TunaBug
Member
If you're not aware, Tesla doesn't do model years. They add new features whenever they're ready. And sometimes they take feature away. For example people commonly refer to "2021 model year" as having the new center console, new lights, heated steering, but all of those things were introduced at different times. For a lot of these things you can hunt down threads specifically discussing the feature and often there is an attempt by people to narrow down the change-over to a range of VINs. If you want to know what's in a particular car then look at that particular car.Can folks spell out what features the newer years add, compared with the 2018 model 3? These are the ones I see:
- later years got a heat pump,
- later years lost radar.
- Fit and finish probably got better in later years
2021+ got a heated steering wheel, and (I believe) the updated center console.
New center console appeared some time in calendar year 2020. The new center console also switched from USB-C to USB-A connectors (although the glove box remains USB-A).
As Terpman90 said, they added the heated steering wheel.
In late 2020 they started shipping model 3 with the new matrix/projector headlights (all variants of M3, whereas for the MY you only get those lights on the MYP). I think recently (calendar year 2022) there were some shipped with the old lights, but now they're back again?
Somewhere in 2021 they killed the lumbar adjustment for the front passenger seat.
I haven't been able to keep up with the options, but also somewhere in 2021 they didn't have data connections in the front center console USB (power only). I don't know if there were some cars that had no power there either (empty holes where USB ought to be?), and I don't know if the data has come back in more recent builds. You can buy third party modules to add back support for the USB data (but I think that assumes your car already has power there).
Newer cars have built-in support for CCS charging. Tesla may offer an upgrade kit at some point, and you can find threads on TMC with how-to descriptions of adding the support to some older cars.
When I test drove an M3 in February 2021 the car I drove (I don't know when it was built) had low and high settings for the regen. My car was built late March 2021 and by then the M3 only has one regen strength (i.e. it's not configurable).