Tesla Model 3 2021 EV Review: Car testing is a VERY serious thing. Something Top Gear takes VERY seriously to give you, the viewer and potential EV buyer, the most informed and factual reviews. We don’t want you putting your money where our mouth is and anything to come as a surprise, so in this new series – Top Gear Tested – we review the most frequently searched electric cars at our VERY serious testing facility where VERY serious car testers meet to test cars VERY seriously. We’ll answer all the questions – being your eyes and ears – in a way you can understand them, making this the only buying guide you’ll need. First up, TopGear.com’s Ollie Kew tells you everything you need to know about the internet’s favourite EV, the Tesla Model 3.
Oh hello interested in evs are you well you’ve come to the right place see i’m a car tester and i spend my days testing cars in serious car testing facilities i do this so you don’t have to i’m here to help you avoid those electric car pitfalls if you’re thinking of buying one and answer your ev questions welcome to top gear tested what is it well the model
3 is tesla’s smallest cheapest car an american saloon car with space for five people and a big touchscreen inside hardly sounds like a verified big deal does it but in fact the model 3 is one of the most important cars of the 21st century this one costs about 47 000 pounds slap bang in the middle of the model 3 family top of the line is the model 3 performance
Which costs 60 000 pounds but will keep up with a porsche tycan in the smuggest drag race of all time what does it look like kind of like an angry metal frog really i like that tesla didn’t just slap a big lazy fake grill here on the front or dummy exhausts on the back but they sort of forgot to design what was left in the middle seems strange doesn’t it one
Of the most futuristic cars that you can buy right now has ended up looking like a well a slammed toyota prius wearing a covid mask is it practical well this can be more than a rolling meme generator you know it’s also a clever family car this skateboard chassis gives a flat floor so it’s pretty easy to load people into the back and there’s loads of augment
Storage though the wireless charging pads for your phone point your device distractingly at your face bit of a dumb idea if you ask me the boots are good size too but this saloon tailgate makes things just a little bit tricky to load it would have been better if it had been a proper hatchback but that would have spoiled the size of the glass roof apparently
What’s the tech like inside well that depends on whether or not you’ve been to touchscreen school because everything in here is controlled through this massive display and i do mean everything i mean your mirror adjustment the headlights the wipers even the steering wheel adjustment is all done in the screen so it’s a good job that it’s not only a crisp looking
Display but the reactions are so fast as well though it does get unnervingly hot in the summer still this display makes the interface in say a volkswagen id3 feel about as up to date as a nintendo gamecube does it have a party trick this is a sort of tesla universe mario kart that you control using the car’s pedals and turning its steering wheel it really
Helps those supercharger visits fly by but it’s not exactly good news for your tires is it then there’s the outright silliness you can tell your car to pretend you’re on mars settle in for a quiet night in and there’s even a disgusting fart mode which i won’t be bothering with because i am a serious car tester how fast is it here at top gear tested we don’t
Wait around all day for perfect weather conditions or a change in the wind direction this is what you could expect if you got in this car anywhere in the world and floored it all i’m going to do is give you some super accurate results using my gps satellite verified box of tricks tesla claims that this middle of the family model 3 long range should get me from
Naught to 60 in 4.2 seconds which is still pretty fast now there’s no ludicrous mode in this car all i’ve got is chill or standard let’s have a little bit of standard i’m going to put my left foot hard on the brake and here we go for a standard middle of the range car this is still really fast there was no wheel spin there at all because of course we’ve got
Four wheel drive dual motors no fuss even on a slightly damp surface and that’s well over 100 miles an hour already whoa let’s cut hard on those brakes plenty of runway left so it’s obviously got there quite quickly let’s see just how quickly this tesla model 3 long range might not be the fastest tesla you can buy but it certainly didn’t hang about going from
Naught to 60 in 4.4 seconds dead and sneaking under 10 seconds to 100 miles per hour getting there in just 9.98 seconds the model 3 long range ran the quarter mile in 12.83 seconds at 110.1 miles per hour how big is the battery and how far will that get me the base model 3 has a 55 kilowatt-hour battery but this long-range version and the model 3 performance
Up that to 74 kilowatt hours still not massive by ev standards but that’s because tesla’s battery tech is light years beyond everyone else’s they claim 360 miles of range for this car but we found that 250 to 280 miles is about bang on the money where do i put the cable tap the touchscreen and the charging flap pops open on the side at home your charging
Lead is going to look something like this connect it up from your home wall box and you’ll be ready to go in about seven and a half hours but of course if you’ve got one of these you’ll be wanting to meet other tesla owners in a car park perhaps for a spot of late night super charging and chill if you can find one of tesla’s dedicated chargers and let’s face
It they’re just about everywhere then you can have a full juice in just 34 minutes what’s it like on a motorway well here i am doing about 70 miles an hour and apart from too much wind noise it’s perfectly acceptable very easy to drive here but you’re already thinking aren’t you why are you driving it yourself why don’t you let autopilot take over now this is
Where things get interesting all uk spec tesla model 3s have autopilot but that’s really just the kind of capsule umbrella term for adaptive cruise control lane following steering assistant and a blind spot monitoring now that’s all terribly useful but it’s nothing you wouldn’t find in a bmw 3 series or a ford focus for the tesla to execute lane changes and
Overtakes and guide you to your destination you need the full self-driving package now that’s a 6800 quid option and it’s not one we’d bother with the cars reactions are just too haphazard you’re always having to kind of grab it second guess it now they say that the technology is improving all the time and that one day you’ll definitely take that box by default
But right now i prefer taking over from the computer and using my computer up here so what’s it like if you’re running late for your spacex rocket launch well the good news if you’re an astronaut is that you’ll probably get to the launch pad on time but you’ll arrive with a headache because my goodness it’s noisy in here there’s so much wind rush and tire raw
It’s not a particularly refined experience when you’re going very quickly but speaking of speed this thing is seriously fast tesla says this long range model 3 would actually run on to over 160 miles an hour now i’m not going to do that because i think i’ll end up deaf but it’s incredible to think that a car that looks so meek and unshowy would end up going
Faster in a straight line than a bmw m3 how heavy is it well you don’t expect me to take elon musk’s word for it now tesla claims 1847 kilos for this model 3 long range and i’m astounded to say that it’s just been weighed at 1847 kilos now any family sized electric car that comes in that far below two tons is seriously impressive and what that proves is if
You can get your motor and battery pack technology as efficient as physics allows then you don’t need a battery that weighs more than the factory it’s built in is it comfy well it’s sort of okay but now come on you’re not buying this because of how it rides are you you’re buying it because of supercharging and the range and this bloody great touchscreen it
Doesn’t have anything like the expensive damper feel of something like a jaguar eye pace but it is american and credit where credit’s due america spent all of the last century building enormous cars with suspension made out of old water beds and string cheese so the fact that the tesla just rides okay is a big credit to it what’s it like round a bend well
Not brilliant really the steering’s just so video gamey doesn’t feel like it’s connected to anything and i can sense the center of gravity is nice and low with the batteries in the floor i can’t tell anything else what about cornering when you’re running late start to lob one of these teslas around a bit and you begin to understand why tesla thinks of itself
Not as a traditional car company but more of a tech company if you buy the model 3 performance then it can be coaxed into doing power slides and big drifts and wrecking your tyres but when it comes to just making a sensible family car that’s still a bit of a giggle in the corners well i think tesla maybe has one or two things left to learn from the brits and
The germans the old guard basically what’s the verdict well this is the car of the future that we were all promised weren’t we i mean i know it can’t quite fly but i bet tesla’s probably working on that it has sentience though and a sense of humor a real fresh take on just about everything now the model 3 was actually top gear’s saloon car of the year back
In 2019 and in fact it’s a little bit old this car now it’s been on sale in the us since mid 2017 but in that time there’s still nothing else on the electric car scene that’s managed to catch the tesla model 3 up and then beat it on all fronts now while i know i’m taking a big risk here and i’m going to cut major flak from some parts of the internet for saying
So the tesla model 3 is not perfect tesla’s build quality has been a bit iffy in the past even this car has got some dodgy panel fit on it and there are definitely a couple more electric cars i can think of that are a lot more fun to drive than this but because of tesla’s pace of improvement and how they just dare to do things differently there’s no doubt that
This tesla model 3 is one of the most interesting compelling new cars on sale in the world right now you
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Tesla Model 3 2021 Review: 0-60mph, ride, handling, user guide & Tesla Autopilot | Top Gear Tested By Top Gear