My fiancé and I just got back a couple days ago from our Christmas road trip: 1,400 miles to, from, and all around the state of Ohio. I picked up my M3 SR+ exactly 7 days before we were due to depart, and I was thrilled to take my dream car on this trip. I put together a few thoughts for folks on the fence about buying a 3 (or just curious how it fares on long trips). The TL;DR is: if I can help it, I’ll never do a road trip in any other car (or at least, any non-Tesla). It takes longer to get where you’re going, but is just so comfortable and fun to drive no other car compares—especially with autopilot doing most of the work for you!
The Ride: The M3 rides like a dream. It was far more comfortable, spacious, smooth, and quiet than I was expecting (I’m coming from a Mazda3 Sport, so folks coming from larger/luxury cars may feel differently). The seats in particular were terrific, and even after 9+ hours we never felt physically uncomfortable.
Driving: The M3 drives like a dream, too. That instant torque really came in handy in a couple tough spots on the highway. But the real star of the show for me was autopilot. 1,400 miles of driving—to Dayton, a few round trips to Cincinnati, then up to Cleveland, and then home—and the car drove, I’d guess, 95% of that itself, which is absolutely wild. AP+TACC takes so much of the stress/strain out of driving long distances that I wound up doing almost all of the “driving” myself and never felt fatigued. AP is a game-changer, hands down.
Charging: I used ABRP to plan our routes and PlugShare to find local charging options. Tesla Nav does a good job, but I like ABRP’s preference for more/shorter stops and ability to set the level of charge I want to have at my destination. I was surprised by how quick a supercharger stop can be, and most of the time the car was ready to go before we were! Charging definitely added time to the trip over an ICE car, but not as much as you might think when you account for time to get food, use bathrooms, walk the dog, etc. I was nervous about Dayton’s relative lack of charging options, but surprisingly, plugging in to a 120V wall outlet overnight more than sufficed. All things considered, I had range anxiety exactly 0 times on this trip. The key was just a little advance planning.
Range: I bought the 3 knowing full-well that cold weather affects range, sometimes significantly. I was surprised, though, by how much—and how little I could do to mitigate it. If the car is cold, it will burn through power as much as twice the expected rate (and this was only in the 30s—not even especially cold!). You can lower the cabin temp if you like but most of this consumption is going to heat the battery, meaning there’s almost nothing you can do to to substantially improve efficiency. I thought that leaving the car plugged in would reduce the effects, but charging at 120V just doesn’t generate enough heat, and I’m not sure whether 240V would do significantly better. There’s just now way around it, if it’s cold you have to plan on 25-30% of a range hit. The good news is that, on a long trip, the car eventually heats up and the range hit basically disappears.
Storage: This really impressed me. Between the trunk, the lower trunk, and the frunk (which I still think is just fun to use) the 3 has an incredible amount of storage space for a car its size. The frunk, for example, doesn’t look big but it handled my fiancé’s carry-on suitcase, no problem.
Vehicular Insomina: The one major problem we had: for about three days the car refused to sleep and I was losing about 12-15% of the battery per day. This was when we were street parked at my fiancé’s home without the ability to charge, too, so not ideal! The problem seemed to be a nav update that had begun downloading but then couldn’t complete without WiFi. I did a bunch of troubleshooting—disabled TeslaFi, deleted the Stats app on my phone, signed out of Spotify, nothing worked until I finally noticed the update and used my phone as a hotspot to finish the download (Why no OTA updates over LTE w/ premium connectivity?). The car went to sleep 5 minutes later. The 3 has “efficiency” written into it’s DNA, so why doesn’t it have failsafe software that detects abnormal idling patterns and forces the car to sleep or alerts you to a problem? Why don’t I have the ability to put the car to sleep manually through the app? This was an inconvenience but suppose I parked it for 4 or 5 days at the airport—that would be a recipe for the ultimate dead battery.
Overall, the biggest tell that the 3 really is just an awesome car is that, even after spending insane amounts of time driving places in the last two weeks, I’m still looking for an excuse to drive it. I think the Model 3 is that rare thing that you dream about one day having, and then find that the genuine article is better than you imagined. The 3 is a game changer, and if Tesla keeps this up (and man, I hope they do!), I’ll never buy another kind of car!
The Ride: The M3 rides like a dream. It was far more comfortable, spacious, smooth, and quiet than I was expecting (I’m coming from a Mazda3 Sport, so folks coming from larger/luxury cars may feel differently). The seats in particular were terrific, and even after 9+ hours we never felt physically uncomfortable.
Driving: The M3 drives like a dream, too. That instant torque really came in handy in a couple tough spots on the highway. But the real star of the show for me was autopilot. 1,400 miles of driving—to Dayton, a few round trips to Cincinnati, then up to Cleveland, and then home—and the car drove, I’d guess, 95% of that itself, which is absolutely wild. AP+TACC takes so much of the stress/strain out of driving long distances that I wound up doing almost all of the “driving” myself and never felt fatigued. AP is a game-changer, hands down.
Charging: I used ABRP to plan our routes and PlugShare to find local charging options. Tesla Nav does a good job, but I like ABRP’s preference for more/shorter stops and ability to set the level of charge I want to have at my destination. I was surprised by how quick a supercharger stop can be, and most of the time the car was ready to go before we were! Charging definitely added time to the trip over an ICE car, but not as much as you might think when you account for time to get food, use bathrooms, walk the dog, etc. I was nervous about Dayton’s relative lack of charging options, but surprisingly, plugging in to a 120V wall outlet overnight more than sufficed. All things considered, I had range anxiety exactly 0 times on this trip. The key was just a little advance planning.
Range: I bought the 3 knowing full-well that cold weather affects range, sometimes significantly. I was surprised, though, by how much—and how little I could do to mitigate it. If the car is cold, it will burn through power as much as twice the expected rate (and this was only in the 30s—not even especially cold!). You can lower the cabin temp if you like but most of this consumption is going to heat the battery, meaning there’s almost nothing you can do to to substantially improve efficiency. I thought that leaving the car plugged in would reduce the effects, but charging at 120V just doesn’t generate enough heat, and I’m not sure whether 240V would do significantly better. There’s just now way around it, if it’s cold you have to plan on 25-30% of a range hit. The good news is that, on a long trip, the car eventually heats up and the range hit basically disappears.
Storage: This really impressed me. Between the trunk, the lower trunk, and the frunk (which I still think is just fun to use) the 3 has an incredible amount of storage space for a car its size. The frunk, for example, doesn’t look big but it handled my fiancé’s carry-on suitcase, no problem.
Vehicular Insomina: The one major problem we had: for about three days the car refused to sleep and I was losing about 12-15% of the battery per day. This was when we were street parked at my fiancé’s home without the ability to charge, too, so not ideal! The problem seemed to be a nav update that had begun downloading but then couldn’t complete without WiFi. I did a bunch of troubleshooting—disabled TeslaFi, deleted the Stats app on my phone, signed out of Spotify, nothing worked until I finally noticed the update and used my phone as a hotspot to finish the download (Why no OTA updates over LTE w/ premium connectivity?). The car went to sleep 5 minutes later. The 3 has “efficiency” written into it’s DNA, so why doesn’t it have failsafe software that detects abnormal idling patterns and forces the car to sleep or alerts you to a problem? Why don’t I have the ability to put the car to sleep manually through the app? This was an inconvenience but suppose I parked it for 4 or 5 days at the airport—that would be a recipe for the ultimate dead battery.
Overall, the biggest tell that the 3 really is just an awesome car is that, even after spending insane amounts of time driving places in the last two weeks, I’m still looking for an excuse to drive it. I think the Model 3 is that rare thing that you dream about one day having, and then find that the genuine article is better than you imagined. The 3 is a game changer, and if Tesla keeps this up (and man, I hope they do!), I’ll never buy another kind of car!
