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!
-
Want to remove ads? Register an account and login to see fewer ads, and become a Supporting Member to remove almost all ads.
Performance Model 3 Drag Race - 2021 vs 2018 - Is it Faster?
- Thread starter MasterC17
- Start date
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!
Awesome! Thanks for the heads up. Maybe I should just try to find some light weight sport tires....
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.
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.
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.
To be completely honest - you're probably going to run faster in the colder months. If you get the battery up to temperature and the drive units are cooler you will have better performance, not worse. In the summer, you're likely to have hot everything, which will give you worse performance. Given the way the cooling system is designed, this is a likely outcome (better performance in winter). That being said, we're talking about pretty small differences here.
In regards to your point about the average, I have that data too. The 2021 averaged 312.21kW from 0-90 MPH whereas the 2018 averaged 309.58kW from 0-90 MPH. I'm not sure that is enough of a difference to tell us much of anything.
I'll try to do a more comprehensive test in the future at an actual drag strip.
Already on it - the 54.4lb dead-weights have been removed from the vehicle!
Good to know! I've got 18" Enkei's with the Tesla-Spec MXM4's on the 2018 right now, and I only really noticed a lack of traction in the cold/wet, but I haven't been logging the traction control behavior either.
BetterSlowDown
Member
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.
Thank you, I'll try to get more comprehensive data in the future in a more controlled environment. Doing the best I can here towards the middle of winter
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
Awesome job, OP!!!
i hate to tell you, but you did not prove it. There are always differences between cars, even though they are in theory the same. .1 is such a small difference.
And as said above, Dragy leaderboard might say something when the temperature goes up, not now.
So interesting data, but there is more to explore.
my battery has lost 13% and it is still within 0.01 seconds on a 0-60 and 1/8 mile time. So I’m not sure if a higher % loss makes a difference, but mine has not, at all.
