A few days ago the photo above “leaked” on social media. The picture allegedly reveals the next iteration of the Tesla Model 3, dubbed Project Highland which is rumored to be released later this year.
This is exciting for a number of reasons. Tesla is known to drastically improve manufacturing quality with each redesign. They also tend to look for ways to use what they’ve learned to make manufacturing of new models cheaper and more efficient than previous ones so this should translate to lower sticker prices.
Except for a few cosmetic changes, the Model 3 design has largely remained the same since its launch in 2017. Today I stumbled across what is clearly a render based on the leaked photo.
Based on what I’ve gathered of Project Highland this render is very close to what the new car will look like. I see design cues in the new Model 3 from the, as yet, unreleased Tesla Roadster. The front-end is definitely sleeker, which should improve the drag coefficient rating and allow for more miles of range.
After owning a 2022 Model 3 Long Range for about seven months and living with it through the worst weather that Mother Nature can conjure, I can say it’s the best car I’ve owned in my thirty-seven years of driving. It’s also a car that most people could easily and happily live with. It's faster, more fun to drive, safer, and (now that I have access to Level 2 charging) less costly to operate than even my Toyota Prius. Right now the biggest barrier is price, they aren’t cheap.
The big test for me was leaving the car for six weeks while we traveled to Arizona for a winter break. As sad as I was to leave the beauty and warmth of the desert I found myself excited to come back to the car. As we were planning to leave for Sedona I was really worried I’d come home to a dead battery since I didn’t have a way to plug the car in at home. I charged the car to 80% just before we boarded our flight and six weeks later I came home to a car with 76% of the charge left.
This translated to an impressive 4% of charge-loss in six weeks. Our garage was heated to 55 degrees and I only checked the Tesla app on my phone once a week because doing so wakes the car up from Deep Sleep mode, and can drain the battery. If the car wasn’t in a heated garage the charge-loss would have been greater.
Having only ever driven traditional gasoline powered cars, the first several months of EV ownership were fraught with anxieties. In hindsight, most of the fears were just based on the unknown, some of them were born of fairly substantial disinformation campaigns.
Over the past few months Model 3 has masterfully and confidently put each of my fears and anxieties to rest. This first experience with leaving the car for a long period of time has cured my final fear.
As this tech gets more efficient and affordable, I’m excited for more people to experience it. Is it perfect? Definitely not, but it’s better in so many ways, in lots of use-cases, for many drivers and the world is about to figure this out on a massive scale.
In this age of polarized opinions and viewpoints I see many people either demonizing EVs or petrol-powered vehicles. It seems you either have to be on one team or another but I see a diverse mix of different powertrains (gasoline, synthetic fuel, hydrogen, EVs) getting us from point A to B on the highways of our near future. For now, I’m happy to be driving a glimpse of that future, my Model 3.
All for now. Trust your instincts, invest in you, live boldly, and take chances.
~Eric Vance Walton~
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