I’ve owned a Tesla Model 3 for 4 years now and instead of going over everything
I like about the car, I thought it'd be more interesting to actually go over the things
I don't like about the car after four years of ownership. And the first downside I found with
the Model 3 is oddly enough, the software updates. While Tesla in general is way ahead of the
competition with their consistent software updates, sometimes, the updates can actually
make things worse. Take the latest UI for example that came out in Dec 2021, Tesla made it harder to
turn on seat heaters by removing the two front heater icons from the main screen, they also
removed the swipe card system for quickly checking tire pressure, which is now hidden behind a menu.
And the navigation maps dark theme decreased the contrast between the map background and
the secondary roads color, making them harder to see, though at the time of recording, Tesla seems
to have fixed this issue. Now related to software updates, Tesla is lagging behind his competition
in one other key area related to software and that’s support for CarPlay and Android Auto,
which mirror the apps on your phone and allow you to access a simplified version of certain apps
on your car’s screen, which is really useful in particular for music streaming and podcast apps.
Now, this would not be as big of a deal if Tesla's software had more apps on it. But at the time of
this recording here in the US at least for music streaming services you can only get Spotify,
Tidal, and TuneIn. So if you want to stream music from another streaming service,
or your favorite podcast app, like Apple Podcasts or Pocket Casts,
you’re out of luck and will have to do that through your phone and stream the
audio to your Tesla over Bluetooth, which isn’t as integrated as CarPlay and Android Auto’s solution.
Now, for some people, the lack of support for these software platforms from Apple and Google,
that's a deal breaker. And that's where I'm really curious to see what you think. Is not
having Android Auto and CarPlay a deal breaker for you and holding you back from purchasing a Tesla?
And if you're already a Tesla owner and you're familiar with Android Auto and CarPlay,
what do you think? Do you miss not having that in your Tesla? Let me know in the comments below
and while you're down there, make sure you hit that thumbs up button if you like this video
and subscribe to the channel to see more long-term review videos like this one.
Moving on. Next, let's talk about the next downside, which is the trunk, specifically
when you open it in a rainstorm. For whatever reason, a lot of the rain will just kind of slide
down that back glass and just kind of hop over the little lip and then land directly into your trunk.
Another thing that's been annoying with my Model 3 that Tesla did fix in later versions
of the Model 3 are the door buttons. it throws passengers who aren’t familiar with Teslas and
they often try and grab the emergency door release instead, which isn’t great.
Also in the winter time and this is true for all electric cars, not just Teslas.
Your range can be significantly reduced. And the reason for that is with an electric car is when
the battery is really cold, it limits how much power you can put back into the battery
through regenerative braking, thus reducing your overall range and if your Tesla is equipped with
a heater and not a heat pump, like my version is, that can also zap your range as well.
So you want the car and battery to be as warm as possible before heading out so
you won’t have reduced regen. The only problem with that is, typically it’ll
take me a good 30-45 min to warm up the car enough to the point where I have full regen,
Often, I'll forget to do that and then I'll lose out on range. Now
Tesla does have a scheduling feature that allows you to schedule the car
to warm up every day so it's ready to go at a specific time, which is great. Especially for
those who have a pretty regular schedule and they leave their home at the same time every morning.
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Another part of the Tesla Model 3 driving experienceI haven't enjoyed is Phantom breaking
while using autopilot, full self-driving, or just traffic aware cruise control,
And apparently this behavior actually increased last year during the time
when I experienced it and coincided with Tesla disabling the forward radar in cars
with the full self driving beta, which mine at the time was enrolled in.
Now after I had a few run-ins with this behavior, I quickly unenrolled my Model 3 from the full
self-driving beta and ever since I did that I haven't run into this behavior again which is
good. But man when it happens, it's scary, and it makes you want to use autopilot way less.
The other thing it also makes me long for is just regular cruise control. With Tesla's you get
traffic aware cruise control or nothing. There is no just standard cruise control
like you may be used to from prior vehicles. Tesla’s been putting traffic aware cruise control
in their cars since 2015 although, weirdly they started classifying this feature as a beta feature
in 2018, which doesn’t exactly instill a ton of confidence in this feature, given most
other car manufacturers now also have traffic aware cruise control available on some models
and they certainly do not classify it as a beta feature. And this situation has become
serious enough for the National Highway and Transportation Safety Administration
otherwise know as NHTSA here in the US, to open an investigation into Tesla over this issue.
And if you’re buying a new Tesla today, your car will not be equipped with a front facing radar.
Tesla has removed them now from all of their production cars, at least here in North America,
in pursuit of Elon Musk’s strategy to solely rely on a single type of sensor for Autopilot
and autonomous driving, known as Tesla Vision, which is made up of several cameras around the
car, which I think is interesting to point out pretty much goes against
what everybody else in the autonomous driving industry is doing right now. So
either Elon is right and knows what he's doing and the rest of all these industry players are wrong.
And, and I don't know if I'd bet against Elon Musk at this point,
The guy seems to be more right than he is wrong, typically, then again like Jeff Bezos, Steve Jobs,
a lot of visionary tech founders, they all make mistakes. Elon Musk has made many mistakes
as CEO of Tesla, you may not remember, but the Model 3 Production ramp was absolutely chaotic.
Part of the reason for that was Musk’s strategy to over automate his production lines too quickly
which completely caused chaos for the Model 3's production ramp and caused
Tesla to miss their initial projections.So hopefully, Tesla will figure this one out and
soon. Not having reliable or just standard non-adaptive cruise is just inexcusable in 2022.
So those are all of the downsides I found after using my Model 3 for years. Now, do I see myself
driving another car or trading in my Model 3? Absolutely not. I do not see myself driving
anything, but a Tesla at this point in time, The car’s performance is incredible, maintenance has
been very low over the past 4 years, I've had to replace two dented rims after I ran over a
really bad pothole. I've had to replace one of the tires after a tire blowout on the highway
and then I replaced the cabin air filters and the windshield wipers around every 12 to 18 months.
I never have to go to a gas station, the Tesla Supercharger network still gives you
a huge advantage over other electric vehicles, especially here in the US, the car gets awesome
new features over time like Sentry Mode and Dashcam, which are two of my favorites.
So, yeah, I still love this car, even with its downsides, it's a work of art, and
I wouldn't trade it for anything else. Now, if you're looking at getting a Tesla, I've left
some links below in the description to some of my favorite Tesla accessories. So make sure you check
those out. And if you have any further questions about the Model 3, leave them in a comment below.
If you like this video and found it helpful,
make sure you hit that thumbs up button and subscribe to the channel
to see more videos like this one. For 6 Months Later, I'm Josh Teder, thanks for watching.