About a week after the European deliveries of the updated Tesla Model 3 “Highland” started, the first owners who got their hands on the facelifted EV went on Reddit to tell the world how the car drives, how its interior looks like, and what annoying bits come with the package.
A thread was started on the r/TeslaModel3 subreddit earlier this week by a Highland owner who picked up his new car last Saturday and put about 310 miles (500 kilometers) on the odometer before writing about his experience.
He says he’s coming from a Seat Ibiza, which is a small, no-frills city car built by the Volkswagen Group on the Old Continent. With this in mind, the original poster says the refreshed Model 3 has a “very solid” interior, with exceptional quality speakers, even though it’s the base version with nine speakers, as opposed to the all-wheel drive spec that comes with 17 speakers.
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Moreover, the suspension is great and it clears speed bumps “perfectly without discomfort,” while the absence of stalks on the steering wheel column becomes less annoying after about an hour, according to u/Yamox.
With this being said, the user mentions in his list of first thoughts that the Tesla Vision system that’s responsible for things like parking visualizations and putting the automatic wipers on when it’s raining is “pretty underwhelming in its current state,” adding that he would have preferred ultrasonic sensors (Tesla started removing them from its models last year).
In the replies, other new Model 3 owners chipped in and shared their own thoughts of the car, with u/tomster1907 saying that the effect of the ventilated seats – which are new to the facelifted Model 3 – was really strong, even though it was only 50 degrees (10 degrees Celsius) outside when he tried them out.
Coming from a Mercedes-Benz E-Class, this user mentioned that the comfort level in the American, Chinese-made EV is at least as good and that even at highway speeds, the Tesla is as quiet as the Mercedes. However, the so-called parking sensors (the car doesn’t have sensors per se, it relies on the aforementioned Tesla Vision system that uses cameras) are “rubbish.”
In one instance, the car told the driver to stop immediately even though there was nothing in front of the car, while another time it said there was a 19.6-inch (50-centimeter) space in front, when in fact there was just 3.9 in (10 cm). Because of this, he says the system can’t be trusted.
The thread includes more comments from owners and prospective buyers alike, and it looks like most people agree the 2024 Tesla Model 3 is more comfortable than before and has a better-built interior, just like this American reviewer said in his 50-minute video.