1 Year Tesla Model 3 Review

Today one year ago, I took delivery of my @Tesla Model 3. Here’s what I’ve experienced during that year and in over 23’500 km (14,600 miles).

First off: this thing is a blast to drive. I got the performance model with >500 HP and a 0-100 km/h acceleration of 3.4 seconds. To this day I can’t hide the “Tesla grin” when accelerating.

Sometimes I open the rear camera while at a stop just to see how small the car behind me gets once the traffic light turns green and I floor it. It’s also safe insofar as it allows for quick acceleration in tricky situations.

Unsurprisingly this is one of the first things I demonstrate to people sitting in a Tesla for the first time. The reactions are always one of the two comments: “Holy shit this feels like an airplane taking off” or “Holy shit this feels like the Blue Fire Megacoaster”.

Another feature I love to demonstrate is summoning the car which is especially useful in my garage since it has a tight parking spot; wide enough for the car but not wide enough to easily get in/out of the car without doing some involuntary yoga exercises. The Tesla gets out/parks into the spot on its own daily.

What about long distance trips? This car works as a daily driver just as well as for road-tripping. I’m surprised some people still aren’t aware that Tesla has a vast Supercharging network allowing for quickly topping up one’s car. See here.

More Superchargers are constructed on a monthly basis.

I’ve driven:

• Zurich - Vienna - Zurich
• Zurich - Calabria - Zurich (~3000 km total)

without any issues.

The road-trip to Calabria took us 19 hours (my brother and I weren’t in a rush and spent over an hour in a restaurant despite the car having reached 100% state of charge for a while). We stopped 7 times for charging sessions of ~15-20 mins each.

Those charging stops were also used as bathroom and breakfast/lunch/dinner breaks. Therefore our 19h trip consisted of over 16h of driving and about 2 hours of (productive) charging + 1 hour spent in a restaurant (where the car patiently waited for us, fully charged). We arrived refreshed at our destination since Autopilot did about 99% of the driving.

Due the fact that we used a referral code (thanks @NYKChannel) granting us 6 months of free supercharging the trip did not cost us anything in terms of electricity.

Speaking of electricity, 1300 kWh were added to the battery during this year just via regenerative braking. Coincidentally, this is the amount of electricity our household (my brother and I) uses in a year! The fact that this causes a longer lifetime for the brakes is also quite nice.

So what about charging without the Supercharging network? Unfortunately I can’t charge at home, however, there’s a charging station 500 meters from my home which I basically never use. Why? Because I already charge at various destinations.

E.g. when I go bouldering, there’s a charging station in a garage close-by. When I do @Freeletics with friends in Zurich, there’s a charging station near-by, when I go indoor skydiving at @Windwerk_Winti there are free charging stations provided by them.

~100 meters in either direction from @Windwerk_Winti there are two more free charging stations. Also, I spend less time actively charging (i.e. plugging in), than I used to spend filling up my gasoline car during daily use.

The fact that electricity is cheap is convenient. Using @EnBW’s card, I pay 0.28€/kWh which amounts to about 22€ (~26$) per full charge (480 km / 300 miles range). But most of the time I use free charging options, such as the one provided by @StadtwerkWin which offers electricity generated via solar 🌞.

Sometimes I do what I refer to as “car-office”. The Tesla is comfortable and it has an impressive audio system which is amazing when watching YouTube or Netflix via the car’s own 15” screen, so I’m inclined to spend time in the car while charging.

The audio is comparable to a cinema imho. Sometimes I review the dash cam or sentry footage which the car records while driving or while being parked and someone getting too close to the car.

Thanks to this feature I caught someone bumping into the front of my car while it was parked and she was reversing out of the parking spot. The license plate is visible and perfectly readable. Aside from that I have 20GB of footage of curious people checking out the car.

YouTube, Netflix, Sentry Mode, games etc. are features provided by Tesla via free over-the-air updates. That’s another thing making a Tesla a blast to own. I get around 2 updates/month providing new features, games, power (e.g. +20 HP) or improvements suggested to @elonmusk etc.

As a software engineer, I love playing with Tesla’s APIs and data. The API shows data about the car’s status and location and with an OBD2 dongle I have a vast amount of live data (e.g. current torque of each motor, battery cell temperatures and voltages etc.)

Recently the rear window got chipped (looks like there was an impact there but I can’t tell what caused it). There are lots of stories about waiting for spare parts from Tesla taking weeks to months.

I informed @diemobiliar about the damage and they referred me to Desa Autoglass. Apparently the rear window was available in a few days (less than a week). I was able to bring my car to Desa Autoglass and they replaced the huge rear window in ~2 hours.

Everything worked flawlessly, @Tesla quickly had the part available and @diemobiliar quickly referred me to Desa Autoglass in Winterthur which did a great job. I didn’t have to pay anything but was surprised to learn the rear glass cost less than 500.-.

So, what are the actual disadvantages with a Tesla? The only negative experience I had with Tesla was the delivery experience & customer support. The delivery process a year ago was pure chaos, I was informed that my delivery should take place in March.

March passed and I did not receive any further info. No communication whatsoever, Tesla was just silent. Ended up going to the delivery center 3 times and finally got a loaner Tesla Model S until the Model 3 was ready for pickup in June 2019.

When I had an issue logging into my account neither the service center nor delivery center were able to help. Had to send an email to Tesla, but was never answered after months of follow-up. Finally someone in the delivery center wrote an email to the same email address and got an answer.

In order not to end on a negative note, I’d like to stress that the positives far outweigh the negatives and I would definitely buy a Model 3 again, even if it meant the chaos during the delivery process would repeat itself (which they seem to have fixed by now).

Thank you @elonmusk and @Tesla team for such an enjoyable, incredible, amazing and fun car. I will never be able to go back to an internal combustion engine car.

Thank you for accelerating the world’s transition to sustainable energy! ☀️🔋🚗🌱

Bonus: The frunk even fits a Swiss Army rifle!

Bonus: Cats seem to like the Tesla too.