Top Gear Model 3 Performance Preview!

[cizUK]

The clip showing SOC may be misleading since it could have been captured before or after the actual run.

All the interior shots show a half full battery, even if you can't see the exact percentage

 

[cizUK]

I just specced the Merc and Tesla, Merc came in at £80,178 and Tesla came in at £54,590.
Merc fuel costs = £4,011/year vs 484/year for Tesla, I.e. 8x the cost or £3,500 extra per year.
Over 4 years, that's £40,000.
It's not even close to the same class.

 

[WarpedOne]

People people ... please do look at the dyno charts and learn how to understand them.

Yes, electric motors do drop in torque as they rev above some treshold RPM (max voltage).
The point of having two motors is that the car stops being motor limited and becomes battery limited without having too big a motor (overspecced).

Above 60kmh or something AWD (P and nonP) can output their max power right to the max car speed.
Switching gears would onyl enable a higher max speed (161 mph for a P).

The reason merc won is TG depleted the charge so it did not have the power of performance version but was closer to a 90%socced DUAL MOTOR version.

 

[Dangerous Fish]

The way a show like TG works is they film several takes from different angles and edit it together. The close ups of the display in the car are shot at a different time to the exteriors of the runs as it's impractical to rig all the cams at the same time and do just one run.

Harris or someone has said elsewhere the main runs were done at 87% Soc.

In any case, TG is an entertainment show and they sometimes simply fabricate a lap time or result to fit the narrative. This is often why they don't show complete laps, although this series they are hardly showing any of them anyway, which seems to be an editorial decision. Maybe they thought it was boring to the demographic they are now aiming at?

In terms of a powerful ICE car getting past a Tesla in a drag race, once they are in their highest gear it's mainly about additional horsepower overcoming frontal area/drag. With bigger motors & batteries, an EV would win that part of the race too.

 

[daniel]

The P3D is a direct competitor to these ///M, AMG and QV cars... all of them are family saloon cars that you can take to the track. It’s awesome that Tesla has the chops to compete and even beat cars with a more celebrated history in Motorsport and racing on their first foray into this segment. But to try to convince yourself that it was an unfair comparison from the start ... family saloon vs track monster... is just disingenuous.
A criticism of the P3D is that it isn’t special enough in terms of go-fast bits. Imagine what the P3D could do if it actually had a well sorted suspension setup and wasn’t running on frisbees. New BMW m3 is coming with awd... hopefully Tesla can update our cars to maintain the edge.

Okay. I get it that racing fans would like the Teslas to beat the classic muscle cars at every measure, not just zero to sixty. But Tesla's whole philosophy is electric transportation. Putting BEVs on the public roads. As cizUK points out above, the Tesla costs about 2/3 what those cars cost.

Tesla could upgrade the "go-fast bits" ( ) to compete with those cars on the track, and we'd all have to pay for them. I did not want to have to pay £80K for a car I will never take to the track. Either that, or they'd have to introduce another entire trim line, something they might do some day but right now they're struggling to build all the trim lines their mass consumer base wants. A racing trim Model 3 would appeal to a tiny market.

So I repeat: Tesla is building cars that have the performance that matters to the great majority of its buyers: Acceleration at real-life road speeds is a great boon for merging and passing in normal driving. Performance at race-track speeds is not something that 99.9% of car buyers want, care about, or are willing to pay for. I would never in a million years give up EAP for a higher top speed.

 

[Paddy3101]

Despite rumor an electric motor isnt perfectly efficient at all RPMs and doesnt produce max torque all the time.

They are currently geared with a single gear for the whole rev range as a best cover all solution because you can. Its not optimal for every speed.

Torque isn't really relevant to the speed/acceleration, power is the factor. (A water wheel may have a HUGE torque, but it won't go very fast)

Like I said, the efficiency of the drive train drops off after it hits max power (at about 6.1K on a P3D), and drops down to approx the same as the dual motor at about 12K. 450->350.
i.e. The same input power is being applied (i.e. MAX Wattage from the battery), but the efficiency decreases, meaning less output power (from the motor/gearbox).

Now the Non-P which doesn't have the power drop-off (because the power is limited lower down) has a flatter curve at about 350.

Adding 2 gearboxes (front and rear), a second gear would move you back up the power curve yes, and gain some of that efficiency back (i.e. you will hit max power again in 2nd gear). BUT at the expense of an overall cost of about 15% across across the board, for the loss in the gearboxes (about what a manual gearbox on an ICE car costs)

That would take the max-power of the P3D down to 380bhp, but drop off with the same shape as it does now.

For most of the power curve, then the Dual Motor would probably be faster than the P3D. (Not including the weight and complexity penalty, and the time taken to shift gears).

N.B. All numbers are rounded and approximated

 

[afadeev]

C63s and ///M3 are both about 50% cheaper to insurance than Tesla Model 3 Performance.
Many theories as to why, but that's how it is.
Sadly.

Not sure I believe this. I just traded in a 2018 Audi S5 Prestige with almost all options for a 2019 Model 3 Performance with every box ticked, and my insurance went down considerably. From $900 to roughly $680 every six months. USAA insurance carrier, perfect record, married, excellent credit.

I can't comment on S5 rates, but I am insuring BMW M3 and TM3P on my policy, concurrently, and the former is $962/year, the later is $1573/year. Same limits and discounts apply to both vehicles.

My car club friend lease-returned his C63s and replaced it with TM3P, and saw his rates go up by 50%.

Your insurance rates may vary (YIRMV).

I find it a tad hard to believe the M3 or (especially) C63 AMG would be less expensive to insure than my S5 was, but I guess I could be wrong.

Certainly seams to be the case for me in NJ. I can't comment on other folks in other states and other circumstances.
Thanks for sharing the data point on S5 insurance rates. I guess, they are even more "impressive" than Tesla's.