In West Los Angeles, Elon Musk has truly accomplished a remarkable feat. No, not launching rockets to space and catching their boosters. Instead, Musk has managed to replace the formerly ubiquitous Prius with his Tesla electric vehicles.
I still remember the first time I saw a Tesla accelerate up an on-ramp, teasing the brutal acceleration made possible by instantaneously available torque and all-wheel-drive.
Add in all the videos online showing Tesla seven-seaters challenging legit supercars and it's safe to say my interest has been piqued for a while now. But up until recently, I'd only ever sat in a Model X (in the backseat, mostly to check out the Falcon Wing door debacle). So when my friend Ryan announced that he had scheduled a real-life Tesla Model 3 "touchless test drive" last week, I jumped at the chance to join in on the fun.
Shopping For Cars At The Mall
Ryan currently leases a Volkswagen GTI and his three years will be up come December. He's also got a two-year-old son and another due in a few weeks, plus a big, energetic dog who travels with the fam—safe to say, his priorities are in the midst of a serious reshuffling and a car the size of a GTI just won't do the trick anymore.
Originally, he was dead-set on something bigger, probably used, with a bit of power under the hood (years ago, Ryan owned a 1990s 4Runner and loved everything about it except the weak engine). The first-place option on his growing list of potentials has typically been a Porsche Cayenne—probably a V8, hopefully a GTS, or, at the very least, an S. But he's also pondered the Macan... and a 1980s Mercedes-Benz diesel station wagon... and a mid-2000s Mercedes-Benz E55 AMG wagon... and on and on.
More recently, Tesla popped into his head because he could then ride in the carpool lane solo and avoid some LA traffic on his commute. All the widely reported performance stats helped, as well, but Ryan's a serious aficionado when it comes to his gear, so a test drive of a Model 3 was in order before his eyes got bigger than his wallet.
The Skateboard On Display
At the Tesla store (showroom?) in the Westfield Century City mall, customers (clients?) aren't allowed to actually sit in any actual Teslas—LA's in the throes of a pandemic, after all. But Tesla compensates for that potential difficulty by offering the so-called "touchless test drive" where a salesperson (concierge?) hands off the car and stays behind while amateur EV drivers get up to god-knows-what behind the wheel.
When we walked into the Tesla shop, I immediately turned to check out the chassis and drivetrain "skateboard" layout. From the front engine and the rear suspension, I knew this couldn't be the Model 3 we'd be testing. The previous day, I'd gotten a chance to visit Lucid Motors' new Beverly Hills studio, where their own skateboard design was featured prominently. Lucid's motors are definitely smaller but their currently slated lineup of cars will cost multiples more than a Model 3.
Checking Out The Lineup
And that was one detail Ryan was dead-set on from the start: he was only interested in testing out the very cheapest Tesla money could buy. Yes, that means foregoing the potential supercar status of a dual-motor, all-wheel-drive Model 3 in favor of a single-motor, rear-wheel-drive car, but it's much more affordable. The question lingering in the air was whether the cheapest Model 3 would still be fun.
While we loitered in the open-aired showroom waiting for our car being readied, one salesperson joked he'd only let us test drive the Model 3 without supervision if we promised to floor it. "Don't worry, we will," Ryan assured him.
Downstairs in the garage, another Tesla salesman named Gianni gave us a rundown on how the touchless test drive would proceed. He showed us the access card—keys are sooo 1990s—and Ryan climbed into the driver's seat. I slipped into the passenger seat, immediately impressed with the comfort level, from the soft padding to the aggressive bolsters more reminiscent of a sports car than an economy commuter.
Pointing at the centrally mounted touchscreen—yes, it's a whole lot like an iPad—from outside the car, Gianni walked Ryan through adjusting the rearview mirrors and selecting various driving functions like the aggressiveness of the regenerative braking and the steering weight. We got the A/C blasting (out of very classy vents hidden in a knuckle on the long dash) and the nav system running. Gianni told us we had 25 minutes or so on our own with the car, and we were off.
The Thrill Of Electric Power
First things first, Ryan made a right turn out of the garage, then quickly made an immediate and illegal U-turn. And then, he floored it. I wasn't at all ready, still musing at the car's interior design details, and my head snapped back into the seat—good thing it's nice and soft or whiplash would be ruining my week. At about 60 miles per hour, Ryan let off, grinning like a supervillain. As the regenerative braking slowed us down (without Ryan even touching the brake pedal), he looked around, presumably checking for cops.
For the next five minutes or, Ryan proceeded to mash the throttle, then slow down, mash the throttle, then slow down. He took a few turns at a good clip, too, impressed by the Tesla's mild manners and smooth ride on bumpy boulevards like Olympic and Sepulveda—we were definitely speeding at least 90% of the time but the car was seemingly riding on air.
Meanwhile, I scooted my seat as far back as it would go, again comparing the smallest Tesla to the Lucid Air—and finding that the Model 3's front passenger seat appeared to have more legroom.
A Ton Of Legroom
Next, it was my turn to drive. Ryan pulled over so we could switch positions. I adjusted the mirrors, set the steering on Sport, checked out the rear visibility (not great but again, I'd say better than the Lucid Air the day before), and floored it.
Without a doubt, that instantaneous torque immediately becomes addicting. I was well above 60 in a 30 by the time I decided to focus on the car's other characteristics or risk getting a pretty hefty ticket. "This is a nice car," I kept saying to Ryan as he nodded, clearly impressed himself. "Like, a really nice car! Way better than I expected."
Clearly, my descriptive adjectives were failing me as I reveled in the thrill of acceleration. I spent about ten minutes putting the Model 3 through its paces, Ryan fiddling with some settings and scoping out the interior as it might apply to his life.
On my first left turn, I had just started creeping into the intersection when a Mazda3 driver pulled out from the opposite left-turn lane, having decided to go straight without feeling the need to indicate his intentions to anyone else. He was, quite literally, coming right for us—and here, I'd just made the decision to take things easy.
Not so. Halfway through a relatively tight turn, I slammed the accelerator to the floor, snapped both our heads back, and immediately broke the rear tires loose. In all fairness to Elon's engineers, the Model 3 handled my mania with aplomb, sliding through an easily controlled drift with just a flick of the steering wheel (presumably thanks to the low polar moment of inertia made possible by the skateboard chassis).
Safely through the intersection, I chuckled to myself. Ryan seemingly took the episode in stride, no problem. And so, when a right turn onto Sunset Boulevard approached, I let a string of cars go by, checked both directions, and did it all over again.
Seriously. That instantaneous torque. Wow. But also: the suspension, the center of gravity, the steering control—and this is the cheapest Tesla money can buy! I can readily admit that I came into the Model 3 test drive expecting to get blown away by off-the-line acceleration but otherwise let down by a heavy four-door's handling, interior quality, and visibility. On the iconic rolling curves of Sunset, however, the whole car comes together swimmingly.
Heading Back To The Mall
I pulled over to give Ryan a chance for some more scientific test driving—this being his potential purchase, after all. Plus, I figured he needed to try burning rubber and throw in some hard-angled steering himself. Sure enough, turning off Beverly Glen onto Santa Monica Boulevard, he managed to do just that. And then again turning off Santa Monica onto Century Park Way.
Back at the mall, we tooled around with the center screen. (The radar function while driving is pretty cool; otherwise, it's just a slightly nicer touchscreen than most other cars I've driven). We checked out the rear seat's legroom and both trunks, we looked at the wheels—basically, the stuff that might make a difference for Ryan's purchase. I checked out the tires, curious whether we were only drifting thanks to bargain-basement rubber: sure enough, disappointing Michelin Primacy MXM4 all-season tires (but don't worry, Tesla offers a summer wheel and tire upgrade for $2,000).
Upstairs, Gianni walked us through the various financing and purchasing options, making sure to point out that Tesla is all about total cost of ownership—including monthlies like gas, insurance, and electrical bills. Ryan revealed his garage has a built-in 240-volt outlet, which is a definite plus when it comes to EV lifestyle.
Getting Down To Practical Matters
But these aren't cheap cars. Even if Ryan dropped the autonomous driving software and 30 miles of range hoping to get the bare-bones, cheapest deal possible, he'd be looking at spending a couple hundred bucks more every month than on his GTI, which he's only driven about 17,000 miles over nearly three years.
The reason we were test driving two full months before his lease expires is that Tesla's production backlog equates to about a five-to-nine week delivery estimate for buyers. In the meantime, Ryan has plenty of time to try out that Cayenne or Macan—or whatever else strikes his fancy in the interim.
Personally, I walked away from the Tesla Model 3 wishing I had more time to blast around and have some consequence-free fun. Or maybe a chance to take out the all-wheel-drive version, like immediately.
A Model 3 might not be the best fit for Ryan's life but it definitely would not work for me. Nonetheless, I'm left tempted, teased, and a bit torn between my love of internal combustion and the silent joy of getting sideways in a roomy four-door that can autonomously drive itself to the ski slopes and back.
Sources: tesla.com, lucidmotors.com, treehugger.com, and michelinman.com.