I just took delivery of a 2021 Model 3 about a week ago. I wanted to see if it was any faster in a straight line than the 2018. See my video for the results!
You can install our site as a web app on your iOS device by utilizing the Add to Home Screen feature in Safari. Please see this thread for more details on this.
Note: This feature may not be available in some browsers.
I just took delivery of a 2021 Model 3 about a week ago. I wanted to see if it was any faster in a straight line than the 2018. See my video for the results!
In short, what tires and wheel combo could make it faster? Just curious...I have a stealth with 18's.
The lighter the better! Forged wheels such as Titan-7 or Martian are going to probably be your lightest options (17 to 18lbs). The tire traction isn't too much of a concern on the Model 3 as long as the pavement is dry and warm, so again I would probably search for the lightest tire possible. Tire Rack lists weights on all of the tires they sell, so it makes it easy to compare. For sizing, I would stick with 18" or 19" wheels, the 20's are just too heavy and have a lot of compromises.
That all being said, the stealth Performance with 18's is already a fairly light combo, much lighter than the PUP 20's!
Interesting: I see two races, both won by the 2021, one with a narrow margin, because of the grip in the left lane, and one by a substantial margin.
And the conclusion is: both equally quick?
What did I miss?
Martian wheels ain’t forged lolThe lighter the better! Forged wheels such as Titan-7 or Martian are going to probably be your lightest options (17 to 18lbs). The tire traction isn't too much of a concern on the Model 3 as long as the pavement is dry and warm, so again I would probably search for the lightest tire possible. Tire Rack lists weights on all of the tires they sell, so it makes it easy to compare. For sizing, I would stick with 18" or 19" wheels, the 20's are just too heavy and have a lot of compromises.
That all being said, the stealth Performance with 18's is already a fairly light combo, much lighter than the PUP 20's!
The 2021 and 2018 tied, maybe even a tiny win by the 2018 in the first race, it just let off the accelerator earlier. That being said, poor weather conditions and difficulty starting at the same time mean there's no real data there it was more for fun.
Comparing the hard data, such as power output, shows no difference between the two (graph in the video). Additionally, the Dragy graphs I put in the video are comparable/slightly slower than those from numerous 2018-2020 Models. If there was truly more power from the 2021 we would have seen it.
According to Tesla it is .1 sec quicker from 0-60. So i would think that it actually is.
But a .1 difference is not much, so it might look comparable especially under less then ideal circumstances.
Martian wheels ain’t forged lol
Thanks for the side by side comparison.
I just took delivery of a 2021 Model 3 about a week ago. I wanted to see if it was any faster in a straight line than the 2018. See my video for the results!
The lighter the better! Forged wheels such as Titan-7 or Martian are going to probably be your lightest options (17 to 18lbs). The tire traction isn't too much of a concern on the Model 3 as long as the pavement is dry and warm, so again I would probably search for the lightest tire possible. Tire Rack lists weights on all of the tires they sell, so it makes it easy to compare. For sizing, I would stick with 18" or 19" wheels, the 20's are just too heavy and have a lot of compromises.
That all being said, the stealth Performance with 18's is already a fairly light combo, much lighter than the PUP 20's!
How is peak power proof of which is faster? Wouldn't duration and average matter? And wouldn't all 2021s on dragy be from colder months where a tiny bit of performance is lost?
jesus finally thank you for specifying the battery temp being important.
Any possible way you could swap out to lighter wheels and see if that changes your 0-60 or 1/8? Believe you have a few options on that.
I can say with 100% certainty that my car has more wheel spin with lightweight rotors/wheels, even with stickier tires when SOC is above 85%. Once it gets warm here again in the spring, I’ll log the traction control metrics, but I think most of it is occurring on the front axle since the front end wants to scoot around, even with low tire pressures.
How is peak power proof of which is faster? Wouldn't duration and average matter? And wouldn't all 2021s on dragy be from colder months where a tiny bit of performance is lost?
THIS, yes! LionXng knows dynos.... I do too. Peak power isn't near as important as "power under the curve", and doubly so for early power under the curve. Car A can make more power 90% of the powerband but if power B has a crazy peak near redline where it makes 1hp, it is not the faster car. Peaks aren't very informative most the time.
That said, fantastic work, OP! Nice that you proved no real difference between the older 3 and the newer 3 performances.
Martian wheels ain’t forged lol
Thanks for the side by side comparison.
But it's not - that is what we proved. The peak power output is exactly the same - 421.45kW for the 2018 and 421.13kW for the 2021 (so technically the 2018 actually has a tiny bit more power). We ran several tests after filming the two cars on the track in better conditions and the results were the same. The reason for looking at the actual power output is that it eliminates those differences in tires, wheels, brakes, weather, traction, etc that are difficult to account for.
If you look at the Dragy leaderboard the 2021 is slower than several 2018, 2019, and 2020 vehicles in both 0-60 and the 1/8th mile. Multiple people speculated that Tesla changing the advertised time from 3.2 to 3.1 seconds was done to account for the 5% power boost from a year ago - I would say they were correct.
Not trying to be difficult - I spent a lot of time verifying this.
Just going off what the website says Personally, I would get the Titan-7's.
But it's not - that is what we proved. The peak power output is exactly the same - 421.45kW for the 2018 and 421.13kW for the 2021 (so technically the 2018 actually has a tiny bit more power). We ran several tests after filming the two cars on the track in better conditions and the results were the same. The reason for looking at the actual power output is that it eliminates those differences in tires, wheels, brakes, weather, traction, etc that are difficult to account for.
If you look at the Dragy leaderboard the 2021 is slower than several 2018, 2019, and 2020 vehicles in both 0-60 and the 1/8th mile. Multiple people speculated that Tesla changing the advertised time from 3.2 to 3.1 seconds was done to account for the 5% power boost from a year ago - I would say they were correct.
Not trying to be difficult - I spent a lot of time verifying this.
I was under the impression that battery degradation has a small impact on performance.
It is interesting to see that this is not the case here. Thanks for sharing the video.