Tesla Model 3 vs. BMW M3 [video]
topgear.comI just rented a P3D a couple weeks ago for a weekend, and I agree with the review, it would spank an M3. Hell, it would even spank my Camaro. But it's not a driver's car. Steering is numb, handling is competent but it's a very heavy car, seats are disapointing as hell. I was impressed, but not enough to drop 60 grand. And to be honest, between an M3 and a P3D, I'd probably still choose the M3.
It really, really depends on what you want from a car. If you want to win stoplight races, almost nothing will hang with a P3D. And if you're not an enthusiast, then it's probably sportier than anything you're familiar with. Go for it.
I strongly agree with you. I don’t care if it spanks the M3 in a straight line. The M3 would still be the car with the better mechanics, handling and overall driving pleasure and still fast as hell for everyday life driving.
Yes my opinion is subjective. But if you like cars you might know what I am talking about.
I'm only aware of Model S, 3, X and Y. What's P3D?
It's not an official designation, it is informal lingo for the Model 3 Performance. It's a riff on the P##D system that Tesla uses for the Model S.
P = performance 3 = model 3 D = dual motor (all wheel drive)
Model 3 (Performance Series (more HP) w. All-Wheel Drive)
I'm not surprised it would spank a Camaro, the Tesla is AWD while the Camaro is RWD. Shame to hear about the seats though, I'd think that Tesla would put in some Recaros at least to give it more of a sporty feel.
I mean I think it might even take my Camaro on a road course, and my car is no slouch at the track. In a straight line it's no contest. The handling on my Camaro is very sharp (it's a 1LE), definitely a step up on the Tesla, but the ability of the electric motor to put down full torque at any time is a pretty significant advantage.
Seats were by far my biggest gripe. Took a while just to find an adjustment that didn't make my lower legs go numb. They have almost no lateral support, and the bottom cushion is fairly short -- my legs were overhanging by a good six inches or so. That pressure point at the front edge is most likely why I was getting the tingling.
It's so easy to contract with Recaro for seats, but Tesla really wants to be vertically integrated. They've improved the seats already at least once on the Model 3, and a couple times on the Model S, so I'm hoping that the Model Y will be comfortable.
If I’m not mistaken, seat suppliers specifically were one of the third party suppliers that Tesla got burned on in the past, which was likely the primary driver to vertically integrate them.
If you're going to track it, you're not going to mind ripping out the seats and putting something more sporty in with a five point harness. The vehicle is heavier, but adjusting to it would be similar (IMHO) to adjusting to sports cars with a mid engine layout.
If you want a dedicated track car, a Model 3 is a pretty expensive way to get there, and I'm not entirely sure how you'd have a good track day with all the recharging you'd have to stop for.
If you want a street car that you can track, you might swap in Recaros (I've done it...) but you do give up an airbag or two. Five-point harnesses are bad news on a street car, I definitely recommend against that.
Nobody is expecting racing buckets but you shouldn't be disappointed in the stock seats in a 60k vehicle.
My last car was an E92 M3 MT (with Tech, Premium, Competition packages and a modded exhaust). It was the most fun vehicle I've ever driven. It had plenty of power, and introduced me to the side of cars other than straight line power. It also had plenty of luxury inside, the car was credibly comfortable. All in all I think it compared very favorably to my friends R8 with nearly as much performance and plenty more luxury.
It was however incredibly expensive to maintain, especially those competition package brakes!
A friend of mine has the Model 3, but not the performance version. He hasn't had it long but the torque is very comparable and I'll bet the maintenance is quite a bit lower.
That said I'll miss that RWD behavior and those exhaust notes.
That car is bananas, so fun to drive. I had the 2013 e92 m3 competition but very similar. Incredible luxury, 3.9 second 0-60 that literally slammed your head back into the seat producing a stupidly happy grin.
The best part of that car was the handling/suspension and the stereo though. You could put it in M Dynamic Mode, which let you do controlled drifts. Shredded tires, but goodness it was fun to drift corners everywhere.
The sound system was the best I've ever heard, far better than a custom $4,000 system. 800 watts, a 10 inch sub under both front seats. That car was the closest thing to perfection I've personally ever driven. Its only real flaw was it didn't have quite enough low end torque ( 300 lb ft ) because it was a naturally aspirated v8. Plus you had to really baby the throttle on the low end so the tires wouldn't start sliding around when you accelerated from a stop.
I had literally 0 problems with it in three years outside of the stupid Takata airbag recall, which is why I didn't keep it. But you can't blame that on bmw. Plus I mean I spent a lot on tires, but that's on me :-)
At the time I test drove a comparable tesla and thought it accelerated really slow and had poor handling. Also it didn't even have a backup camera, decent stereo, or integration with popular music streaming services. But I hear they have gotten better.
For me the big benefit of the tesla is that you can shave 15-20 minutes off your commute by using the carpool lane and still have a decent car. Plus you are doing something to offset climate change.
I'm glad I'm not the only one who is still ridiculously in love with their M3 experience. Haha.
Yeah I spent a fair bit on tires too, also on me.
What else was expensive to maintain, and why? Was this on a new M3?
It was an E92, and specifically the 2008 model. The most expensive thing I ever did was the brakes. The competition package has floating discs and they were ~$2500 to replace. There are just a lot of design decisions on a car like that which favour performance over maintainability. Another example from when I first got it was the car was the gas tank would only fill up to about 3/4. Turns out because the car is so low the tank has a saddlebag design and a transfer pump transfers gas between the two sides of the tank. Though the truth is even oil is a lot more expensive as it drank six quarts of 10W60.
A newer car would have likely been a little easier on maintenance, but the truth is the thing begs to be driven hard, which also doesn't help. Haha
Sorry I realized I didn't directly answer your question. It was used, ~64000 miles and ~7 years old when I got it.
In this test performed by the show host (not a professional driver) the Tesla Model 3 won for 1/4 mile, 0-100-0, and the hot lap. The BMW M3 was deemed “more fun to drift”. Looks good for the Tesla!
I'm not sure it really won the spirit of the 0-100-0. Yes it completed the task faster, but it also required more distance, implying that it takes significantly longer to brake. A quick search suggests this is a known Model 3 weakness.
Edit: It would have been more honest to have one test of acceleration and another of only braking. Also, the Tesla won the hot-lap but had significant body roll that made it difficult to stay on the track... This video is really only appealing to people who already like the Tesla.
A quick lookup of the curb weight and the OEM spec'd tires would also indicate this.
If you really like driving sports cars, "more fun to drift" is not just a nice to have. It can be make or break on the decision.
Does anyone trust topgear for actual reviews, especially when tesla is involved? The courts literally ruled that you shouldn't:
> Mr Justice Tugendhat said that no Top Gear viewer would have reasonably compared the car's performance on the show's airfield track to its likely performance on a public road
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Top_Gear_controversies#Tesla_R...
Top Gear is under new ownership. Clarkson and Wilman sold the IP to the BBC and took their team with them to Amazon; post-2016 Top Gear is a completely new entity operating under old branding.
The new Top Gear has been nothing but fair about EVs and has given glowing reviews to several all-electric models.
Top gear is automotive themed entertainment, not automotive entertainment. Much to the dismay of many a Hilux fanboy you really shouldn't be taking shows like this as indicative of fact any more than you take that gold mining show on discovery as indicative of the economics of the mining industry.
Clarkson and co haven't been involved with Top Gear for a while now - even before that though, the Top Gear website has always been much more "sensible" than the TV show. TBH, it always felt completely separate.
The former staff of the top gear who originally made comments towards the tesla are currently hosting a show on amazon
These super fast cars are a threat to life and safety in urban environments. EV or not, these fast vehicles should not be sold as these speeds do not serve any valid purpose.
I just came here to say something similar. It drives me nuts that this sort of power and performance is let loose on public streets.
At some point I would think we'd be able to have some sort of geofencing system were a car would be forced into "golf cart" mode once it's off the highway.
Where is this sentiment coming from? Let the driver (who is legally, ethically, and morally responsible for the operation of the vehicle they are controlling) judge the appropriate safety boundaries of the environment they're currently driving through. A 45mph zone would be more appropriately driven at anything from 15 to 70mph, depending on so many factors other than "it's off the highway".
At any rate, don't turn a fine piece of engineering that many people have an emotional connection with, not to mention pay a lot of hard-earned money for, into some vaguely-autonomous, ToS-bound appliance that does not what its owner sees fit, but what its maker deems appropriate from medium earth orbit.
Censorship applies to behavior as well as words.
> Let the driver (who is legally, ethically, and morally responsible for the operation of the vehicle they are controlling) judge the appropriate safety boundaries of the environment they're currently driving through.
Time and time again, it's been shown that people do not have the capacity to make correct judgements on simple things, let alone things that threaten other's lives.
What's better than geofencing is that the long needed depth sensing is coming to Tesla cars (watch the latest investor presentation about autonomous driving to see how it was trained). I believe emergency braking will save a lot of lives.
On the contrary, as an owner of a slow/heavy 2002 luxury vehicle, the improved acceleration and braking of newer cars offers the individual and machine a greater range of options to avoid danger and improve safety for the passenger.
FYI: youtube-dl works with this URL.
Cannot stand watching a video surrounded by a ton of crap.
youtube-dl -o - 'https://www.topgear.com/videos/video/video-tesla-model-3-vs-bmw-m3' | vlc -There is a maximize button.
I think the 0-100-0 point should go to BMW because it stopped a few meters before Tesla (visible at 00:02:45). This can make a difference in real traffic.
not if the m3 driver is asleep!
I thought there would be an article with text. Meh.
Thanks, we've noted that in the headline.
I admittedly haven't watched the video yet (although I plan to and will update my comment), but as someone who really wants to love an EV, the technology just isn't there for me yet. The range is not nearly enough for me. Yes, 300 miles is not enough. Just this weekend I drove between LA and SF twice, and while I had to stop and get gas it took me 5 minutes instead of however long it would take me to charge the car enough to make it the rest of the way (I'd guess around 30 minutes). This is absolutely positively unacceptable when I just want to get from point A to point B, at least for me. The other factor is that batteries are heavy, and this destroys how fun a car is. Weight is always the enemy with performance vehicles (and I feel an M3 is too heavy as well actually). Yes, the cars have incredible acceleration - better than the majority of performance vehicles. But they handle like shit, and this is coming from someone who test drove a Tesla after driving there in a '94 Camry. I honestly preferred the way the Camry handled, and everyone would unequivocally agree my Camry was a piece of shit (parts of the car were actually falling off of it). The other thing to consider is that batteries overheat, so it can only go around the track I believe once or twice before you have to pull over for it to cool down.
However, the idea of instant acceleration, a flat torque band, silent performance, and less pollution is very appealing to me. But the technology just isn't there for me yet, plus the inconvenience of the currently limited charging network compared to gas stations. Yes, I know it's getting better and I'm happy that it works for many people, but it does not work for me. I look forward to the day it does.
This is why I believe that plug-in hybrids will last much longer than people expect. I know most techno-geeks think that PHEVs (Plugin Hybrid Electric Vehicles) are "stop-gap" technologies.... but they solve the range problem AND solve the "batteries are heavy" problem very elegantly.
Lets be frank: Li-Ion batteries may have gotten dramatically lighter, but they're no where close to how light gasoline is. PHEVs allow gasoline engines to operate at their optimal power-generation band as a gasoline generator (optimizing your gas milage), while also using standard electric connections to charge on a daily basis.
So you don't need many Li-Ion batteries for PHEVs (lighter car, cheaper to make). You still get the flat torque band of EVs, and if you manage to charge your vehicle within 50-miles, you won't use any gasoline either.
In the long term, gas stations will grow less profitable as electricity becomes sufficient for 80+% of driving cases. But it seems more sustainable to downscale gas stations in the USA rather than to build out a supercharging network.
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Pure-electric high performance cars like Model S will be fun toys for those who can afford it. But PHEVs are the ones that seem to make financial sense for the majority of consumers. Be it the Prius Prime, Chevy Volt, or Honda Clarity.
This seems unlikely given that the Volt has been canceled and much of the momentum is moving towards electric only platforms, even from the major manufacturers.
The technology for the Volt still exists. Rumors are that an SUV-version of the Volt is coming (just like the electric-SUV version of the Mustang is allegedly in the works).
Sedan marketplace is shrinking, SUVs are growing. GM doesn't want to waste its hybrid technology, but also doesn't want to bet on the Sedan market anymore.
EDIT: Note that a 20-mile range PHEV (the typical one) is insufficient. 50-mile range PHEV seem to be the sweet spot for me.
The Volt was cancelled because the Cruze was cancelled so it doesn't say much about the PHEV market.
With the new Tesla Model S Long Range (400 miles of range on freeway), you can drive non stop between LA and San Francisco.
Isn't the real problem with using EVs for long distance travel the charging time, though? My petrol engine car has finite range as well, but if I'm running low, I can easily find somewhere to fill up and it takes less than five minutes. If you have an EV, how easy is it to find a charging station, and how long does it take to recharge? Some of these practical issues still seem to be a long way from being solved, and until they are, pure EVs seem to have more potential for reducing emissions locally in congested urban areas than as long distance transportation.
With EVs that you can charge at home, that means that for your normal driving that you probably do 80 to 90 % of the time, you NEVER need to stop to "fill up" because you charge every night at home. The tradeoff is that when you do decide to drive more than 250 to 350 miles in one trip, you'll need to take at least one break where you charge.
If you optimize only for the long journeys, you miss out on the benefits from normal driving which you probably do a lot more often.
If you optimize only for the long journeys, you miss out on the benefits from normal driving which you probably do a lot more often.
Please be careful with that sort of assumption, though. For example, I work from home and have a lot of day-to-day facilities quite nearby, so on any given day I might not drive anywhere at all. If I'm driving, it's probably either because I need to carry a lot with me to some local event or because I'm travelling a longer distance. There are certainly efforts to encourage more of this sort of lifestyle in planning new residential areas in my country (the UK) and reduce the need for routine daily commuting over short-to-medium distances by car, so if we're taking a long-term view then we should allow for that.
You’re never more than 150 miles from a Supercharger in the US, and it takes ~30 minutes to fully charge on road trips (which is a fair compromise for never going to the gas station day to day).
What about the rest of the world, though? Granted the US has a greater problem with harmful emissions than almost anywhere else combined with a culture of big, inefficient vehicles that make these alternatives particularly attractive. But people in other places are asking about the future of transportation and how to make things more sustainable and environmentally friendly too, and the arithmetic doesn't necessarily work out the same way if you're starting from a more normal baseline.
Electric busses, scooters, and taxis for urban areas, electric cars for private owners and suburban/rural areas.
I agree with the basic sentiment that EVs have potential but aren't quite there yet.
One issue that I've seen raised a few times now is how honest the environmental credentials of these EVs really are. Sure, you aren't emitting pollution from your petrol/diesel engine as you drive. However, you have the emissions from whatever electricity source you use for charging instead, which obviously depends on how environmentally friendly or otherwise your power supply is. Crucially, you also have the effects of manufacturing these vehicles. Particularly when it comes to the batteries, those are still very significant. On top of that, batteries for EVs are heavy, and shifting all that extra weight around has a cost as well.
Just last week, there was a study being widely reported that suggested the true overall lifetime CO2 emissions given typical lifetime and usage levels for a car would make an electric vehicle worse than a diesel one of otherwise similar specification, much of this due to the hidden costs in mining key elements used in the battery.
Given that some of the materials involved are also relatively rare (or at least relatively difficult to supply viably in large quantities) I think the jury is still out on whether the modern generation of EVs will bring the big improvements that some of the environmentalists are hoping for.
Edit: To those anonymously downvoting, it would be more constructive and probably a lot more interesting to discuss actual facts and scientific evidence. For example, if you know of substantial, robust research on the environmental impacts of mining the materials needed for EV batteries on a scale where these vehicles become mass market rather than a niche product, please share it so the rest of us can learn something. Likewise, if you have substantial knowledge about the likely efficiency of improving EV technology, charging facilities and the sources behind them compared to other new or evolving models for powering vehicles over the next 10-20 years such as hybrid models or alternative fuels, please comment accordingly.
If you want to look at it that way, you also should include the emissions/environment impact included in acquiring the oil, building refineries, the emissions during the refinery process, and the shipment of the fuel around the country.
https://cleantechnica.com/2018/02/19/electric-car-well-to-wh...
And with electric cars, the ongoing CO2 emissions can be limited by where you get your charge. If you have solar for example, your not contributing any additional emissions beyond what it took to produce your solar setup. With an internal combustion engine, you don't really have much choice on how your fuel is produced.
If you want to look at it that way, you also should include the emissions/environment impact included in acquiring the oil, building refineries, the emissions during the refinery process, and the shipment of the fuel around the country.
Yes, we should.
As I said, so far it looks like the jury is still out. The problem with many of these reports, including much of last week's commentary on the study I mentioned and also including the source you linked to in the parent comment, is that the popular summaries are often light on key details so it's hard to make meaningful like-for-like comparisons based on the available reporting alone. And so far, it has often been remarkably difficult to track down and evaluate the primary sources behind a lot of these reports, on both sides.
It's also worth observing that some of these claims aren't necessarily contradictory. It's certainly conceivable (without seeing more data to confirm either way) that the average petrol/diesel vehicle in the US is relatively big and inefficient compared to those in say Europe or Japan. Meanwhile, the environmental impact of an EV is going to depend on how environmentally friendly the energy supplies ultimately used for charging are, which apparently varies dramatically across the US based on your linked source, and presumably varies elsewhere as well.
If our national power grids and/or local microgeneration facilities at homes and offices continue to move towards more environmentally friendly sources, and if the environmental costs of the batteries do not increase significantly as more EVs are produced, then it seems reasonable to assume that at some point it would become more environmentally friendly in terms of emissions to use EVs. So far, I see a lot of loaded arguments and cherry-picking from both sides of the debate, which makes it difficult to know whether we have yet passed that point in any given set of circumstances.
This is a common argument, but I think it's a great example of perfect being the enemy of good for a couple of reasons.
1) Cars (especially diesels) emit far more particulates and carbon in real world driving conditions compared to idealized testing. The sort of stop and go, light to light driving we do on a daily basis running errands while the engine is cold is the worst edge case for an internal combustion engine. It's also the sort of driving EVs really shine at, since a big chunk of the energy spent getting up to speed is recaptured during regen braking and sitting idle uses no energy.
2) CO2 scrubbing, heat recapture and other techniques to reduce emissions are far more practical and economical at grid scale. Mandating better emissions on cars only affects new sales, but new rules for power stations can be retroactive.
3) EVs get cleaner as the grid does. ICE cars only get worse at emissions over their lifespan. The shift to EVs is really a two pronged approach, with improvements to the grid as another major focus.
Yes, this is all true. However, it's also fair to say that a lot of "green" technologies have been oversold over the past decade or two, with their realistic environmental credentials at the time of use not necessarily living up to either their long-term potential or the hype in the promotional literature. Moreover, some (not all, of course) green advocacy groups are among the worst offenders when it comes to distorting science and cherry-picking evidence to build an argument around their preferred world view.
It is important that we look to the future, and it may be necessary to accept some compromises along the way as we transition to technologies and lifestyle choices that will be better in the long term. No-one is disputing this, at least not in this discussion that I can see. But I don't think this is a perfect-vs-good argument. It's more a good-vs-not-good-yet argument, and trying to move ahead with a technology on a large scale before it's ready isn't necessarily a good option at all. As ever, we should be guided on such matters by robust scientific evidence and strategic long-term planning as much as possible.
The very simple thermodynamics of green technology are this:
You set a PV panel out in the sun, you get free electricity as long as the sun shines. For ever.
You set up an otto cycle engine to burn something and generate power: you get nice power. As long as you keep digging up and procuring fuel, and dealing with (or forcing someone else to deal with) the waste products. Good luck with that.
This has been the physics of renewables since I first learned about them, since I was a child, about 45-ish years ago. The politics of it have also been: "we can't switch to renewables now, we've got too much invested in burnables now - so lets transition gradually."
And, in fact - we haven't transitioned gradually.
It's not that it's not ready.
It's that the people who don't want change - aren't ready. And frankly - I'm tired of them already. And their enablers and apologists.
Unfortunately, simplistic explanations that are understandable to a child don't always model reality. If it were that easy, we'd have solved energy security and climate change a very long time ago.
The (real) arguments about transitioning gradually have very little to do with past investments in fossil fuel production and much more to do with whether we yet have the ability to manufacture and deploy better alternatives efficiently at scale.
Once upon a time, those PV panels you mentioned cost more in resources to develop, manufacture and install than they were likely to save over their working lifetime. Of course, the technology has come on a long way since then, but if we'd all gone out and stuck panels all over our roofs in those early days, it would have been counterproductive.
Today we face some similar questions with the lithium batteries currently used in popular EVs. It's all very well looking at Tesla aiming to manufacture a few hundred thousand vehicles per year, but total global car supplies (and remember, cars aren't the only vehicles on the road) are approaching one hundred million per year. Even assuming we could magic up 100 Gigafactories to produce that many batteries -- and keep in mind that Tesla's first Gigafactory is on a five-year build programme that hasn't finished yet -- we'd need about a million tonnes of lithium per year to sustain production using the technology and processes we have today. That's an order of magnitude more than the current annual global supply, and at that burn rate we'd deplete the entire known global reserves in 1-2 decades. There are analogous concerns over the availability of other essential elements for the production of current technology EV batteries, such as cobalt.
So if you think we are ready and anyone who says otherwise is some sort of apologist, I invite you to explain how we're going to scale up battery production, gather enough raw materials to go into those batteries, and presumably develop a suitable recycling programme, so everyone can be switching to EVs within the kinds of timescales that environmental lobby groups are currently calling for. Otherwise, you're really just arguing for changing our infrastructure to use a different set of natural resources that still has a finite supply that we'd be in danger of exhausting.
I just want to thank you for an incredibly insightful comment.