2021 Tesla Model 3 Full Review

This is rental car number 158 and today I drive the standard

2021

Tesla Model 3, plus this one sells for around 36,000. Although Tesla claims that after tax rebates, you can reduce it to about 30,000, which is a craziness. This is by far the most expensive rental I have ever had cost a whopping $160 for 24 hours but as you will see it was worth every penny. I have too much to share with you, just to give you a quick sample. Look inside and take some time to look at the touchscreen and all the features it contains. There is a lot to talk about.

I'll try it at low and high speeds. I'll even take it out on the road and get it. It's over 95. I'll take you for a ride in the snow. I recently got about nine inches while renting this, so why not? I'll show you a little bit about one-pedal driving, which is something I'm really excited about. and then we'll close things out with the storage and I'll give it a rating from one to five. Look, I admit this is a longer video than I usually make, maybe too long for you, so if I'm talking about something, I'm not excited about using the chapters below to move on to something more interesting, okay, so which uh that's my bit of cleaning up let's jump right in open the hood and take a look at what's underneath so um it's an ev so we don't have an engine here. what Tesla calls a frunk and it's just a little storage space which was perfect for me when I went to buy something to take away while renting this vehicle, but not much else under here except the little port you can use to add windshield wipers. fluid Another unique feature is the door handles.

They are flush with the door panel, so you have to push to the side for the handle to come out and then you can pull the door towards you. I must admit this was a little difficult. At first I actually had no idea how to open the door, but after doing it a couple of times it's pretty intuitive and works really well and adds that extra touch of style to the vehicle which is always nice. I jumped into the driver's seat, let's take a look because things are quite different. Let's start with the attractive steering wheel logo in the center and then two directional pads on either side, there are no other buttons of any kind, including those wrapped around the back of the steering wheel. two levers, the one on the left controls the turn signal and wiper fluid and then the one on the right is actually the gear lever and parking brake, so you'll just push this up or down to shift into gears and then press the button here on the side to park it or hold it to activate the electronic parking brake, everything else is controlled through the center screen here and to turn things on and off you can use the touch screen right here or you can use these two directional pads right here they will scroll and select things on the center screen.

You can also press and hold the right center keyboard, open the glove box to give it a command and then it will wake up and do what you asked. I just showed you how to open the glove box. Let me show you real quick. There is no latch or anything on this. You can only open it through the menu structure on the center screen or by giving it an audible command via this touch. button here, touch the button on the keypad, so one thing that takes a lot of getting used to is that there is no start button anywhere on this vehicle when you open the door and you have the key in your pocket, everything is already there on once it rises.

There is no button or anything on the dash, in fact there is nothing at all on the dash or anything on the stock either, there is no button that you press to start the vehicle if you want to drive anywhere or need to have a phone. with the app or you have to have a key card, it looks like this in a nice attractive case and just looks like a small credit card. The Tesla logo on the front has some simple instructions on the back. You touch on it in this. area of ​​the vehicle and then the car recognizes that you are in control and then you can just step on the brake pedal, shift into gear and go, so this takes some getting used to and is a little overwhelming at first, but uh, no.

I know, it's kind of funny, uh, there's nothing on the dash either, so you don't have to open the hood, you don't have the fuel cap, there are no buttons of any kind down here and there are no vents for the climate control systems , you'll usually see something here. The vent is actually this little cutout that you see above the steering wheel, that's the vent where the heat or cooling will come from, so it's neat. designed, everything has been thought of and it is so different from a normal car that it is a lot of fun to be on the left of the wheel.

We have almost the standard controls, I mean, all we have are window controls here and then. a button to exit the vehicle, so this is what you have to press to open a door. Now the door is open and you can exit the vehicle. Beyond that, there are no controls of any kind, which gives it a very elegant and exclusive look. See, you also have different types of leather, well this is plastic, and then this is like a suede leather material here, but it feels really premium, no door lock here, we just have a fancy plastic panel, it's very simple and makes the car feel calmer in my opinion.

The rearview mirror is pretty standard stuff. It doesn't have blind side detection, but that's nice because when you're driving, if you want, you can look at the center screen to see everything that's going on around the vehicle. We're driving in real time, it's pretty amazing up there, we've got a pretty cool rearview mirror, there's no buttons up here of any kind, up there we have lights and then the emergency button up here, which is a different location than mine. I'm used to it, but you know, hey, it's a little different. You also have the sunshade curved up a bit to match the curve of the roof.

When you open it, you'll see that you have a mirror right here. It folds into two sections and lights up when you open it, it's quite nice and you get the same feature on the passenger side, and underneath we have the big touch screen. I'll show you in a second and then below again, suede. material um to charge your phone so you have contact charging right here a little cutout here with additional storage kind of a deep area with a removable rubber liner on the bottom two cup holders right here and then you have your center armrest very exposed white stitching soft leather simple control here to open it and then you have another storage compartment here with a light and then you also have a DC power port okay let's take a look at this on our screen first of all it's absolutely huge and This doesn't look like a typical screen in most sedans I've driven, even high-end ones.

It feels like a premium iPad. The resolution on this is crazy. It's so crisp and beautiful that it's hard to look away. On the left side we have the car itself and you can just press areas to activate things so you can open the front, that trunk space in the front of the vehicle, the trunk in the back, your fuel port right here and then you can lock and unlock. the vehicle just by pressing the vehicle itself, really intuitive controls and we see the load here right now, I'm at 191 percent which is pretty decent and then we have dedicated menu buttons all over the bottom to activate almost everything in the vehicle , so if you press the vehicle, you'll get the settings screen where you can cycle through and turn features on and off, like autopilot, for example.

We could activate or deactivate it or manipulate the settings a little. This is really easy to use and I think that's because the screen is so big that you can see the whole menu structure laid out next to everything and it makes it very easy to find what you're looking for, for example we can go to the quick controls screen and then I can select left or right mirrors and then I can use these directional pads to adjust the mirror exactly how I like it. Now I'm not going to bore you with every configuration here, but I want to go over some of the main features.

In the vehicle, you obviously have a huge navigation screen that you can see around you and instantly know when it's your next turn. This is incredible. You can also activate your entertainment functions. Here you have music. Your navigation screen still appears, but you can also use other things like scroll through the radio, play what's on your phone, a streaming service, etc., and then to make it go away you just tap the music button again and it goes away . We have our cameras, so the rear and side view. In the back there are a ton of cameras on this vehicle and just look at the resolution of the screen, I mean it's so sharp I know it's not a very attractive view but you can see the parking space behind me and the snow piled up everywhere and we can see the same views on the left and right of the vehicle, it's just incredible and it makes parking this very easy and to make it go away we can press the x up here or just press the menu icon again, we can activate things like our windshield wipers from here press this button to pop up windows with a lot more things so we can see a power tab to see how far we can drive before running out of empty and what our fuel economy is, our fuel consumption over time.

It's absolutely amazing how much information you can get. We also have heated and heated seats for both the driver and passenger. I'm going to keep it off for the passenger and low for me. Climate controls right here. You can see how beautiful it is. I showed you a second ago where the air comes from. It's from this little fold here built into the dash and it's just a nice icon to show you that there's airflow through the vehicle and then a nice big gauge here to adjust the temperature within the vehicle's defroster setting and then a volume control down here so let's look at some of the toy box settings here press the up arrow go to the toy box on the far right and we can do things like control the sound of the horn so turn that on and press the fart command.

What's really interesting is that they've recorded a bunch of different types, so it changes every time you try it, which is really impressive, there's a lot more, maybe a pretty satisfying tada. I'm not going to replace the horn with that, we can also have a couple more things to reduce emissions and we can make the vehicle fart in different seats which is always fun, so let's do the passenger seat, I'm not sure if it can be done. Listen to it but it's coming from this side of the vehicle now it's coming from the back listen to the difference now it will be from me that's pretty funny um and then we have a bunch of other romantic things for example you want to feel comfortable with me for a second that also sounds fantastic oh wow, I didn't see that coming and then trax is another one where we can make our own music from inside the vehicle, which I mean, I guess if you're stuck waiting for someone to come out of a maybe a building or something like that it could be very fun and then a boombox too so we can make the sounds really come out of the vehicle to the people around us.

It's quite surprising. I have never owned a car that had anything remotely like it. This and I think that shows what it's capable of when you have so much technology and software driving the vehicle. What's even more fun is that Tesla can make new things and upload them to give you access to them at any time. You don't know what kind of fun stuff is coming in the future anyway, this was a lot of fun and it's hard not to play with it over and over again, so overall I want to say I'm super impressed, I have to be honest, I was. a bit.

I was overwhelmed when I first got into the vehicle just because it's so different, but after driving it for a while, it seems to make sense and it's very easy to get the settings and features you want, with just a couple of taps. the screen is fine, I jumped into the passenger seat, great leg room, right, I have this seat pushed back the same distance as the driver's seat and I have plenty of room for my legs. I'm six feet tall and super comfortable, right? now I don't know what you think maybe six to eight inches between my knees and that dash which is just wonderful it doesn't have a lot of creature comforts I mean all you have here is the window control and then the button you use to open it the door because as I showed you before, there are no manual locks on this thing of any kind, you have to press this button to unlock and then the door will open and let you out.

Now you have oneglove compartment, but As a passenger I can't access that unless the center screen is on now because we don't have a driver that has automatically turned off to turn it on. I'm just going to open the door a little bit. so I'm going to press this button now that we have access to the center screen and open the glove box. We can use the manual controls right here to talk to the vehicle or we can find it in the settings screen, so I'm going to press the car icon, go here and press the glove box button, now it opens for us, it's not a Huge glove box, it's quite small.

Basically you only have room for the owner's manual here and then an adapter in case you're not going to do it. use

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supercharger power plants, if you use a standard one you will have to use this adapter to make it compatible with

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so it is a good feelingThe interior lining has a quality feel but there is not much storage space so so I jumped into the back seat passenger seat. The back seat I'm six feet tall and, uh, I don't know, I'm not super comfortable. this seat is pushed back a good distance, not all the way even though I still have maybe two or three inches between my knees and the back of that seat, although I feel like I have to sit pretty upright, let me show you real quick, like this what is hard. for me to slouch because then my knees end up hitting that seat, so I have to sit, I don't know, like I'm meditating or something, like I'm really upright and my head is touching the glass ceiling. just a little bit so I'm not very comfortable but I mean I could come back here for a couple of hours without having any major complaints as far as the amenities are the same as the front seat passenger window controls and that button to open.

On the top door we have a little hook right here that we can use to hang a jacket on the back of the seats. We have little pockets made of a nice leather material that doesn't give much, so this is really just going to do the trick. be good for something really small like maybe one of the smaller owner's manuals on the back of the center armrest for the front seat passengers we have two dedicated vents and then in addition in the center we have an armrest that folds down with two cup holders and Then the last thing I want to look at is the car seat anchors.

Now we have the icon here that tells us that the anchor is here and then if you can see it without actually manipulating the seats, we have access to the car seat anchors. that's that white metal bar over there and that's wonderful, that means if you need to install a car seat back here it's going to be relatively simple, that's not true on all vehicles, some of them you have to pry to open these seats and reach the distance. Go back to access them, well let's look very quickly at the boot space, there's not a lot of excitement back here, although it does have a fairly large storage area and there is some additional storage space under the floor, this little bag here is for your charging port if you actually carry it with you and also the back seats fold down very easily, you just lift these little tabs right there and then they fold down and you have even more space if you want to carry a larger item and have it stick out the back out of the trunk and into the cabin of the vehicle, so overall it's pretty standard stuff, but it's nice to know that you have some extra storage back here if you need it, so let's give it a try.

I'm going to put this in gear and let's go, the first thing I want to look at is the lower speed driving, so I'm talking less than 15 miles per hour, maybe less than 20. So we're just driving around in a parking lot. Now let me do some quick turns around these light poles. Now the turning radius is really nice, it doesn't feel like it's drifting at all and the steering responsiveness is, well, it's impressive, sometimes with vehicles even this size. you make a turn you just have a slight delay before you go where you want to go but not with this vehicle at all the responsiveness is top notch and that makes parking it a breeze and that includes parking in reverse which It's pretty easy because of all the cameras on this vehicle, let me show you real quick, so let's back up to one of these parking spots, so we'll put the car in reverse and now you can see we have a lot of views to show. it tells us exactly where we're going and then it also guides, so as I manipulate the steering wheel, you see those white guides move for me as well, which makes it really very easy to park the vehicle, so I'm about to get into my garage, one of my favorite features of this vehicle is that it actually tells you how close you are to an obstruction, so watch this screen here as we go and the tesla will give us feedback and show us exactly how far the wall is from the front of the vehicle, so we get a little feedback here: you're seeing those yellow ones appear and those are starting to recognize the object now 33 inches 25 24.

It's great now we know that we have 17 centimeters from that wall in front of us instead of just having a red bar and having to guess those last few inches, but now I know exactly how far to go before hitting something at lower speeds. Plus, you can really appreciate how quiet this vehicle is because you don't have an engine always revving. All you really hear is the wheels on the road and a little bit of wind, which I don't know why, but it makes me feel a little calmer while driving this vehicle, so at low speeds I'm really impressed, but you know, no.

There's a lot to complain about in any vehicle when you're talking about driving it at 20 miles per hour. Let's hit the road and take the vehicle to about 40 45 and see how it performs on some gentle curves so I put the vehicle at about 35 40 miles per hour and we just have a couple of really gentle curves uh down. this road and I must say the responsiveness is even more impressive at this speed uh I'm still not completely used to driving this car it's only been a couple of hours since I bought it but I mean I feel like I can hug it easily this crease right here between the asphalt and the sidewalk itself, really effortless because the car is so tight, which is a little dangerous because it makes me want to drive much more aggressively than I would in my normal daily driver, let's try . a really quick U-turn and see what the turning radius is like oh yeah I mean there's no chance I'm going out of lane that was effortless I didn't even have to turn the wheel all the way um so Let's see how far I can take it and I'm starting to feel a little uncomfortable so I would say in these corners 50, which is just exceptional and I know the car can go faster in these corners.

I'm just saying my thing. personal comfort level and I'm just trying to show you that, wow, it's a lot of fun to drive, so driving at higher speeds is fun. Now let's do the obvious acceleration test because that's really what these cars are known for. You have an electric motor, so you have instant torque available. Let me stop completely. Oh, there's a policeman. There is no private security. It's okay, we're fine. I'm going to slow down to a complete stop and step on the accelerator. If only. it hits 40. That's a little crazy. There may not be cops around here, but I'm not going to go past that.

The acceleration is just crazy, it's instantaneous. And you feel it in your stomach as it pushes you forward. uh it's a lot of fun and the same is true even if you're moving so now we're going about 40. If I just push the accelerator down slightly, it's an instant burst of speed. I know you've probably heard other people say that before, but I'm talking, the moment you step on the pedal, you're rocketing forward and, man, it's pretty addictive, I'm not going to lie, I can see why so many people fall in love with this. vehicle so fast, okay, so this vehicle doesn't have

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autopilot, by which I mean you can't enter an address here and have the car change lanes and navigate you to your destination, but it can detect the lanes on the road and maintain the speed limit according to the speed limit signs on the side of the road.

All you need to look for is to see if the car detects the lines on the road so you can see here where. You can see the lines going by and you can see the traffic ahead once we have that, we'll adjust the stock down twice, we'll press it twice to go to the cruise control settings, okay, so we'll do that. one two okay now the car is driving completely on its own keeping the lanes on the road however it won't stop the woods ahead so I'm stepping on the brake pedal to bring us to a complete stop but now that traffic continues.

Again I can press that stock again twice one two, and it says it can't detect lines on the road, so autosteer is not available. You can see that it is still not a perfect system, especially in conditions like this, where the road is quite sloppy, okay, let's try one more time. I have quite a bit of traffic ahead. He's detecting the lines on the road, one, two. Okay, he knows the speed limit is 40 and he's driving for us, so no hands or feet on the wheel. The car drives for us, knows the maximum speed limit is 40 miles per hour based on the signs on the road and keeps us a safe distance from the car in front and stays within the lines quite well, I might add considering how neglected the road conditions are.

I don't know, this is pretty amazing and despite only using it for a short period of time, I don't know why, but I feel very comfortable letting the car drive for me even in conditions like this, which says a lot about Tesla. reliability anyway, just wanted to show you guys real quick that it's a pretty fun feature to play with, so another thing we need to consider is cabin noise and by this I mean how much of the outside you can hear while driving at a reasonable speed. speeds, so I'm going 45 miles per hour right now, which I think is a pretty average on the typical speed that you go while driving a car like this and let me be quiet for a second so you can hear what the sound sounds like. outside while We're driving so we can hear the bumps in the road a little bit, you can hear things in the vehicle that I have with me right now, shaking slightly and a little bit of wind, but the car is very aerodynamic and built so firmly that Compared to any other vehicle at this price, I think this is top notch.

I can still hear a little bit of what's going on around the vehicle, which I mean, I don't want it to be absolutely silent, but it's pretty quiet, which makes hearing things through entertainment a lot easier, so let me turn on the radio very quickly. I'll be silent, so it's not bad, okay, very easy to hear the lyrics, uh, I didn't have. You have to turn it up and the volume is at a very low level, so I don't know, the cabin noise is quite exceptional. I feel like I'm still looking for something to criticize about this vehicle, okay, so let's get this out of the way. on the highway and see what it's like at higher speeds.

We're lucky now that there's no one behind me, so when I go through this toll I'll come to a complete stop and we can play with the acceleration. there's a slight incline, but it should be a good test 30 40 50 60 70. Wow, I felt like I was doing an abdominal exercise because I mean the acceleration is so intense that I feel like I need to prepare for it, uh, which is, uh, It's a new experience okay so now we're in a new experience for me we're on 75 right now cruising down the interstate. The car feels very, very stable at this speed, I don't feel like we are anywhere near its limitations. and the handling is still extremely responsive, so even the slightest movement of the steering wheel allows us to turn instantly and even though I do, I still feel like I'm really in control of the vehicle's cabin noise, it's a bit more. pronounced I don't know if it's noticeable, but I have to raise my voice a little, but it's not unpleasant, it's to be expected, especially when we're going almost 80 miles per hour, so let me make a very quick Lane Change, that felt pretty okay and let's do it again and see if we can get past this.

What is this? A Rav4 in front of us, so I'm going to change lanes and speed around this car, oh my God, okay? We're at 90 right now, that took no effort. What I mean by this is that I barely stepped on the accelerator. I mean, maybe I pushed it down half an inch and we shot up to 90 miles an hour, which is man, this thing isdangerous. I drove this to work every morning, I mean I would go 100% without even thinking about it, it's that responsive and fast which is a lot of fun, so we have a car passing us.

I feel personally insulted. Right now I would let a Hyundai Accent, a car that I like, pass us like that, so let's see if we can make it 90 95. Yeah, I mean, look, I want to try to get over 100 right now, but uh. I also don't want to lose my license because there are a lot of cops here, I mean, it's crazy, it's crazy. Look you have to try this if you have the means please go out and take this for a test drive it's an experience you just need to have yourself. I'm trying my best to explain it to you, but this is unlike anything I've driven in the past.

I don't know 300 rentals I've done. I don't normally post every time I rent a vehicle, but this is incredibly fun, a dangerous vehicle on my hands, so I'm going to pull off the highway now and get back to some normal speeds, so we have about nine inches. of snow last night my street has not been cleared so well. I'm very curious to see how well the Tesla will perform. There's quite a bit of snow and, uh, this is a small car, so the responsiveness is still, I mean, pretty good.

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control over the vehicle, whether it's on these little rivets or not, let's make sure we don't get hit by this plow coming and going, I think you're doing well on this guy's driveway, clearly, I can't accelerate very fast .

I'm actually trying it now and we're holding steady at about 20 miles per hour, but this is going pretty well so far I think. Like I have control over the vehicle and I'm definitely moving along at a good speed. I'm still amazed at how quiet this is. I can't hear anything at all except moving around this car. Oops, slipping a little. I don't hear anything but just the wheels on the road, it's nice, it's a little quiet, okay let's go around this corner, little problem getting through that big amount of snow, right now, we're on the roads, oh wow.

Yeah, that accelerated right away and all of a sudden full throttle comes back into play and it's handling really well, let's go around this corner and see if we slip, no we don't slip at all and I took it so Pretty aggressive, okay, let's go this way. which has been completely plowed after this car yeah now we should have it full oh yeah man I'll never get used to that when you step on the gas and go so fast it's a lot of fun so all things considered I'm pretty impressed , this handle is better than many of the SUVs I've driven in the snow, so one of the features of the Model 3 that I really liked is the one-pedal driving, usually when you're in a car powered by gas and you release your foot from the accelerator, it will slide a little and you will eventually stall with the Tesla when you reach lower speeds and take your foot off the pedal. it actually stops completely and holds and does so so responsively that you can't actually touch the brake in normal driving situations, so actually, while driving around town, the only time I had to stepping on the brake pedal was when I need to stop suddenly because someone has cut me off or there is an obstruction in the road, but when I come to a stop sign or a traffic light, for example, I usually make the car come to an almost complete stop without touching the brake pedal, so let me give you an example, you see there's a red light, a red light approaching, I'm not going to touch the brake pedal, instead I'm just going to slow the vehicle down a little bit. and then when I get to the point where I actually want to stop, I'll just lift my foot off the accelerator all the way and the vehicle will stop nicely and now that the auto hold setting is enabled, it'll just hold the car in place until I press the accelerator and we go, look at this, I'm sure it seems like a slight thing, but if you're driving a lot of stop and go like in the suburbs, like I'm doing right now, it's just, it's really nice um and it's something I've never experienced. before uh so again we run into a red light instead of pressing the brake pedal all I'm doing is slightly lifting my foot off the accelerator now my foot is I completely let off the accelerator and we came to a complete stop and now we have We have to go, so I'm hitting the accelerator one more time to give us some lift, a small feature, but one of those extra things on the

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3 that I've really come to quite like, so that's pretty much it from start to finish. end in the

2021

Tesla Model 3.

Mmm look, I love this car, it's so different from everything else I've driven lately that it makes every second behind the wheel exciting, so if this is the man of the future, I'm totally convinced, so you won't be surprised that I'm going to give it five stars. Look, honestly, what you don't like here if you want an ev. it's the one you should buy it's just amazing anyway that's all for now thank you so much for looking and I hope you'll join me next time when I rent my car number 159 again, I'll see you and then