00TL-P3.2

It's definitely a bit too minimalistic for me, but would have to see it in person to know for sure.
If it otherwise looks good in the flesh & drives well, I could possibly give a pass on the sparseness of the interior.

kurtatx

Everyone is comparing the Model 3 to an iPhone. The reality is, it's probably more like the Apple Newton.

Everyone: Why is there no instrument cluster?
Musk: Well, it's meant to drive itself.
Everyone: What standard and when is this going to happen?
Musk: ...

The reality is this car is a decade early. Cars aren't driving themselves yet and for many of these owners, Teslas won't drive themselves until their next model.

00TL-P3.2

^ And then, I likely wouldn't want one. I'm happy to drive myself until the overlords command that all manually driven cars are no longer allowed on the road.

kurtatx

The overlords won't command you. Insurance companies will make it too expensive to drive yourself.

Costco

I never thought I would say, "there aren't enough buttons"

imj0257

iTrader: (1)

The interior is WAY too boring for me.

kurtatx

Don't worry: Tesla will still sell tons of these. Soon tons of models will look similar.

biker

Not sure about the single car wide vent tho.

kurtatx

Tech bloggers have already decided car ownership is dead. They annoy me.

AZuser

https://www.wsj.com/articles/tesla-m...als-1506976496

kurtatx

Has Tesla ever made a deadline they set? I have never seen a company so open with their stretch goals.

Can't tell if it's brilliant or foolhardy.

kurtatx

Tesla Model 3 Volume Production Target Pushed Back Again

In other news, the sky is blue

biker

But, the Model Y, the semi and the pickup truck are right on target.

cu2wagon

Yep. "Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain" the voice boomed out over the shareholders meeting.

kurtatx

Meanwhile, some 500,000 people gave $1000 to Tesla for what could be no reason.

SamDoe1

My guess is that only 20% or less of those actually take delivery of the car.

kurtatx

Tesla is lucky Budweiser is ordering all those trucks. It's clearly a marketing ploy for Budweiser, but hey, orders are orders.

biker

Slow production of Tesla's Model 3 sedan leaves customers at the bottom of the 455,000- person reservation list facing a three-year wait for their new cars.

That leaves an opening for other EV makers, such as Chevy, to woo away Tesla customers. But it's not an opening Chevy plans on openly exploiting, the company said.

"It's not in the cards," Steve Majoros, marketing director of Chevrolet cars and crossovers, told Automotive News last week.

On paper, the Bolt EV and Model 3 are similar in terms of performance and price. However, Tesla has created a cult following that had customers making down payments on the car even before its unveiling.

And it would be nearly impossible for a competitor to identify those wait-list customers without offering a broad incentive for those who prove they were on the list. Tesla, for privacy and competitive reasons, wouldn't share that list.

Like all first adopters, most Tesla reservation holders know what they're getting into when they drop a $1,000 deposit on a car sight unseen.

When Tesla unveiled the Model 3, 180,000 people paid a deposit to reserve their spot in line, according to Tesla CEO Elon Musk, though the car wouldn't be delivered for more than a year — and, in most cases, has yet to be delivered.

However, with the sleek exterior characteristic of the Model S and Model X and a spartan interior consisting of just a center console touch screen, the Model 3 is somewhat prevented from requiring any major redesigns in the near future, said Mike Ramsey, an analyst at consultancy Gartner Research.

"This model is very simple," Ramsey said. "It will stick around for quite a while with the way it looks. It has an exterior design that ages well."

Delivery rate

Last week, Tesla said it increased the delivery rate of the Model 3 by more than seven times. On Wednesday, Jan. 3, Tesla said it delivered 1,550 Model 3 sedans in the fourth quarter, up from 220 in the third quarter.

Tesla said it is in the process of relieving bottlenecks that have slowed initial production rates. But the automaker will need a major production breakthrough to make sure customers don't end up receiving a car with a 3- to 4-year-old design at a new-car price.

"We're very appreciative of our Model 3 customers, who continue to stick by us while patiently waiting for their cars," Tesla said in a statement.

When Musk launched the Model 3 in July, he projected the company would produce 5,000 vehicles a week by the end of 2017. During the company's third-quarter earnings call, Musk pushed back the production target to the first quarter of 2018. On Wednesday, it was delayed again to the second quarter.

Reports suggest the initial delay may have been due to an unfinished assembly line at Tesla's Fremont, Calif., plant. In November, Musk said a supplier to Tesla's battery gigafactory had "dropped the ball," forcing the company to rewrite code to get the production line back on track.

No matter the cause, Tesla customers are still stuck waiting for a car with no sure timeline as other automakers begin to roll out their competitors and as Tesla's $7,500 federal tax credits disappear, which will happen after the company hits 200,000 EV sales.

Mass market

The predicament for Silicon Valley's darling automaker is a stark contrast from its largest Detroit rival, General Motors, which just completed its first limited full year of sales of the Chevy Bolt EV.

GM sold 23,297 Bolt EVs in 2017 — making it the best-selling, all-electric mainstream EV in America. That made for an average of about 2,750 vehicles a month since sales expanded nationally in August.

In December, the car topped 3,000 in sales — a small milestone but enough to have it outsell the Chevrolet Volt to become GM's top-selling plug-in for the year.

This year will be an early indication as to whether automakers, including GM and Tesla, can produce mass-market EVs that will attract owners who aren't early adopters of the technology.

Barclays analyst Brian Johnson said 2018 is shaping up to be the "Year of the Model 3, Part 2"— referring to how "production bottlenecks" and delays stifled sales in 2017. Problems, he says, that may continue this year.

"While one would assume the ramp to steadily increase, in reality the ramp is likely to be lumpy, with weeks of downtime/low production as Tesla addresses bottlenecks — only raising production once bottlenecks are solved," he said in a note to investors last week.
Easy conquests

Majoros last year said Chevy did some cross-market research in an early Bolt EV buyer study about whether people who purchase the car were interested in or waiting for the Model 3. He said the results were "a pretty healthy number."

Chevy, Majoros said, is naturally attracting some Tesla buyers, though he declined to provide details.

Conquesting battery-electric vehicle, or BEV, buyers is easier than those of traditional powertrains, according to IHS Markit.

According to a report released last week by IHS, BEV buyers' loyalty to a brand is generally "below make loyalty for the remaining models in the BEV's brand."

Make loyalty is the percent of BEV households that return to market and acquire another vehicle from the same make.

Helping the conquest is the rate at which buyers are switching vehicles. Currently, more than four of every 10 battery-electric vehicles are leased, substantially above the lease penetration rate for both hybrids and all vehicles, according to IHS.

Stephanie Brinley, senior automotive analyst for IHS Markit, says the real battle between the Model 3 and Bolt EV will come once Tesla's production is at a "more robust level," and even then, measuring the cars based on traditional metrics such as sales may not be the best way to evaluate success.

"GM is rolling it out the way that they want to," Brinley said. "GM's strategy for Bolt is much broader than immediate sales in the coming months."

Read more: Tesla Model 3 Update: Chevy isn't planning to woo the wait-list away | Autoweek

thoiboi

It's refundable

oonowindoo

These delays should not be any surprise given its track record.

biker

The Tesla Model 3, the car that is going to bring Tesla technology to the masses, is finally here. It is not here as in “in press fleets across America,” but it is sitting in the driveways of real customers who don’t work for Tesla, and that, my friends, is what counts for progress in the Willy Wonka world of Elon Musk.

So, not knowing when a real, regular loaner Model 3 would actually become available, I, uh, “borrowed” one. Where’d I get it? As they say in New Jersey, “Don’ worry ‘bout it.”

The point is that for a couple of hours yesterday I drove a fully loaded Model 3 in city and suburban traffic, around freeway on-ramps as fast as I dared go with the owner riding shotgun, and I fiddled with that 15-inch touchscreen that controls everything in the car.

And? Yes? Well? Was it what you would call a “good” car? Yes. More than good? In many, if not most ways, yes.

There are advances available in the Model 3 that it will take some more timid mainstream automakers several years and a few model cycles to put into regular cars. Those range from the obvious, like autonomous driving in the form of Tesla’s Enhanced Autopilot, to simple things like auto-dimming outside rearview mirrors on an “entry-level” car and a steering wheel that electrically adjusts while in your hands for a better fit, instead of requiring that you reach down and under it and guess where it might fit best.

But as far as the basic car-ness of the Model 3, it is a success. At least it felt pretty good after a two-hour tour of suburbia. What follows, then, is a brief introduction to Tesla’s latest and probably most important new car.
Tesla Model 3 prioritizes efficiency in its design.I had seen a few Model 3s before, but this was the first time I was able to linger about one, open the doors, adjust the seats and close the "frunk" -- that's front trunk -- by gently pressing two palms on either side of the Tesla logo and waiting for the click -- anything else might bend the aluminum hood. There is a lot of steel that makes up this car, but some parts are aluminum.

First, the styling. The stuff is so subjective. Some people love the look, others don’t. It’s your personal taste. For my personal taste it looks too much like a jelly bean. Just because an electric car doesn’t require a front grille doesn’t mean the front end has to be a flat slab of beef. This one looks a little like the automotive equivalent of a brick wall. The roofline, which makes all that interior space possible, looks bulbous from the outside. And the rear roofline sloping down to the decklid, important for aerodynamics and cargo space, is a little too hunchbacked for my tastes. I do like the sculpted sides, and the wheels are nice, but you decide what you like. It’s not like the Nissan Leaf or the Chevy Bolt are going to appear as aspirational poster icons on the bedroom walls of any adolescents. Electric car styling in general, apart from the Model S, seems to be aimed at efficiency over style.

The $1,000 optional “Red Multi-Coat” paint looked flawless. The fit and finish was as good as any modern production car, as far as I could tell. All the panel gaps lined up perfectly. Early worries about this on some prototypes seem to be unfounded on this “production” car. The doors opened with mechanical ease. You can get the door handle to present itself using your smartphone, but you can also just push on the back of the handle to make the front of the handle pop out. Yank on that and the door opens. This is a much better solution than the magical proximity sensor door handles on the Model S.
Tesla Model 3's all-powerful 15-inch touchscreen
Inside, the Model 3 is big. The rear trunk is surprisingly large. Fold down those rear seats and you can carry a SpaceX rocket booster. The frunk is made to carry a roll-on suitcase -- the kind that fits in an overhead storage bin on a plane. There are clever little flip-out hooks on which you can hang plastic bags -– or, in the case of Tesla owners, the more sturdy reusable grocery bags.

The passenger compartment is comfortable enough, about what you’d expect, but the dash is what you’d have to call revolutionary. Instead of the usual phalanx of dials, gauges and vents, there’s just a long slab of wood. But not cheap wood like you’d find at Home Depot. No, this is a nice slab. You wouldn’t burn this in the fireplace. You’d mount it on the mantle. The only thing poking up from the dash’s sheer design minimalism is a 15-inch touchscreen. Remember seeing this on the Volkswagen Bulli concept car at Geneva in 2011? I’m not saying that’s where Tesla got this idea. The screen controls almost everything, which may seem like a massive headache for anyone with an older iPad, but on first impression, it seemed to be a workable solution. On second impression, you have to go down many levels deep to change from Bluetooth iPhone music to FM. On the other hand, you save a lot of money on switches and vents. And when something better comes along you can just get one of those OTAs -- over-the-air updates.

On the left side of the screen is an outline of the car, showing which doors are open or allowing you to pop the frunk. You also get: which gear you’re in, the range left in the battery and the local speed limit. The right side of the screen, taking up more than half of it, is where everything else is. By touching one of the icons on the bottom edge of the screen you can bring up the main menu, defrost, seat controls, dual climate control, fan speed, music, phone and volume. From there are those submenus to go into as much detail as you want. I didn’t spend too much time playing with the touchscreen since I’d only be driving this car for a couple hours. But if you buy one, get the full tutorial.
Tesla Model 3 front seats are fully functional but fairly ordinary
A couple really cool things: Rather than have more complex vents and flaps, the Model 3’s climate control changes fan speed at each outlet. Want more air in your face? Just drag the touchscreen icon up. The navigation screen reacted surprisingly fast -- pinch-zoom your way over to Kansas City and you’re there, no waiting. Likewise go from map to satellite view almost instantly. Hit the music icon and tell it what you want to hear and it plays it. I said, “Mott The Hoople” and by golly it played Mott The Hoople. Spend more time on this and you’ll discover more cool features.

Many functions on the screen operate through a free 4G connection. How long the 4G will be free is not clear, but it’s free now so take advantage of it.

Now for the drive. The car I had, as with all the cars being sold now, was pretty much fully loaded. While the theoretical base Model 3 will get a 50-kWh battery and sell for $36,000, my car had everything on it and sold for $60,500. That included: the Long Range Battery ($9,000), good for 310 mile range; Premium Upgrades ($5,000); Red Multi-Coat paint ($1,000); 19-inch wheels ($1,500); Enhanced Autopilot ($5,000); and Full Self-Driving Capability ($3,000). About that Full Self-Driving Capability: It has the capability but not the ability yet. Tesla says, “In the future, Model 3 will be capable of conducting trips with no action required by the person in the driver’s seat. This feature is dependent upon extensive software validation and regulatory approval, which may vary by jurisdiction.”

My car, with the Long Range battery, makes 258 hp, according to the EPA. Tesla doesn’t list those figures. Tesla says its rear-drive Model 3 will get to 60 mph in 5.1 seconds. I brought the VBox with me for the drive, but the car’s owner was understandably hesitant to do drag strip launches on crowded public streets. Can’t say I blame him, but I have no doubt this would get into the four-second range to 60 mph with our NHRA-sanctioned 1-foot rollout.

The Model 3 is ready to go when you enter it with your registered phone in your pocket. There’s nothing so droll as a key here, (though we wonder what happens when some street urchin steals your phone). Put your foot on the brake and flip the right stalk sticking out of the steering wheel down, and the screen indicates you’re in D. Off you go.
Tesla Model 3 at the beach
First thing you notice is that the car is remarkably quiet. For a while I thought I heard a slight booming inside, but that was only because I’d flipped the rear seat down. Flipped up it was serenely silent. There’s very little noise coming from the tires or from wind wafting over that bulbous exterior. On some electric cars, you can hear the motor whining a little intrusively, but not on the Model 3.

Acceleration is what I’d call brisk. First time I hit the gas -- or, rather, the accelerator -- was in mid-range, about 30 mph to 50 mph. It launched impressively. There’s a lot of torque here, reportedly 307 lb-ft of it, though again, Tesla doesn’t say. Before I knew it, I was up to 70 mph. Top speed of the Long Range Model 3 is a claimed 140 mph. I didn’t try that out.

Next I tried out a few freeway on-ramps, which was as close as I was going to get to a road course on this drive. With a curb weight for the Model 3 with the big battery listed at 3,814 pounds, and even though 52 percent of that is on the rear wheels, you might think it’d wallow around a little in a turn. But the Model 3 showed very little body roll. The feel through the wheel is not exactly that of a sports sedan, but compared to any other electric vehicle on the market, it’s communicative. I never really pushed it into understeer or oversteer, despite its rear-wheel drive, but maybe, if a test car materializes, I could fling it a little faster through some more proper turns. At first blush, though, the handling is promising.

Next up was Tesla’s $5,000 Enhanced Autopilot. I’ve generally enjoyed this feature on other Teslas, minus the wiggle of the steering wheel it requires every two minutes. I would love to try out the new Cadillac Super Cruise system so I’d have something to compare this one to. But as it is it’s either the most advanced or the second-most-advanced system on the market. Tesla says it’ll match speed to traffic conditions, keep within a lane, automatically change lanes, transition from one freeway to another, exit the freeway and park at your destination. I tried out all but the last two, and it performed as advertised. It’s particularly helpful in stop-and-go traffic.

For another $3,000, you get that “Full Self-Driving Capability,” which at this point is theoretical, “…dependent upon extensive software validation and regulatory approval.” Looking forward to that.
Tesla Model 3 has 15 cubit feet of cargo space, including this spacious trunk.
So is the Model 3 best in class? Well, it’s bigger than the Nissan Leaf, Chevy Bolt and most of the rest of the competition, so it might be in a class of its own. Should you buy this instead of a Leaf? If you have the cash –- because all they’re delivering now are full-zoot models -- and if you don’t mind waiting. Tesla’s website says deliveries will take “one to three months.” Is that optimistic? I don’t know. Are there really hundreds of thousands of buyers in line? If so, it would be longer than a three-month wait, wouldn’t it? Check with Tesla to see where your spot in line would be. As for the styling, there really isn’t an attractively styled electric car anywhere, is there?

The room inside, the surprise-and-delight features, the acceleration all fall into the plus category. At this point, I’ll say so far so good, Tesla. I would like to spend more time in one of these. Tesla?

Read more: Tesla Model 3 first drive: Will it be worth the wait (if you're on the list)?

imj0257

iTrader: (1)

Ugh that interior is wayyyy to boring for me. In fact even the exterior looks rather bland.

oonowindoo

If this car was offered by Acura, it would be DOA..... the exterior looks so bloated and the interior has nothing but a monitor. paying $50k for it is fucking nuts.

Legend2TL

Pretty good review, my sister in law recently drove a fellow doctor's S and she was extremely impressed. She's not a car person but said the overall UX was extremely good.
A friend also drove a "S" (his daily drive is a 2014 Accord EX) and he also was very impressed.
Tesla definitely needs to put in a front driver display, the one display in the center won't work for me.
My daughter will graduate as a S/W engineer in 2019 and if she gets a car, a "3" is at the top of her list.

As long as Tesla can stay solvent and produce "3"' in production quantity this vehicle will be a success. But that's also a big if, there's alot of financial issues at Tesla in short and long term.

biker

Munro & Associates, Inc. is not a company you've probably heard of unless you work in the engineering department of a major automaker, but this Detroit-based specialty engineering consultancy has a very specific niche: tearing down new cars to find out how -- and how well -- they're made. And when we say tearing down, we really mean it. Munro slices and drills into parts to see what's inside, inspecting the materials, engineering and build processes. Their clients are the automakers themselves, who pay Munro to figure out just how their competitors are building the latest models and what lurks beneath the bodywork.

Even though the Tesla Model 3 is a bit of tough car to get your hands on these days, Munro secured an example to see how it's built.

It's tempting to answer the question of how it's built with "by hand," if the various reports leaking out of Tesla are to be believed, but despite the electric automaker spending an extravagant amount of time completing each car, it doesn't appear the handmade process is necessarily translating into quality on some vehicles.Autoline’s John McElroy got a chance to go over the Model 3 in question with Sandy Munro, the CEO of the company, just before it was taken apart, and let's just say Munro has a new nitpicks about the engineering choices made by Tesla. But he saves the most brutal zingers for the panel gaps -- an issue that we've heard about ever since the first examples of the electric sedan started rolling out of the factory.
"If we look over here I can barely get my fingernail in," Munro says. "And then we look over here, I can almost put my thumb in. This is, this is very unusual; the stackups, the tolerance stackups on this car are just like nothing we've ever seen before. Not since, like I say, the '70s or something. I don't, I don't understand how it got to this point. I mean, these are, these are flaws that we would see on a Kia in the '90s or something."

Munro is clearly not among those who overpaid an eBay scalper for one of the butane torches rebranded as The Boring Company Flamethrowers; his clients are mostly automakers of the gasoline and diesel persuasion who have been around a little longer than Tesla.

Opinions on Munro's take will surely be split down partisan lines as the Teslarati point out that Model 3s are still early examples while EV skeptics might point to the fact that each Model 3 spends quite a lot of time at the factory, which should theoretically allow Tesla to fix some fit and finish issues in these early cars. We should also note that our own Mark Vaughn spent time in an early Model 3 and found his example to be both a delightful driver and reasonably well screwed together.

The biggest question now (aside from whether Tesla will hit the delayed production targets by the end of Q2 2018) is whether the widely-reported quality control issues affecting some Model 3s will dampen buyer enthusiasm. So far they haven't, but then again Tesla is only about a few thousand cars into production after seven months, so a wider consensus will take time to develop.

Read more: Tesla Model 3 assembly quality is like 'something from the Seventies" says benchmarking firm

biker

oonowindoo

those wheels....

BurnabyTSX

Tesla trying to copy Kia with their wheels now...

kurtatx

The fire department's worst enemy

Sarlacc

Seen a few of these in the wild now. There is one that parks on the street the next block over.

kurtatx

Flaws like Kia in the 90s. Ouch.

Legend2TL

Meh, watched the video and pretty obvious he's highly biased and exaggerates alot. The 3 still needs quality improvement but his complaint about the door handles showed his bias very well.

kurtatx

Bad ergonomics are bad ergonomics. The gaps in and of themselves don't bother me, but those types of shortcomings are signs of NVH issues down the line.

Legend2TL

I agree but his dimension of fingernail on the left side vs his thumb on the right side was ridiculous.
The head of that company obviously didn't like Tesla's so it's kinda hard to say much of his review is worth anything.
It's one thing to be subjective it's another to show extreme exaggeration.

Costco

The video did make me question if he's got some sort of bias. He is a CEO so it would be expected for him to be very critical and have high expectations, especially when his company which carries his namesake focuses on design, tooling and QC for manufacturing. But the "whole thumb in there" is hyperbole and I doubt I would ever notice unless it were pointed out.

I do recall "panel gaps" as something that luxury car owners sometimes complained about. Considering this car will easily get into the $50k range, the extra scrutiny is justified in a way. The safety aspects and redundant systems seem almost lacking. I don't know if it's true or not, but in a video about the Model 3 I saw that the mechanical interior door handle was recommended by Tesla to be used only in case of emergency, otherwise damage can result

I'm sure there are plenty of systems in place in case of catastrophic failure, but are they all guaranteed to work perfectly? Would you be confident in a full brake-by-wire system, no mechanical connection between the pedal and the master cylinder? I wouldn't.

The lack of a mechanical door handle in the rear is baffling. Reminds me a bit of the Neon SRT-4 which had power front windows but manual rear windows.

AZuser

A little biased and exaggerates quite a bit.

Gaps that can be seen from Mars? And which is it, is it something from the '70s or the '90s?

Silly to be comparing quality or gap tolerance of a $35K-$40K vehicle (and an early production build at that) to luxury vehicles costing $80K+ .

You can find big / uneven gaps on a 9th gen Accord.





And 2018 Accord. Look at the gaps on that hood.

Costco

There's one thing I can say with confidence... my guess is Tesla isn't a Munro & Associates customer don't think he would have went off like that if they were.

kurtatx

Can anyone find a Model 3 that is in the $35-$30K range? They're almost all more expensive than that.

oonowindoo

I am sure you can build 1 and wait for 2 years if you want one.... but seriously at that price range, i dont see the point. I would rather go lease a i3 with range extender for 250 a month... if EV is what you going for. If not, there are much much better cars than a $35k model 3 with nothing in it.

kurtatx

Right, but I have yet to see someone review the $35K model, which kind of worries me.