microprocessor units and having dual motors having a little bit of slip is instantaneously corrected by taking a little bit of torque away or sending torque to the rear of the vehicle so they don't need explicit control of each wheel and this happens so fast because again it's instantaneous in terms of sending voltage uh that you don't notice it and there is a different driving character to this than a traditional all-wheel drive mechanical system or even a rear wheel drive car which we'll talk about on the drive so the motor unit there's more to it than you think the electric car in this case you still have brake fluid you still have brake pads and rotors you still have tires and these get abused way more than a traditional car because you have so much power getting sent to that so you're going to burn through tires more you also have coolant you need to change in this case it's had a little bit of coolant seepage so you got to monitor that and this also has gear oil and a motor oil filter or an oil filter on it and the gear oil is designed to help cool the bearings in the differential and the gear set and you also have a cool that runs to a cooler so it's also cool but it's a combination cooler so the coolant system runs through the cooler it doesn't mix with the oil of course but the coolant has the benefit of cooling off that oil the coolant runs to the control board it cools the moss fits and it also cools that control board that acts as the brain for the whole motor unit now the back is different in the front than the suspension you have a multi-link here and it has five links and in terms of a car at this price point they kind of started at that 35 they toyed with this 35 now they're getting rid of it now the base price of it's actually 38 but that's kind of in that entry-level luxury car price but also you see mid-sized cars creeping up to this point now in terms of what you see under here it's way ahead of some of these cheaper cars for one you can have it completely flat under body and this is something typically reserved for sports cars like upper end sports cars because aerodynamically a flat floor has benefits of not having all that air turbulence i mean it's just very good to see this and this is one of the huge benefits of going ev you don't have to plumb exhaust in this case you don't have to plug a mechanical drive shaft that connects the front drive to the back you can make a true i mean it's technically not a true but it is a rear-wheel drive architecture first because it's the base model's rear-wheel drive and you can put a bigger drive unit in the back and a smaller one on the front to give you that all-wheel drive effect so i'm going to talk about that just briefly before we get in the drive because we're going to talk your ear off but in terms of the all-wheel drive system power delivery once you have the core set like tesla has they want to be able to manipulate and update these systems over the air with system updates so that means they can make efficiency improvements and not only a battery economy like giving you more miles per charge which they have done over the course of the life cycle of this car they keep improving just minute amounts of better efficiency by their drive logic of their motor units they can also improve performance by tuning the electric motors and tuning the battery you can get more power so they've reduced the 0 to 60 time on the performance model of this car for 2021 and again it's a hair you're not going to be able to tell but all of this is done via software this is the tech company mentality that tesla is trying to implement in their cars that traditional automotive manufacturers have been unable to do because their car manufacturers first tech second tesla's tech first car second and you know there's trade-offs of this and build quality and overall quality at this point in time but a lot of the buyers really appreciate the cell phone computer mentality to updating cars but let's get this on the road and talk about how this really drives and how they tie all this together [Music] they're the engine stones or something jack no mark welcome to the future we are in the model 3 performance and this according to elon musk is faster and better performing than a bmw m3 i'm tired of hearing about bmws anything's got to be better than a bmw right now i did it okay [Music] i mean you can't argue with the results you can't argue with it and i think it's not even a gimmick it's just it really is once you get batteries mainstreamed and you get the battery densities mainstreamed across multiple manufacturers this is going to shred some faces to the point i think they're going to have disclaimers on some cars for people with neck injuries back injuries older people because it is extremely forceful there is so much torque from the electric motor on the performance model compared to the base trim that i drove in the previous video this to me mark is the great equalizer what i mean by that is what tesla's accomplished is they've given supercar levels of acceleration to say like 100 miles an hour the real kind of speeds that normal people would take their cars and they made it fifty five thousand dollars exactly and even well i'm gonna come to a stand still here and just get a little bit of speed and you can't hear it you can't hear this so you can't really get a visceral sense even behind the seat you feel torque and kind of a push back like roller coaster ask but you really can't grasp your sense of speed aside from wind noise so taking off that was essentially 100 miles an hour give or take and you know even in terms of powering out of corners you can get over kind of the acceleration you get desensitized to that in any car supercars exotics this car i think you do get adjusted to it because as you get upward in speed it's not just the zero to 60 to zero to 80. it starts to lose its pull after like 90 100 miles an hour and some of its aerodynamics and so some of it is the physics of how much power this can produce but i don't i can't remember any car that has so much physical brute force anywhere up well below a hundred thousand dollars for this price point or for this amount of power at this price point no and if you're coming from a regular car you haven't experienced some of the vehicles you and i have this will feel out of this world no it does it's it's it's interesting how it drives though it doesn't really drive like a traditional like sports car the brake is really spongy and almost synthetic uh you have to put a lot of pedal force in and even then you don't get a lot of feedback of how much speed you're scrubbing off i would say that it feels more like a middle of the road middle range sedan versus like a sporty car um and then getting used to the cornering of this i think that's something to talk about traditional cars with mechanical systems or mechanical differentials or rear-wheel drive car for example you send power to the back if you have a limited slip like a torso unit it feels way more natural the way that it rotates you feel a more positive connection to what you're doing with the wheel the pedals and the car whereas there's so much electronics that's happening behind the scenes here and if you leave it in auto let's just say you're not in track mode it's kind of figuring out where all that power needs to go to the front or to the back and this is all happening digitally electronically through the ecu to figure out how to get you through the corner this reminds me of like a gtr in the fact that it's so mind-blowing you know put yourself in the late 2000s when the current generation gtr came out what it was doing behind the scenes made you feel like a better more competent driver and it felt unnatural this is the next step of that this car does a really good job masking all of the mistakes you're making if you don't have a great concept of how to get a car to rotate through a corner right this will do it for you and make you feel like a much better driver i think there's cars after the gtr because you have the hybrid supercars that came out and the closest thing to you is the new on sx because you have electric drive in the front you have the electric motors you have a traditional drivetrain and there's so much the algorithms and tuning behind all these systems to get you through a corner feels very unnatural if you're used to a normal car but i think what your example is what this brings to the table is if you if you're cooking and i think cooking is the best example if you're a chef and you you're in the kitchen all the time you pick your chef's knife you pick your knives you know how to work you know how to find that balance tool to make you feel comfortable to do all those cuts and you take an average person who's never cooked before and you give them a 10 knife they're not going to know the difference between a 10 knife and a 500 japanese knife with a precision and waiting and that's what this brings to the table for the people have never experienced high performance cars or super cars it it makes you feel like you're in the best thing ever if you've never experienced it and i think that's something that tesla has done that nobody else has done and that's where i give them a lot of credit i don't disagree with you and you can't argue with the results i'm not talking about you know internal combustion versus electric or you know the philosophical debate there but the results the speed this can obtain and you know allegedly and according to like top gear this is faster than an m3 around a track so the track stuff is misleading people even with sports cars don't really take their cars to the track these lap times this comparison of how things get around the track are basically meaningless if you're looking at it as a metric of performance this would not make a whole track date no it wouldn't it would go into battery protection mode the battery will be depleted or a gasoline car you could fill up and keep going so this is not at the point where you can compete with an internal combustion sports car for a whole day of lapping or that type of performance but it will get there and we saw an episode on speed academy if you want to check out speed academy they had a video with one of the tuners in canada that build suspension for the tesla model 3 they do a lot of aggressive driving they do some tuning that gets rid of some of the production mode so you can really drive these cars like a sports car but i will tell you this this does not feel like it's where it needs to be yet in terms of driving experience the acceleration the power is there the drivetrain is there but the chassis tuning is not they don't have the years of development that companies like porsche bmw mercedes and in some cases the japanese companies they don't have the refinement they're they're still figuring it out and they don't have the resources to do everything for the knowledge base final thoughts on the tesla model 3. 10 years ago if you would have told me i would be standing in front of this car driving it i would have said it was science fiction and the best way i can explain this is when i was in tech around that time period when the first iphone came out everybody was blown away they broke new ground they innovated they did things that nobody else had done before and they were pushing the industry in a new direction that's what tesla is in the automotive market but all this time removed nobody still uses nobody uses an iphone the original iphone anymore in fact it's in a drawer or in a landfill and that's the overwhelming feeling i got while driving this while it is very here and now and the tech is at least six years ahead of everybody else they're also at least six years behind in terms of automotive manufacturing interior quality build quality and some of the refinement aspects that other companies can do better now in this price range when you're buying the base trim level at around 38 grand there are even things they do better than their competitors in terms of the refinement and all that they have a good core architecture here in terms of suspension underbody that's not fully yet realized this is ground zero for an affordable ev they're the only ones that have been able to do it now the thing is you have to be of that mindset to be an early adopter you have to be a tech person first to really appreciate what this car is doing it is more disposable it's not going to be a car you're going to be keeping for like five or six years you're going to be trading this dumping it for the next thing with more battery density as that continues to evolve this 300 range will go to 600 it'll make this pretty much irrelevant when they finally get to the place where software needs to be updated and the hardware can't keep up or they don't have the right sensor package in the car this will be disposable and that's how this car is overall including these self-driving beta that they've included that you have to pay them the privilege for you to test so they can data collect and improve it i feel like they should be paying you to test it it's not as good as a human driver it's way way far away it's smoothness and de-acceleration when it's slowing down coming to lights getting close to another car it's not completely natural yet it's acceleration isn't smooth it's lane changing can be jerky or when the sun is too bright on one side of the car one of the sensors isn't going to work and it's going to give you warnings there's just too many things here unless you're 100 on a highway where this is optimized for it's going to be a system you have to babysit and i don't want to babysit a car that's not why i want to pay that money for like an autonomous driving mode that again it's still being still being developed so that's kind of my takeaway the last thing from the performance perspective is this gives the average consumer at an affordable price point the experience of what supercar acceleration feels like from zero to 80 miles an hour you will be absolutely floored if you have never been in a bunch of sports cars before and this will change your mind about what a car experience is it's going to bring people that weren't car enthusiasts in it's it's kind of transforming them giving them that experience to see what it's like to have a little bit of fun now the thing is in terms of acceleration all that that's going to be great for years but tesla needs to do far more work on reducing road noise levels interior noise levels build quality paint quality all these things that they have not yet caught up to other car companies and it's going to be a long time before they can do that but the main thing is they've made a car that you can afford a lot of people can afford and it does have a usable range and a ton of performance behind it this is ground zero for tesla and what they're capable of doing from here is how much they're gonna learn from this and learn from what the other car companies are doing and make it better and i hope they're capable of doing that i really do so if you want to potentially donate to win this car or the house through a maze again hit up home.omaze.com savagegeese and i will see you next video [Music] you

Channel: savagegeese

Views: 190,629

Rating: 4.8797626 out of 5

Keywords: cars, trucks, suvs, 2020, 2021, review, Tesla, Model 3, performance, fastest ev, model y, ev, hybrid, taycan, electric, porsche, macan, bmw m3, audi a4, mercedes, honda accord, tesla problems, best new car, best suv, best used, cargurus, carfax, reviews, toyota rav4 prime, mazda, carvana, autonation, lexus, suv, worst, fpace, problems, comedy

Id: 4O_oevLs3iU

Length: 24min 56sec (1496 seconds)

Published: Fri Dec 04 2020

Reddit Comments

[u/En_Ex]

Like in his other Tesla Model 3 video, I appreciate his balanced critique and input on what he feels does and doesn't work with the car, and the brand overall. I know this statement applies to most of his other videos, but with how divisive Tesla can be, I feel it's worth mentioning.

[u/blackbelt96]

I've been wanting a performance 3 since they came out. The feeling of acceleration is absolutely mind bending, even as someone that rides liter bikes.

Problem is, I don't have the $$$ to buy new and the used market for model 3s is absolutely stupid. Asking price for two-three year old cars will be $5k maybe $10K below new msrp.

Plus like Mark said, as soon as the "next new thing" comes out values on these will probably plummet like all other tech. So I bide my time with bikes and V8s until that happens.

Also Mark hit the nail on the head in regards to FSD, people paying (now) $10k to be beta testers (AND the option not transfering if you get a new Tesla so you get hosed if you want to upgrade) is absolute insanity.

[u/[deleted]]

“I’m tired of hearing about BMWs. Anything is going to be better than a BMW right now.”

Show us where the M3 grille touched you, u/SavageGeese

[u/[deleted]]

Cross shopping this, the m240i and the supra. All around the same price and I'm a single dude so space and storage differences don't matter. Toss in my wanting the engine sound but also wanting the speed but living in an apartment with no charging option but also living in the north with snow.

Paradox of Choices I guess.

[u/Das-Drew]

Holy bent rim, Batman! 😖

[u/DoblerRadar]

I’ve owned a Model 3 Performance for about 18 months, and there are certain aspects of this car that short term reviews just won’t pick up on.

First though I disagree with not being able to track it and keep up with gas cars, because I do it. Yes it needs to be charged mid day and so that limits you to tracks with a supercharger in relative proximity. My favorite track had a supercharger 20 minutes away, so I make a run on lunch and can run all day. I’ve even camped in the car using camp mode at the track.

The thing about this car is that it’s good at life. The speed is addicting but there’s an aspect of it no reviewers talk about. It’s not JUST the instant acceleration, but the pairing of that torque with aggressive regenerative braking. This car feels like a scalpel in traffic. You can gain or scrub speed with very high fidelity with the modulation of one pedal - it’s a joy. The sort of that that worms itself into your head over time and then you want every car to have it, but you realize this is the only car under $100k that offers it.

This car is good at hauling people and hauling stuff, the stereo is fantastic, the software experience is next level from any other car and it gets compliments from people who have no idea what it is. The fact that I get a TON of new features via software update is addicting, and I appreciate that now in 2021 the differences between my 2018 and the newest cars is very minor because I received most of the new features via update.

Seriously, the update thing is game-changing. Waking up to a new software release that gives me something interesting and exciting like Track mode v2 or Sentry mode security cameras or new entertainment options is fun, and an experience I haven’t had since the early days of the iPhone where every software release felt like the future.

Anyway, I’m the sort of person that craves new automotive experiences. I don’t usually keep cars very long. But this Tesla keeps making a case for itself with new ways to keep ownership interesting. Which is sort of the opposite of what he said about being disposable.

[u/theboymehoy]

I can't wait until EV performance and practicality. finds its way into more cars this decade. Nothing really wrong eoth the tesla, the interior/exterior styling and layout just really aren't for me. Plus, tesla is kind of in the bmw/corvette/subaru/lifted truck kinda realm where people will judge you based on the car you drive (good or bad)

[u/picard001]

I think the big advantage of EV's is how easily they fit into certain folks daily routine, especially for the vast majority of those who commute. Being able to preheat/cool the car before you drive is very nice. I didn't think not having to stop at the gas station would be a benefit, but it's one less annoyance for a daily commute. Tesla's AutoPilot is great for highway or urban traffic jams. I'm excited for the VW ID.4 to which VW is heavily committed, I think that expose the masses to what electrification has to offer.

[u/Prestigious-Fly4248]

I really don’t like those rims