Tesla Model3: 8 Months ownership

I’ve never really considered myself as a Car guy. I like cars, sure, but in a more general way, I like sensations: speed, acceleration, you name it. Although, I would never have thought blogging about one in the past.

Today as I woke up, I noticed that my car received the latest Over The Air update. I consider updates for any other device I own as being more annoying than useful but, Tesla’s updates are the exception. I thought I’d do a retrospective view of the past 8 months that I’ve owned the car and driven it beyond the 40,000 Km line, trying to list what happened and what changed…

First of all, let me present you the car I bought, the Tesla Model 3 Performance:

When I bought the car, it was the early days of Tesla shipping Model 3’s to Europe and I was among the first lucky persons to receive it! The delivery day of the car was a truly exciting experience and, the first reaction as I drove away from the delivery center was to tell my 6 years old: “Dang, we’re in the future now!”.

Over the following weeks, I have gotten used to receive periodic updates to the car, whose have been bringing a handful of new features. A lot of people out there would eventually make fun of the car getting Netflix and YouTube.. as it may not be that useful, but it’s not just about that usefulness. Imagine buying a car, capable of so many things, but improving as you are owning it. This is quite a unique feeling which you can not even wrap your head around with about any other car manufacturer. Let me try to, retrospectively, list the features that I did not have at the delivery of my car but which have been pushed later on:

• Auto High/Low beam: Okay, this one is still a WIP in my opinion, but that’s something that was not in the initial specs of the car!
• Sentry: Originally, my car only had the DashCam (!!)
• Navigate on Autopilot: Originally, in Belgium at least, only Auto-steer was available, Navigate on Autopilot came in later along with the car being able to get on ramp and off ramp!
• Netflix, YouTube, Caraoke: Part of the recent V10 roll-out.
• CupHead, Chess, … — Infotainment like nowhere else: Who can boast plugging a USB controller to its car and start playing retro games?
• HomeLink: The original list of supported device by the HomeLink chip present in my car was not including my garage door, this one came supported after an update!
• Link driver’s profile with the Key Card (or Phone), so my seats readjust whenever I enter the car!
• Dog Mode — Or as we are able to use it: the Bird mode! (see below)

• Scheduled departure (The charge ends when you leave and the air conditioning prepare the car!)
• Automatic Navigation: Select the address based off your habits.
• Faster supercharging!
• Single Pedal driving

I’m actually confident that I forgot to list a ton of other improvements that I received (and feel free to supplement my list in the comments if you see I’ve missed some!). I can’t remember all of the new stuff that have been pushed to this car… There’s one though that I have purposefully not listed above as I wanted to treat it separately… Let’s try to imagine that you have bought a car from any mainstream manufacturer which, one day, call you and say:

“We just found out that your engine is more capable than we initially thought, so let’s get you some more horsepower for free…”

No car manufacturer ever.

With this car, it’s not just one increase in power but two, that I have received over time. This morning, my car has greeted me with the following message:

Overall, the car has gained close to 100hp from the time I took delivery! This was not even something I would’ve dream about in the past…

To wrap this post up, let me just mention that for a month now, we’ve became a Tesla family, since my wife decided to make the step as well and buy her Model 3! She was looking at me in a strange way when I initially got the car and wondered a lot when I was getting those updates. Now I can only smile happily when I see her being excited about the new release being deployed.

Let me close with a picture of us doing some gardening in the summer, the “Tesla Way” 😉

Please also share how you’re having fun in the comment section…