background - i drove a tesla 3 previously that was rented by someone else. i think it was one before the last big interior update. anyway, as everyone knows, it's smooth, fast, handles pretty flat because of the battery weight down low, but overall i found it 'appliance-like' - not that interesting.

fast forward to last week when i rented one from 9/7 to 9/11.

picked up at hertz with 84% battery. as most know, hertz has their own lock/unlock/driving requirement with a key card that you press against the driver's B pillar (annoying it doesn't work on the passenger side) to lock/unlock, and you must place the car behind the cup holders to allow the car to be driven.

about battery percentage, i wondered how i could see its estimated mile range instead and eventually realized i can touch the percentage and it changes to miles (and vice versa). at 99% (see later) it indicated 261mi. i think.

i found the door handles to be really goofy but slightly less goofy when you get the needlessly awkward vulcan thumb push on back / finger handle grab method down.

tesla navigation is lightning fast, accurate, but seems optimistic on driving time estimates and sure took me down obscure side streets... maybe trying to minimize distance as much as possible? still, as i was exploring an area i lived a long time ago (chester county, w. of philly) it was enjoyable.

as has been stated by others, glass roof does not get very hot. impressed. and it was in the mid 90s the first couple of days.

having no physical wiper controls is annoying but not a disaster. i did learn the button on the end of the left stalk wipes once with a push. guess that function's gone too on the new highland.

as all know, the drivetrain is EXCELLENT with instant silent smooth response at all speeds as has been written about endlessly. even though this is 'only' a base 3, i found it PLENTY fast enough in all driving situations.

1 pedal driving - this might be tesla's best feature, because you rarely need to touch the brake pedal, but also because they've implemented it all the way to 'stop' with perfect smoothness. now it does take time to get used to because taking foot off the gas results in a jerky slowing down, so it must be modulated for smoothness. anyway, great job tesla.

rear/side camera views on the screen were poor imo when trying to parallel park. the side camera views for blind spot viewing were terrible compared to my hyundai. i think it's because the cameras aren't wide enough angle and obviously lower than hyundai's cameras on the underside of the mirrors.

charging - i had no charging option right where i'm saying (airbnb) but i knew before coming there was a supercharger about 15 mi. away. after some driving various places the car was down to about 30% so decided to charge it. found the supercharger through the car nav (right wheel button press, voice command "supercharger") and set as destination. Car automatically set battery to pre charging conditioning, nice. Once there i backed in with other teslas, touch the flap to open, plugged in the cable, and it started charging, so that was great. it went up to about 140kW at one point and came down as the car 'filled up'. i decided i didn't want to have to charge again if possible and wasn't in a hurry so told it to charge to 100% so i could experience that (yes, i know fans, not what you guys do). it pretty quickly got to about 80% (maybe 15-20mins) but then significantly slowed down). at 99% i gave up as it just didn't seem like it was going to finish. about 40 mins all in all, but very painless. nothing to do while waiting as i didn't care about the large gas station the chargers were next to, or the starbucks across a VERY busy divided highway i wasn't about to get killed crossing, lol.

i think the car said 261 mi. range after recharging. yes this is only a standard range 3. and yes, it feels like those miles get gobbled up quick but i didn't compare odometer with range estimates to see if it's, uh, optimistic. i'm also certainly not driving super fast but mixed city/highway. a/c constantly running which probably doesn't help.

fit and finish... the car has zero squeaks, creaks, etc. inside, nothing seems misaligned which is good. outside though, my white 3 had almost the exact same badly misaligned trunk lid as JDR76 had. :/

the refreshed 3 interior is better than the VERY spartan one i previously drove, and yes we know the highland is going to be even better. i find the 'wood' dash bar to look pretty fake, but other than that, the interior look was 'ok'.

the two large storage bins in the center console were impressive, the cup holders fine, the dual wireless phone charging spots lined with a felt like material were well placed and functioned ok but didn't seem to charge very fast.

the seats - my girlfriend raved about how comfortable they were. i thought they were pretty good (squishy) although i could not get the lumber adjustment on the driver's seat to be comfortable. the passenger side didn't have that adjustment.

rear view mirror is way too small (and very cheap).

constant screen display of car on the road and 'objects' around is interesting but not terribly useful imo. i do like how it recognizes traffic lights and when they go green and beeps you telling you to go.

so all in all, it was a good experience. as fans say, the smooth driving doesn't get old. the 1 pedal despite those thinking i hate ev's or somehow have it in for tesla, neither is true. i have also said i think a tesla could work for me as my work vehicle. i do think the 3 is a lot better looking than the y, but the y is much more usable in terms of space. who knows when the highland changes would come to the y but probably not before my current lease ends (feb) and at this point it seems like it would be good to wait for that release if i decided to get a tesla.

if i wanted to burn a lot more money though, i'd get an eqs suv.

pics...

at the airbnb



it's a year old:



yup, craptastic defect:



supercharger:



charging:



charging:



charging:



charging:



new meets old in amish country

driving to intercourse pa



parking among the ice...

 

Nice review. Not sure why the Hertz rentals all seem to have that same trunk misalignment LoL! I've seen a ton of 2022 and 2023 Model 3's and haven't seen any trunk misalignments. Anyway, good review!

 

thanks, just edited to add the 1 pedal driving experience we really enjoyed.

 

The cameras were upgraded with HW4, but I still rely on the mirrors for parallel parking. Also, the wipers can be set between 4 settings I, II III and Auto. You should see it pop up on the screen when you initially activate them with the left stalk button. Auto is not perfect, but seems to work pretty well once they get triggered. I had to pull over and figure out how to use them the first time it rained.

I'm wondering if the rental companies get the worst customer rejects, or they just build them with less care.

 

Excellent! I've been waiting for you to post your impressions.

I agree with pretty much everything that you said. My rental experience from Avis would have been massively better if I had access to a Tesla Supercharger station like you did.

Sad to see the same trunk lid misalignment.

Thanks for posting!

 

Good review - BMW i4 pretty much solves all the issues of the Model 3 besides the most important which is charging infrastructure. Highly recommend it if you want an EV and will charge at home 99% of the time.

did you feel the center screen was safety issue?
I personally felt it was very distracting not having gauges in front of the steering wheel and Tesla doesn’t offer HUD. Whether its checking speed, looking at music/radio info etc - all that requires you to look away from the road and that additional second can cause accident.

 

After a week or so you get pretty good at glancing at the speed although when I need to dive into menus I did put on AP (where safe)

 

Trunk is a design flaw there is 1 power strut instead of two stresses one side combine that with a hinge that is not strong enough and this happens. For some odd reason this is an issue across multiple brands. Could be worse on rentals because people impatiently crank on the trunk instead of waiting for it to close.

Agreed on the mirrors they are not very good.

 

the i4 is nice... i've sat in one but not driven it. it's like you're sitting in a regular bmw only it's electric.

good question! at first i was put off a bit, but one thing is they did a good job of positioning the screen and the speed number in the very top left of the screen so it's really not hard to glance at that at least.
i made a conscious effort to think about it after i got back in my hyundai and realized it was honestly no worse than looking DOWN at gauges between the steering wheel spokes.
but my hyundai also has HUD which i think is really the way to go.

as far as other controls, like climate and audio... yes physical controls are a bit easier, but tesla did make it very separate with black background on the bottom of the screen so it's easy to find with one's eyes. now if it was buried among other controls on that all white background, it would be terrible. so tesla obviously has paid a lot of attention to UX on their single center screen implementation. almost makes me curious how it feels when driving an S/X with the primary gauge screen, as in, what do they do with all that screen real estate?

besides speed, most cars require you to look at a center screen so it's not as bad as i thought it might be.

also, as jeff keryk has pointed out often, voice controls! so you press the right 'wheel' on the steering wheel, and say what you want... it's LIGHTNING quick in understanding what you said and responding and never got it wrong in my use. that's more than i can say about my lexus or hyundai implementations.

 

another impression...

i felt the frunk was pretty useless (too small). the trunk on the other hand, is very roomy, and the part nearest the back of the car has a floor cover you pull up for another huge 'box' of space. nice.

 

what other brands only use a single power strut?

also you raise a good point about people 'cranking' (pushing) the trunk close. i was actually shocked it was power operated AT ALL and initially i went to push it down but then realized and let it do its thing.

 

thanks. yes, i made a note - don't rent one on kauai!

yes, i did check for supercharger locations before i left. if there had not been one within say 30 miles, i wouldn't have rented it. the one i went to (twice) was great. i thought it was funny that it was alongside a gas station. there were a couple of other superchargers near one location i was at the second time, but i went back to the same one because it was on the way back to the abnb.

another observation was how small the supercharger cable connector is and idiotproof to put in / remove. the non-tesla ones i've seen look gigantic and clunky in comparison, lol.

 

about the second charging... we are at ~30% again with a couple of days to go and could bring the car back with at least 10% (i'd gone for paying for charging ahead of time, $35, so i didn't have to bring it back 'full') but didn't feel comfortable being that low, so went there for a quick top up. this time, 10 minutes, went to about 57% i think. good enough!

looks like hertz didn't mark up the charging which was good... i think i paid about $16 in charging fees... cheap!

 

Not sure but they have a similar problem (including Lexus) where one side of the hatch/trunk bends.

Rentals are a great test of durability if there is a way to damage something people will find it.

 

I was going to weigh in on this initially, but I decided to see what your response would be to keep my own biases in check