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Transportation Businesses The Almighty Buck

Tesla Model 3 Test Drive: Car Has Bite and Simple Interior (wsj.com) 192

An anonymous reader shares a WSJ article: A first peek inside Tesla's new Model 3 compact car revealed a starker, cozier interior than the more spacious and luxurious Model S. But as the sedan sped off, the experience felt similar. On Friday, the Silicon Valley auto maker showed off details of the all-electric sedan's interior for the first time (Editor's note: the link could be paywalled; alternative source), allowing brief test rides with a roughly 10-minute spin around the factory. The Model 3 represents a milestone for Chief Executive Elon Musk, who has long wanted to create an electric car for the masses. He's betting the new vehicle can help fuel massive growth for his 14-year-old company, projecting Tesla will produce a half-million cars next year, after delivering about 76,000 Model S sedans and Model X sport-utility vehicles last year. The Model 3's exterior was revealed in March last year, but details about the interior have been scarce. The $35,000 sedan is noticeably bare bones inside -- gone are the displays and instrument panel behind the steering wheel and the numerous switches and buttons found in the cockpit of traditional cars. Instead, the Model 3 makes greater use of a video screen in the center dash that controls most of the car's functions.
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Tesla Model 3 Test Drive: Car Has Bite and Simple Interior

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  • The front fascia's lack of anything resembling a grille opening makes the whole thing look like a cheap plastic Chinese R/C car.

    That dashboard looks like it was stolen from a 80s-era concept car and Elon velcro'd a giant iPad to it, made more starkly out of place by the complete lack of gauge cluster.

    • by dunkelfalke ( 91624 ) on Saturday July 29, 2017 @02:13AM (#54902615)

      Why would you have a grille opening in a car that doesn't need an air intake? Besides, these wannabe-mouths are usually ugly. I miss the 80ies, back then they tried to hide these for aerodynamic reasons.

      • Why would you have a grille opening in a car that doesn't need an air intake?

        That black area underneath where the grille opening would be looks like an air intake.

        Either way, the front looks ugly. For a minimalist design, it has unnecessary curves.

        • Why would you have a grille opening in a car that doesn't need an air intake?

          Looks like a front spoiler to me. Personally I like the styling, and that's just it. It's a personal thing. Otherwise there wouldn't be different styling options on the market from different companies.

        • You can't say any of the curves are unnecessary, since you haven't taken it through a wind tunnel. (Real or virtual). Tesla have, and lowering the air resistance is a high priority.

      • What makes you think batteries don't need to be cooled [sciencemag.org]? While EVs don't need as much cooling air as an ICE, they still need some air intake since the most obvious source (underneath) is blocked by a thick metal plate to protect it from being punctured by road debris. (Yes you can use it as a heat sink, but then you're only disseminating heat to a two dimensional layer of air contacting the plate, instead of a volume of air.) And you want a duct anyway so you can put a fan in it to force air through when
        • by Rei ( 128717 )

          The radiators on Tesla vehicles are located on the front, using air ducted underneath the vehicle. They're most active when the vehicle is stationary: when supercharging. Tesla uses a somewhat complex but very efficient system for balancing the varying heating and cooling needs between different parts of the vehicle. Heat can be shunted into or out of the battery pack, motor/inverter heat is captured, heat can be shunted into or out of the cabin, etc.

      • I miss the 80ies, back then they tried to hide these for aerodynamic reasons.

        Were you in an alternate universe then? The 80s cars in my universe were ugly boxes, with grills. It was the 90s when they tried to hide them.

        They've brought them back because the highly-sloped hoods were horrible for pedestrian safety: when you hit a person, they'd bounce up onto (or through) the windshield. Somehow, modern grills are safer (probably are made of somewhat easily-crushed plastic) and don't scoop up pedestrians th

    • LOL US drivers still addicted to grilles. Why not buy a Rolls Royce then?

    • by PsyMan ( 2702529 )
      No Grill, nowhere to hang the coal shovel or the buggy whip, completely useless.
    • Before looking at TF Pictures I thought you were just trolling. I assumed it was just an issue of adjusting to elimination of a number of stupid automobile conventions and aesthetics would adjust.

      Now I don't.

    • I also think the front is a styling miss (but not the rest of the car). My misgivings go the other way though:
      I think the front still looks too much like that of a car with a grille opening. If you don't need a grille, why cling to the traditional form instead of making it even more sleek?
      The front area of the General Motors EV 1 does look better IMHO.
      If you still need a small air inlet, it could go left and right of the license plate. Imagine something like the GM Impact, with the two central air inlets

    • No doubt you would have complained about the first cats that didn't have chrome bumpers (fenders).

      Form follows function. EVs don't need grills. You can expect that no car in the future will have a grill. And that doesn't mean they'll be less attractive. It just means you are conservative in your taste. Your idea or what looks good is something that looks not very different from what you've seen before.

    • U know, since you are so certain that Tesla M3 is a disaster, u should not only SHORT Tesla stock, but also consider buying something like a new MB S class. You will really teach musk a lesson that you are smarter than he is.
    • by Rei ( 128717 ) on Saturday July 29, 2017 @08:24PM (#54906629) Homepage

      Lol, it's you! I was wondering what sort of idiot must be out there (but which I had never encountered before) who automakers were catering to when putting fake grilles on cars that didn't need them.

  • by nicolaiplum ( 169077 ) on Saturday July 29, 2017 @04:26AM (#54902835)

    The interior designer they poached from Volvo clearly hasn't had time to improve anything yet. Since he was only hired 6 months ago, this design pre-dates him, and you can tell. It's terrible.

    All the display is to the side - so you have to look sidways and down to find out anything about the vehicle, even its speed. That means you are not looking at the road for longer.

    The display is high gloss - so you have to look through reflections and highlights to read the screen, it is not shaded from outside light at all. That means you are not looking at the road for longer and get more eyestrain.

    Trying to adjust any functions of the car without tactile feedback means you have to not only look to find what to press, but look to confirm the action happened correctly - so you spend longer looking at the controls and less at the road.

    It looks like an ergonomic failure and an unpleasant car to drive which reduces safety by increasing driver distraction.

    I don't even know if the seats are any good; the Model S seats certainly aren't.

    Then there is "unlock via app". So, what happens if your phone and the car are not online to the Internet? The Model S app-unlock is via the Internet, not any short range connection like Bluetooth. Let alone if your phone gets r00ted and the app key is stolen. There's a backup physical key - but if I have to remember to carry the physical key all the time what is the point of app-unlock anyway? They might as well implement having a key you have to have near the car for more reliable unlocking and better security - like every other car manufacturer. This is just more Internet of Shit Things (that spy on you).

    • by AmiMoJo ( 196126 ) on Saturday July 29, 2017 @07:42AM (#54903373) Homepage Journal

      The interior is well designed, spacious like a Japanese car and with lots of storage spaces. The videos people are posting show it's well made, better than the S and X. It's clean and simple, easy to maintain and attractive.

      The display is a daylight readable anti-reflection coated. The screens in the S and X don't have issues with readability.

    • by c ( 8461 ) <beauregardcp@gmail.com> on Saturday July 29, 2017 @09:16AM (#54903687)

      All the display is to the side - so you have to look sidways and down to find out anything about the vehicle, even its speed. That means you are not looking at the road for longer.

      It's at steering wheel height, even slightly higher than a typical console sits, so it's probably not that bad. The center gauge layout isn't unique... the Nissan X-Trail (and probably some other models) used to have that layout and you do get used to it rather quickly.

      The bigger concern I'd have is that screen is freaking busy with a lot of small details... Unless that's just a secondary mode and the real driving screen is more like a typical gauge layout I have a feeling the eye will linger on it a lot longer than is safe.

  • I'm pretty blind on my right eye. If this thing doesn't have heads up display, finding out my current speed would probably be less than ideal for safety.

    • by Nutria ( 679911 )

      I'm not blind in that eye, but there's a damned good reason why important gauges are put right in front of the driver...

      • Re:No dashboard (Score:4, Insightful)

        by drinkypoo ( 153816 ) <drink@hyperlogos.org> on Saturday July 29, 2017 @07:28AM (#54903309) Homepage Journal

        I'm not blind in that eye, but there's a damned good reason why important gauges are put right in front of the driver...

        It's a car for people who hate driving. You can tell whether a car is for people who like driving by where they put the tachometer. If it's centered in the cluster, it's a driver's car. If it's off center, but still behind the wheel, it's a sporty car. If it's smaller than the speedometer, it's probably a diesel pickup. If it's hard to find, it's irrelevant. And if it's missing, then the car was designed for your grandmother. Of course, EVs don't really need tachos, do they? But they should have one anyway.

        • It's a car for people who want to take as little part in the driving as possible. It's designed as a car that drives itself most of the time. Even though the Tesla autonomy is not up to delivering on that yet.

        • by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

          A tacho wouldn't really make sense on an EV. It would just show a linear increase with speed, as most just have a fixed reduction gear. Effectively it's a speedo with a different scale.

          Maybe the closest equivalent in an EV is the power meter.

        • Re:No dashboard (Score:4, Informative)

          by Octorian ( 14086 ) on Saturday July 29, 2017 @11:16AM (#54904185) Homepage

          Of course, EVs don't really need tachos, do they? But they should have one anyway.

          A tachometer doesn't make any sense on an EV. But the equivalent, a kW meter, does. I rather like having one on my Model S. (I also like having a gauge cluster right behind the steering wheel, and the center screen being in an enclosed mount. Worried that the "detached" screen on the Model 3 is going to break too easily.)

        • by lgw ( 121541 )

          There will be a new kind of enthusiast driver for electric cars, eventually. It's weird, when gas cars were new and primitive, enthusiasts and "modders" were most of the market, but electric cars as a whole do nothing for drivers yet. They're for an odd sort of tech enthusiast who doesn't want to tinker - perhaps "geek posers"? Well, it's a sizable market, whatever it is.

          Cars with the tach front and center, but an automatic transmission are the most humorous, of course. We'll never see the end of "sedan

      • Yes, tradition. When you look down, your eyes need to refocus to a radically different distance than basically infinity. It takes time for that to occur. It then takes time to shift back.

        Moving the cluster to the middle reduces that shift, making it faster. It also puts more of the road into your peripheral vision.

        Now whether it actually makes enough of a difference is debatable, but that's the theory behind it.

        • by Nutria ( 679911 )

          Moving the cluster to the middle reduces that shift, making it faster. It also puts more of the road into your peripheral vision.

          When it's in the center, I keep my eyes on the road, and my peripheral vision tells me if the speedometer dial is approximately where it should be.

    • Minis have always had their speedo in the centre of the car. It's never harmed their sales.

      http://www.seriouswheels.com/p... [seriouswheels.com]

      • It's still crap. And you can't compare the contrast in both displays.

        • I've seen many videos of people driving Model S and Model X cars. And never once has the screen been unreadable, no matter what the light conditions or direction of the sun. Nor have I heard any owners complain about it.

          It's almost as if Tesla knew the panel was going to be installed in a car and specced it appropriately and adjust brightness on the fly as required.

          But hey, you go on coming up with the first objecti0on that enters your head, regardless of whether it's an actual problem with Tesla cars or no

  • From the article: "And the best part: when I pulled into park, I asked about the key. The car doesn’t haven’t one. You control the car through the Tesla app on your phone."

    So this is the best part of the Model 3, a car that costs at least $35.000? Are you kidding me?
  • Everything operated by the touchscreen is the #1 reason why I hate Tesla and will never buy one. From a usability perspective, it's the dumbest possible thing you can do and the very definition of everything wrong with getting Silicon Valley to design anything.

    I sat in a Model S, and I thought just that was a disaster. Operating anything other than the wheel and pedals is ridiculous. I was hoping the Model 3 would have a more traditional interior because the vehicle was designed to be a bit more mainstre

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