Teaching teenager to drive in the M3 - Chill mode

[MarcM]

I'm planning on getting a M3 and I am hesitating to trade my old car.
I need to teach my teenager to drive and on one side the old car is still good but way cheap while on the other side the M3 could be easier to learn on (?) and safer with the chill mode on?

Would any parent have any experience to share?

 

[Tam]

I'm planning on getting a M3 and I am hesitating to trade my old car.
I need to teach my teenager to drive and on one side the old car is still good but way cheap while on the other side the M3 could be easier to learn on (?) and safer with the chill mode on?

Would any parent have any experience to share?

I've switched to "Chill" Mode ever since it first came out in one of the updates and I barely see any apparent change at all. That's because I came from cheap, small and slow gasoline cars so Chill is very impressive to me.

I wouldn't say it's "safer" with the Chill mode as there's still plenty of torque for a collision.

But sure, I would use the Chill Mode because there's less torque for acceleration which will make a collision very tiny bit less forceful.

If I have resources, I would make sure my kids can do all the acceleration/speed they want through a High Performance Driver Education and then on a race track after that but not on the regular streets and not with a bunch of other teenagers in the car.

 

[DopeGhoti]

You can also limit the top speed of the car via the software with the Model 3, so that your learning-driver offspring cannot exceed, say, 80 miles per hour. This is irrespective of Chill Mode or the TACC speed setting.

 

[MrJeffWilson]

Chill mode, certainly. This will be appreciated by all any time s/he has to back up.

 

[NYCR160]

When my son was 16 years old we did about 1/3 of his learning in the M3. We did not use chill mode and he did fine. We did most of the highway learning in the M3 since I could watch for merging traffic on the backup camera.

For insurance reasons I would keep the old car in the family. Adding new, teenage driver to the Tesla will be costly.

 

[Pkmmte]

I taught my wife how to drive using only my Model 3 earlier this year when she was 18. It worked out pretty well and mentioned that she didn't feel much of a difference whether chill mode was on or not, so we ended up disabling it.

Creep mode was very useful for learning how to back into spaces, though.

 

[GenSao]

I suggest training your teenager on the car type they will like be driving. Personally, I would keep the old car for them to drive the "classic" way, and minimize costs (insurance, use of existing asset, and loss of lower value car in an accident).

 

[afadeev]

I suggest training your teenager on the car type they will like be driving. Personally, I would keep the old car for them to drive the "classic" way, and minimize costs (insurance, use of existing asset, and loss of lower value car in an accident).

+1 on teach them on what they will be driving.
If you are not prepared to pass your TM3 onto them (and pay $$$$/month to insure that combination), then pick another car.

Personally, I would pick another car.
Learning to monitor and override finicky AP, on top of learning to drive and staying focused, is just too much.

a