Video: We Take a Deep Dive Into the Tesla Model 3

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 Mercedes-Benz C class. But there's still a lot that's different about it. And we're going to take you through that. We'll 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, as you can tell, there's no grill this being an electric car. It 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 to the side, there's kind of 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 Autopilot program at some point in the future. 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 C pillar right there. Just gives you a lot more access back there. Now there's no spare tire. Instead, there's this 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. You 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. In the Model 3, 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 3, it's very simple. Some might think it's actually to 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 30,000 and $40,000 price range just in terms of graining and soft stuff where your arms and your elbows and your knees kind of land. And all the action happens through this 15-inch horizontal display here, 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 3. Everything happens through here, although the left side of the display has, we're told, things like the speedometer, all your driving instruments over here, 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 can 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 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. 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'd 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 Auto, 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 our windows 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 six feet tall. That's about where I'd sit to drive, and I've got actually really good leg room left over here. I do wish the seat sat a little bit higher off the ground though. I kind of just think I'm squatting here overall. Though, if it sat 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 rollout, 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, who are 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, Tesla says there's a roughly 12 to 18 month wait for the Model 3. And cars that are actually close to it's $35,000 starting price before tax incentives, that's gonna be kind of toward the tail end so far what we're looking at. So still a lot of waiting to do, stay tuned.