The 2022 Tesla Model 3 Update Is Here!

let's talk about the model 3 today it's been a little bit overshadowed in the past year by some other cars in the tesla lineup like the model s and the model y but the good old model 3 is still one of the best cars on the market and with some fresh new updates that are just starting to roll out worldwide the model 3 has managed to become an even more compelling vehicle and easily the most bang for your buck of any electric car on the market so let's get into why that is we can start with the new naming structure for the different variations of the model 3. the term standard range plus is gone which is awesome because it's clunky to say and anyone who wasn't around for the original launch of the model 3 wouldn't know what the plus was referring to anyways so now the base level is simply model 3 and it's under the category of rear wheel drive if you want dual motors and all-wheel drive in a model 3 that can come with either long range or performance depending on which aspect you want to prioritize beautiful simple easy to understand the rear wheel drive model 3 is where the real changes have happened for 2022 this is basically a whole new car even if it looks exactly the same as it did for 2021 the first thing that we'll notice is that the range has gone up while the acceleration performance has gone down we're now at 272 miles of epa range with the 18-inch aero wheels installed that's nine extra miles over the 2021 spec it drops down to 267 with the 19-inch sport wheels which also add 1500 bucks to the price if you want to make the best of both worlds you can actually take the weird-looking hubcaps off of the aero wheels and there are pretty decent looking black rims underneath you just need to buy a kit to cap them off it's just like 30 bucks you lose some range when you take the hubcaps off but you can always put them back on for longer trips when you want the extra miles little tesla life hack there for you acceleration time to 60 miles per hour is also up for 2022 which is not so great it's now 5.8 seconds instead of 5.3 honestly though this is still really good for a base model single motor rear wheel drive electric car for comparison the new top-tier model of volkswagen id4 with dual motors and all-wheel drive is doing 0 to 60 in 5.7 seconds then there's the price so the list price of a model 3 has actually gone up by seven thousand dollars since the beginning of 2021. 38 grand to 45. it's unfortunate but in many ways it is justified so basic economics says that if the demand for a product is high and the supply is low then the price will rise and that's exactly what happened with the model 3. the hertz car rental company has certainly played a role in that demand offset but even without them swooping in to buy a hundred thousand cars there would still be more demand for cars than tesla can produce that won't change until they get the new gigafactory in texas really pumping which is probably still a year away then there are other external factors like rising material costs inflation labor shortages supply chain breakdown and all of that fun stuff that is affecting much more than just electric cars right now just wait until black friday this year when there is not enough stuff to go around for those angry mobs is going to get real fast anyways tesla has thrown us one bone by now offering the midnight silver metallic color for no extra charge which is awesome if you don't like a white car then you've saved a thousand bucks getting back to the performance numbers for 2022 what's behind the change in spec there is one major change that has been made with the model 3 that essentially makes this a whole new car that is better in almost every way the latest version of the model 3 retains all of the upgraded features from 2021 the window glass is tesla's special in-house made design that maximizes sound insulation and strength the exterior and interior trim pieces are satin black so there is no chrome on the body or gloss black interior tesla's octo valve heat pump is being used to keep the hvac system as energy efficient as possible and the model 3 comes with a hepa air filter though it's not quite big enough to achieve the bioweapon defense mode of other tesla vehicles and every trim level comes standard with a power lift trunk lid introduced in the first half of 2021 and continuing through 2022 is the tesla vision based autopilot system that means that unlike previous versions of the model 3 the 2022 model 3 is coming without radar sensors built in so all of the advanced driver assist features in autopilot are being run on camera vision alone tesla's artificial intelligence team says that this switch actually reduces the amount of noise in the car's inputs and makes for a smoother and more confident autopilot system the 2022 model 3 for the u.s market has been converted to an lfp or lithium iron phosphate based battery cell this configuration has been standard for tesla in china since the start of production over there in 2020 but this is a new battery design for north america this new cell is only found in the rear wheel drive model 3 and it brings a bunch of changes over the previous battery up until now the battery used in all model 3s was a cylindrical lithium ion cell with nca chemistry that means nickel cobalt and aluminum this cell format is called a 2170 and is used by other high-end ev makers like rivian and lucid but tesla makes their own customized version of the cell in partnership with panasonic at their gigafactory in nevada this particular kind of battery is very energy dense and efficient but it is also very slow and expensive to produce on the other hand we have the lfp battery cell which is made by a chinese battery supplier called a catl because they use regular old iron in place of those rare fancy metals the lfp cells are pretty cheap and easy to make by comparison but what does any of that mean for the consumer well mostly upsides and only one downside the advantages of the lfp cell is that they are much more robust than a regular lithium ion cell with a nickel cathode anyone who's owned an electric car before would know that they are not actually supposed to charge the battery to 100 every day you should only ever do that if you know that you are going on a long trip for optimal battery health you should always limit the charge to 80 or 90 max and even if you do everything possible to take care of your battery it's still going to lose capacity over time real world use of the model 3 seems to show that you lose around four percent of the total battery capacity every year the new lfp batteries are not as sensitive when it comes to charging percentages you can freely charge a 2022 model 3 up to full capacity every day without ever having to worry about the health of the battery pack it doesn't matter and because iron is such a stable element it won't degrade anywhere near as fast as nca lithium-ion chemistry there really shouldn't be any loss in total range over time with the new battery it's believed that an lfp cell in an electric car should last for a million miles of driving and probably much more than that and a third advantage of the iron-based chemistry is that it doesn't burst into flames when the battery pack is damaged we know that lithium-ion batteries are vulnerable to something called a thermal runaway that's where even if one cell overheats it will spread to the rest of the pack and the whole thing combusts lfp doesn't do that now it's not fireproof but it's also not violently reactive either if you're going to be in a bad crash then lfp batteries will give you a higher chance of survival where this gets really interesting is when we start to compare the real world daily driver range of an lfp based model 3 versus the nca battery pack in the model 3 long range the long range model 3 gets you 358 miles on the aero wheels and for daily driving applications we know that we should only use 90 of that capacity so that gets us down to 322 miles in regular use then factor in a couple of years worth of age on the battery at four percent total capacity loss per year and we get down to a daily driver range at 90 charge that would be 296 miles if you plan on owning the car for five years or more then at that point the standard model 3 will probably have more daily driver range than the model 3 long range at the same age and one more really fascinating real world difference between the two batteries the lithium-ion nca battery loses the capability for regenerative braking at 100 charge because the battery is full and even at 90 charge the regen is fairly weak while the lfp battery still allows for regenerative braking at a hundred percent charge and the effect isn't weakened at high charging levels that would probably result again in more real-world range for lfp of course there is more to the long-range model 3 than just range it also comes with both front and rear motors for all-wheel drive traction and much faster acceleration it is a significantly more fun car to drive if you want those features then the choice is clear but if power and traction aren't that appealing then the base model 3 might actually end up being the better option while saving you 5 000 on the purchase price as for the downside the lfp cell has less energy density than an nca lithium ion battery cell so pound for pound there is less energy capacity in lfp that means to get similar results between the two there needs to be more lfp cells in the car and more cells equals more weight and that could be the reason that the car is just a bit slower tesla increased the size of the battery pack until the range evened out but that made it a little harder to accelerate quickly or another reason for this reduced performance could have been tesla switching out the old motor for a less powerful and more efficient product they could even be using the same motor from the all-wheel drive version to reduce their parts catalog those have a little less torque than the rear wheel drive motor that we're familiar with no one seems to know exactly what the case is though could even be a combination of the two factors one more downside that will only affect some buyers some of the time is the cold weather performance of the lfp battery pack results that have come back from northern china and europe seem to show that the lfp battery in the model 3 suffers from greatly reduced range in cold weather and has trouble charging in sub-zero temperatures so if you live in california it's a non-factor but if you live in the northern states or canada it could be an issue it's a tough one for sure though on the upside if you do live in a cold weather area tesla is now including more heaters as standard equipment according to notes from tesla dealers the 2022 version of the model 3 is now going to come standard with a heated steering wheel and heated rear seats so maybe you're spending more time at the supercharger but at least you'll be warm give and take what are you guys thinking is the shift to an lfp battery making the model 3 more desirable or are the few negatives pushing you towards the long range option let us know where you're at in the comment section below for more tesla news delivered straight to your inbox make sure to subscribe to our tesla space newsletter we keep you up to date on all things elon musk tesla spacex neuralink and boring company in one quick and fun to read package link in the description to sign up it's the teslaspace.com and make sure to drag our emails over into your primary inbox so we don't get lost in the promotions tab also don't forget to check out our new space race channel and subscribe over there for even more space exploration content as always if you want to continue to learn about everything regarding tesla spacex and elon musk we've got two more video options for you on the screen to check out don't forget to give this video a thumbs up 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Channel: The Tesla Space

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Id: kzGA9GIdWJ8

Length: 13min 35sec (815 seconds)

Published: Fri Nov 12 2021