Tesla Model 3 - Jay Leno's Garage

You know. I remember one day I went to the Roadster Show and this guy had a hot rod and it had chrome rotors oh man that's what I said what have you ever stepped on? He goes, no, we don't step on the brake, we push him into the what is it, it's not a car now, it's not right, it's an artistic piece, yeah, it's stupid. You know, this thing really handles well, it feels very sporty, yeah, I mean, the Model 3 is probably our smallest car, so it has the lowest polar moment of inertia, you know, so it can turn and respond quickly and what are you looking at? about 4200 lbs for this, something like that, yeah, yeah, we did the math.

I think before it's 1825 kilos, so it's a little over 4000 lb 4, yeah, probably the same weight as any other mid-sized American San, really with the light weight we're trying for. it spreads throughout the vehicle to compensate for the you know, for the battery, but you're right, it's not much heavier than anything else, well for me at this point with Tesla, it's all about what's under the skin and you. I know, engineering is just moving too fast. I mean, we try to pay attention to all the little details that you wouldn't otherwise get. um you guys know well that would be a standard feature and most electric cars the fact that they will now. you have batteries that you can always run at 100% without worrying, you know, yeah, I mean, I think it really depends on the battery manufacturer or the vehicle manufacturer's choice of battery, um lithium iron phosphate, the battery of lfp or R iron is, you know, it has better cycle life um and that's good for people who need to use it a lot um and then nickel really gives you that energy density, so you know we still choose and I think many other manufacturers are doing the same thing, one of the things When we try to improve road noise awareness in a vehicle, we always want you to think that you are faster than you act or right than you really are, so when you go at 60 or 70 mph, We actually go 80 or 90 mph because it's quiet and you don't really feel very good.

You know how they came up with a 65 mph speed limit, no, it used to be 55, right, no, no Well, that's not when the highway system came out, they took people out in new 1955 cars through a towel over the speedometer and told the average citizens. tell me when you feel uncomfortable and it's 65 or 70 people who will go oh this feels fast enough and they make it 6 and they did it hundreds of times and that's how they came up with 65 wow so it doesn't apply anymore because The cars Modern cars are so smooth and efficient that you know 100 is the new 65, that's right, you drive a 1957 car at 70 mph, you're going 70, but, oh, this feels a little bit, you know, I have a 63 carvette split. with fuel injection and 70, you say, wow, this feels like 100, you know, you know, this feels almost as good as my Model S at more than half the price, actually it's almost a third of the price.

I think my paintings cost 130 when I bought it. I mean, it's cheaper now. Yeah, we've really been trying to get the prices down, so we're cheaper now, like you said. But I mean, we always want to give people the best possible experience at the price we can achieve. Don't lower prices and lower the experience too. You want to have the best experience at the best price. What do you think of the direction? Jay. I really like the direction. I mean, it feels very light, it's very responsive. It's a great thing about electricity. "I can fool you, you know it doesn't feel like a 2+ tonne vehicle, well it's about that balance of similar effort gain when turning and you want to feel some of the weight but you don't want to feel like that." You're working hard, you get out of the car sweating after driving and you can change, you know, the steering feel too, so you're in Comfort mode now, put it in standard, it should feel a little tighter and then sporty.

You should really feel oh so you have all those features here yeah so in this car you can accelerate cold and standard and then drive all three modes. We also have a new feature that we just implemented a few months ago, which is um, you can apply the regenerative brakes properly, uh, the actual brakes when the regenerative braking is low, so if it's cold or if you load at maximum and there's no capacity of regeneration, now we fill it with the brake pedal so that the car feels the same. You know all the time that one of the things that's really difficult to do from a dynamic driving standpoint is to make the steering feel responsive and have a road like this that looks smooth but is actually quite choppy, yeah, don't move, what I call The belly test doesn't move your belly because those frequencies are the same ones that you know from the road and the steering response has the same frequency, about 4 to 6 Hertz, and that's where that Frequency selective damping really helped us because, but very firm, no movement of the hood or anything like that, yeah, it's very difficult to make that break, that commitment and we step, I have to tell myself I was never ready for it.

One of the other new features on this car is we added blind spot indicators, so that was a big butt, so when someone appears in your blind spot, there's a little red light on your speaker, there you see them well, yeah, I see you all there you see a blind spot there and also if you turn on your turn signal the camera will turn red on the side of if there's a car there um so that's a cool new feature yeah and then you know in the safety effort, it's also the first time, well, I guess it was the first car and then the Cyber ​​Tru that he had. an airbag from the opposite side, we are talking about a side collision, yes, there is actually an airbag on the inside between you and the right front, so if we get hit from the side, an airbag will get in the way between the two of you and it will keep your heads from hitting each other.

You know, at Tesla, the government always requires safety, but we're really trying to go beyond what they were doing, so you know, in Europe they made some regulations about installing those types of airbags, but before installing them We wanted to make sure that it was actually avoiding head-to-head contact and that's when we looked at our real-world accident database, which is how we get data from all the telemetry of our vehicles, so we implemented that and put it on everything. the world so that everyone can the same safety, um, because we believe that it really does, God forbid, helps prevent injuries, but obviously the best crash is not to crash, that's why we have all those automatic brake lights turned on in regeneration, it's like yeah, okay, then you take off the accelerator and it's surprisingly quiet.

Do you think the track package will become standard on the Plaid? They should have done that too. Yeah, I mean, you mean the carbon ceramic brakes with the big brakes. I mean, you know there's a lot of people who buy a plaid never really need it, um, right, and I think that's really true because our whole brand is like we really want to give you the option, um, without any drama, yes, I mean the most impressive. The thing is, it costs less than $40,000, right, it really is everything. My Model S just isn't as fast, maybe it's not as fast, it's not as big, it's not as big, but it's okay, but it still feels like the quality doesn't feel like a cheaper version of a big car. , Yeah.

Fremont has really been doing a great job, I mean they do a really good job because a lot of times when I get the lesson

model

of a lot of cars, it's just that it really is a lesser

model

, yeah, this doesn't feel lesser, it just feels feel smaller. Well, he did, so that was if you're someone who likes big car performance but without being a big car because it's hard to park and all that, I mean, it's really perfect. I actually love the size of this. Would you like to buy? all free there J well, I tell you that this with the triple engine would be deadly, it would be lighter than the S, it would be faster, it would be difficult to fit in, although you know everything I say, I always buy a car based on performance. when this came out, the fact that it turns out to be environmentally friendly oh well, that's all good, but my main interest is still speed in handling and I think most people like that, they are selfish, they want have everything, yeah, you can't do it. something you don't know anymore, yes, if you want to go green, you can know that there are almost 10 something miles per gallon equivalent, but if you want to go crazy, you can go crazy too well, you get in a car like this. and you realize that you don't necessarily need gas, you can have all the things that we've grown accustomed to and grown up with, yeah, and with the solar panels and all that, it's an almost unlimited limit of this energy that I have a fusion reactor giant, do you know how much lithium is obtained?

I know all that, I get all that, it's all a trade-off, it's a minor trade-off, even in my

garage

, you know, if you think about my

garage

on Earth, how many cars can you fit in there before you drown, do you know what I mean? I mean? Yes, you know the amount of energy it takes to make a gallon of gasoline, get it out of the pump, get it out of the ground, you get a ref, the oil you need. I know, yeah, but when you go the other way, the amount of batteries you need for the power of a gallon of gasoline isn't even close, yeah, I mean, it's like, "Oh my God, you need a room full of batteries." .

There are so many things you know about gasoline. with the exception of P, it's almost the perfect fuel, it doesn't freeze, it produces energy, it's eventually poisonous, you know, yeah, or it goes away, yeah, how far away do you think we are from essentially two or three minutes to fill up on electricity? ? So DC fast charging is a big thing, especially in countries that are starting to adopt more and more electric vehicles, like China. You know that 25 and 30% of their vehicles are electric. Norway is getting to that point and you know we are always trying to improve superfeeding. um I think it comes down to efficiency again because even when you add 1000 volts you know with 350 Kow you know the best case in an hour is 35 KW per hour or sorry 350 KW per hour so if you have If you have a 50 KW hour battery, it takes 17 hours if you can put all the energy in at once and you really like it, the key to fast charging is to make it more and more efficient so that you have fewer batteries to fill well Guys, thanks for bringing this.

I think it's fun. I think people like to hear the real engineer and the real designer of the car talk about it. I always read the comments section and they really like that, instead of just marketing stuff, you know. really cool, you came and got this new one, it's been redesigned and you tell us what it is and I have to admit it's a lot of fun to drive and for under 40 grand it's a great car, yes, really, yes, thanks for having us, thanks . guys, I appreciate it, thank you my friend, you are always welcome anytime and let me know when my Roadster will be ready.

I've been waiting for that for five years. Go back to work. FR, both of them too, but they're going to have incredible performances, yes, it will be worth the wait, any secrets you can reveal no, no, okay, I'll wait, we'll see, but it gets better, it always gets better, it should be the fastest there is here, yes, it improves. with age you know it gets better with age okay i wish i would have done it anyway thank you all thank you for watching. I hope you like this a little bit about Tesla technology and I'll see you next week.