Did Musk just hit a home run with Tesla 3?

**Independent voter** · 2017-07-31, 12:43 AM

You look at Musk and you think, it's too good to be true, a lot of what he talks about. We're an optimistic bunch here but starting a whole new car corporation from scratch? I was skeptical.

Reviewers are saying I'm wrong, the Tesla 3 is all you hoped for and more.

https://qz.com/1041862/tesla-model-3...-is-necessary/

Tesla Model 3 reviewers are in love: “Yes, the hyperbole is necessary”

It’s best in class (and maybe just the best)

The Model 3 feels like an automotive tipping point, writes Wired’s Jack Stewart. Tesla’s debut could mark the point at which almost anyone—not just Tesla fans and the environmentally conscious—could see themselves driving an electric vehicle.
The standard $35,000 Model 3 (before tax incentives) has a 220-mile range, five-seats, and can hit 131 miles per hour for a price equivalent to the median US car price. The more powerful $44,000 long-range version can travel 310 miles on a single charge. At that price, Engadget’s Andrew Tarantola writes, “the Model 3 really feels like the car that will bring electric vehicles as a whole into the mainstream.”
Motor Trend showered the Model 3 with superlative praise. “The Tesla Model 3 is […] the most important vehicle of the century,” the magazine writes. “Yes, the hyperbole is necessary,” it continues, likening the Alfa Romeo Giulia X’s performance to a “wet sponge” compared to the Model 3.
Business Insider also did not hold back. “I’ve driven pretty much every other all-electric car you can buy, and I can safely say that the Model 3 has no competition,” wrote Matthew Debord. “There isn’t anybody who’s going to sit in the driver’s seat of this car and not want it, if only briefly. The Model 3 stokes immediate desire, and the lust lingers.”
Fast, nimble, and wow

“The car sprints like an Olympic 100-meter champion,” raves USA Today. The $35,000 standard version hits 60 mph in 5.6 seconds with a top speed of 130mph (the upgraded version is slightly faster). The Model 3 has a smaller battery pack so it can’t perform the same theatrics as its premium cousins (an extra fast “Ludicrous” mode).
But that didn’t seem to faze reviewers. High-torque electric propulsion means the Model 3 still has a significant acceleration advantage over internal combustion engines. Tesla’s engineers also apparently took advantage of the car’s low center of gravity (the battery pack fits neatly under the chassis) to give it crisp handling. “The Model 3 is so unexpected[ly] scalpel-like, I’m sputtering for adjectives,” sputters Motor Trend.
Autopilot is awesome

The Model 3 comes with the same eight cameras, radar, ultrasonics, and plenty of computing power that the premium Model X and S offer. Although it costs more to activate Autopilot and advanced self-driving features, the car already has the ability to take over highway driving and other chores for drivers.
Testing the semi-autonomous Autopilot, TopGear’s Charlie Turner called it “a system that still feels like witchcraft.” In what is likely to become a standard feature in many cars, the gear shifter has an extra setting: Park, Reverse, Neutral, Drive— and Autopilot.
So much interior

Tesla says it designed the interior of the car for the day when cars will drive themselves, and there’s no need for myriads buttons and displays. Appropriately, the Model 3 exterior feels “like a cockpit from the future,” says Mashable. The challenge was to provide expansive interior space, even as it shrunk the car compared to the Model S. “Subjectively it succeeded,” judges Motor Trend.

**Zandalarian Paladin** · 2017-07-31, 12:51 AM

Electric cars are the only viable option in the future. If that means that Tesla can take the lead, I'm all for it. We'll see how Tesla 3 handle it in the long run.

And the price seems to actually be affordable.

**Sting** · 2017-07-31, 12:52 AM

35k, that's getting into the affordable range.

**Nellise** · 2017-07-31, 12:55 AM

That single screen in the middle seems like a bad idea. Car functions and other junk I'd like to keep separated. Seems like it be really easy to be distracted looking for your mph or remaining charge and pick something else up on that screen to look at.

**ramjb** · 2017-07-31, 01:04 AM

Tesla autopilot in action

**Rennadrel** · 2017-07-31, 01:09 AM

The Model 3 at this point makes any other electric car that's not a Tesla look like a god damn rip off. The longest mileage vehicle of any other manufacturer is the Chevrolet Bolt, which does a mere 383 Km on a single charge compared to the higher end Model 3 which does just shy of 500 Km on a single charge and the base model is still around 345 Km. The Bolt starts at 43k Canadian while the base Model 3 is the same price, prior to tax incentives of course, you'd be looking at around 30k for either car, the tax incentives on electric cars here is ridiculous, up to 14k for a fully electric vehicle. So you basically are choosing a sedan or a cross over utility vehicle. Why would you buy any other electric car than those two for the prices that most of the competition are selling them for? I'd still be wary of the Bolt because Chevy still has their heads up their asses when it comes to making quality cars, but I guess less moving parts means less chance for failure.

**Shadowferal** · 2017-07-31, 01:14 AM