few car companies have created quite as much buzz in recent history as Tesla
California automaker responsible mostly for very expensive and very fast cars
like the Model S and the Model X but here we are with the all-new model 3 now
this is the Tesla that's more affordable this is the Tesla that competes with
sort of bread-and-butter luxury sports sedans like the BMW 3-series and they're
saying these Benz C Class but there's still a lot that's different about it
and we're gonna take you through that well start off with size and styling now
the model 3 unlike the Model S is a lot shorter you can tell there's tighter
overhangs it's about a foot and a half shorter bumper-to-bumper than the Model
S now speaking of bumper this front one here you can tell there's no grille this
being an electric car doesn't need as much ventilation there is some
ventilation down here but just a very simple face similar to what you see on
the Model S you come around at the side there's a lot of cameras if you look
closely there's one here behind the front fender there's another camera up
here on the B pillar overall Tesla says there's eight cameras 12 ultrasonic
sensors and forward-facing radar built into every single Model 3 even though
some of these aren't even turned on yet Tesla says they're supposed to enable
the car to have kind of full autonomy full self driving capabilities under
Tesla's auto pilot program at some point in the future now come around to the
back some cool stuff here the model 3 unlike the Model S is a traditional
sedan but this trunk here the way it comes up gives you a lot of access to
the trunk because the trunk lid actually look how far it rises it just kind of
comes all the way out of kind of halfway down the seat pillar right there but
just gives you a lot more access back there now there's no spare tire instead
there's just kind of well down here where Tesla has some charging hardware
all of that hardware is gonna plug in right here to the charge port to get up
to the roof every Model 3 has a glass roof standard underneath it the rear
passengers really can pretty much see everything up there it's similar to what
you get in the Model X facing forward three that's the visibility you get
looking back now a clear section over the front seats is optional if you don't
get that there's actually just headliner material here we're told even though the
glass roof above that remains as you look around here in the model three it's
very simple some might think it's actually too austere but as far as
materials quality and consistency I mean everything is really up to snuff to what
you'd get in some of these other cars in kind of the thirty and forty thousand
dollar price range it's just in terms of graining and soft stuff where your arms
and your elbows and your knees kind of land now all the action happens through
this 15 inch horizontal display your distinct from the 17 inch vertical
display in the Model S because that also accompanies sort of a gauge display over
here not the case in the model three everything happens through here
although the left side of the display has we're told things like the
speedometer all your driving instruments over you're kind of within your line of
sight this is sort of your home screen here Google Maps right here very
responsive it all works through a 4G LTE connection and pretty much everything
else but the kitchen sink is in here everything from volume to you know phone
controls to climate whatever you want to do there there's even some very cool
stuff in terms of what you can control the air vents for example I mean
passengers and kind of control the direction of the air vents which by the
way are all up here along the dashboard itself kind of embedded and you can
either create two of them or you can put them together and just have one
direction kind of moving around speaking of all these features some of the stuff
that you'd expect physical controls for there aren't any because they're
repurposed from these steering wheel controls which can do various things
including obviously a stereo volume and tuning but they can also do things like
let's see if I can figure this out mirror adjustments yeah there you go so
basically you can use these controls you have to use these controls to change
your mirror angles a steering wheel column if you want to go up or down with
the steering column you use the controls again to do that just lots of stuff
embedded into this screen you know I'm sure that you've learned it eventually
but right here at first glance seems like there's just a lot of learning
you'd have to do even just getting into the car now a few features that
curiously are missing for such a high tech car apple carplay Android
and wireless smartphone charging none of those are available in the model 3 Tesla
says among the few controls that aren't embedded in this screen are window
switches here and a button to get out of the car that activates the door handle
basically there's an override lever here in case it's not working for some reason
to get back into the car there's manual door handles on the outside as opposed
to kind of the ones that motor out toward you to present themselves in the
Model S and the Model X now the model 3 being an electric car doesn't have all
the drivetrain architecture so what you don't get is a floor hump here across
the floor lots of room to kind of stretch out for rear passengers I'm 6
feet tall that's about where I'd sit to drive and I've got like really good
legroom left over here we do wish the seat set a little bit higher off the
ground though I'd kind of just think I'm squatting here overall though if it's at
higher that would mean that over bumps in the road my head might hit this glass
ceiling which looks pretty cool probably doesn't feel very good
now the model 3 has had a very slow roll out painfully slow if you're waiting in
line for one of these cars but Tesla says it's finally started to get through
the initial rollout to Tesla employees and now it's selling them as we speak to
Tesla owners current Tesla owners are actually getting deliveries of this car
and people who don't own a Tesla we're new Tesla owners they're still waiting
but hopefully that wait will kind of start to move along sooner rather than
later how long is that wait well if you signed up right now and put down a
deposit test Assessors a roughly 12 to 18 month to wait for the model 3 and
cars that are actually close to its $35,000 starting price before tax
incentives that's going to be kind of toward the tail end so far what we're
looking at so still a lot of waiting to do stay tuned
you