In today's video, I'm
going to be sharing with you
seven real things that I wish I knew
before buying my Tesla Model 3.
Now I was lucky enough to buy
one of the 2019 Tesla Model 3s
that was considered the sleeper edition.
Now, if you're not
familiar with what that is,
it's basically a long-range
all-wheel-drive body
with the performance software.
This costs me $51,500,
(registers rings)
which is less than the performance model,
but more than the long-range
all-wheel-drive model.
With that being said,
there are seven things
that I absolutely wish that
I knew before buying this car
that I've learned as of now.
I've owned the car for
almost one-full year now.
I have about 15,000 miles on the car,
and I've learned things
as recent as last week.
In proper YouTube style,
I have to save the best one for last.
So stick around to the end of this video.
Number seven is going to blow your mind.
With that being said,
let's get into this video,
starting with number one.
The first thing that I wish I knew
before buying my Tesla Model 3
is that you're going to use more energy
when you're driving on the highway.
Now on paper,
this car is rated at 310 miles of range.
And if you are driving the speed limit
and driving conservatively,
you will get every bit of 310 miles.
However, as soon as you
start driving the car
a little bit more aggressively,
having fun with it,
enjoying the 0-to-60 time,
or driving on the highway,
you're going to be using more miles.
When I'm driving on the highway,
I typically expect to use two
miles for every mile of range.
The second thing that I wish I knew
before buying my Model 3 is
that you need to be careful
when you're adjusting your seat.
This is something
that I never anticipated
having an issue with
with any cars that I'd ever owned.
However, when you start
customizing your seat placement,
this is the lumbar support,
the angle that your backrest is on
and the pitch of your lower seat platform
that you're sitting on,
there are no reset buttons.
You can create new driver profiles.
However, there is no button or single way
to reset the position of the seat
back to how it was when you got it.
Admittedly, I even tried
factory resetting the car
to get the seat back to
the factory position,
and everything else in the
car reset, except the seat.
Moving onto number three, the
third thing that I wish I knew
before buying my Tesla Model 3
is the charge rate in your garage.
Now, in my garage
is probably just like
what's in your garage.
This is a standard 120-volt outlet.
My intention when I was buying this car
was to upgrade the outlet
to a 240-volt outlet,
making the car charge a lot faster.
However, after getting the car
and looking at the process
for getting a 240-volt outlet,
it wasn't going to work
in my specific home.
This is because my house
is on a second floor.
The garage is on the first floor,
and the homeowners'
association in the community
does not allow you to run a new line
to install a 240-volt outlet.
Now, for most people, this
is not going to be the case,
and you can easily
install a 240-volt outlet
by having an electrician
come to your house.
This will cost you anywhere
on average from $300 to $500
to have this installed,
and then your charge rate will skyrocket.
If you have a 240-volt outlet,
you will average about 40 miles per hour
when you're plugging your
car into your garage.
If you have the standard outlet,
which I am still stuck with right now,
you are going to charge it
about four miles per hour.
This is something that
I was not fully aware of
when I bought my car,
and it just means that you need to be
a little bit more careful
when you're plugging your car in at night
and you have somewhere
to go the next morning.
The fourth thing that I wish I knew
before buying my Tesla Model
3 is that it is very fast,
however, it is very silent.
When you pull up to a red light,
and there's a Ferrari next to you,
just know that you are going to give him
a good run for his money and
you may even win those races.
However, the Ferrari is going
to have that screaming engine,
and you are just going to be silent.
Now, for some people, you may enjoy this.
However, I do find myself
missing the auditory experience
of driving a car because this
car simply doesn't have it.
The fifth thing I wish I knew
before buying my Tesla Model 3
is that if you live in
anywhere that is a hot climate,
please keep your cabin
overheat protection turned on.
Now, I live in the southern
part of the United States,
and the temperatures
here do get pretty high.
Up until a couple months ago,
I had my cabin overheat
protection turned off
because I didn't want it
to constantly be triggered,
using the car's battery, just
to keep it at 105 degrees.
I haven't ever had an issue
with any of my other
cars in the heat here,
so I figured I didn't need
the cabin overheat protection.
This was, of course, until recently,
as we got into the summer months,
the temperature has skyrocketed,
and I checked the interior
temperature of the Tesla
via the app to find out
that it was 128 degrees inside the car.
Now I wasn't at the car at the moment.
So I tried to turn on the
climate control system
to get the air conditioning going
and opening the windows
to cool the car down,
and the car wasn't
responding from the app.
Now the car was parked at my house.
So I knew that it was
at a safe environment.
So once I did get back to the car,
I tried opening the door just to find out
that the mirror was slowly opening.
It felt like the battery
was almost drained
or it was struggling to work,
and the inside screen was
completely turned black
and unresponsive for what
seemed like a long time.
Now, once I opened up all the
doors and all the windows,
the car cooled down pretty quickly,
and everything went back to normal
but from then on out,
I turned the overheat
protection turned on,
and now the car stays always
at 105 degrees or below.
If you're going to buy a Tesla Model 3,
just know that there is a
ton of tech in this car.
That is what the car is built on.
So you don't want this
tech to get overheated,
or you could cause more
damage than a traditional car.
Moving on to number six.
The sixth thing that I wish I knew
before buying my Tesla Model 3
is that you need to use protection.
It comes down to two things.
The first is the center console.
The material that the center console lids
and the cup holder area are made out of,
for some reason, scratches extremely easy.
What I recommend to you is on day one
to install some type of vinyl protection.
Both Amazon and third party
websites sell vinyl protection
that is precut to fit this.
This is something that
I did in the first week.
I just wish I had done it on day one.
These are only about $20 to $30.
I'll go ahead and link one
down in the description,
but that brings us to the second part
of what you need to protect
in this car from day one.
What I did not do, and
I wish that I did do
was put on ceramic coating
on the front bumper
of the Tesla Model 3.
The reason this is important
for this car specifically
is that the front bumper is
not like a traditional car,
where it has a grill that air flows into.
When you have a traditional car
that has kind of an open grill,
bugs go through that grill,
and they don't mess up
the front of your car.
On the Tesla Model 3,
you will collect every
bug that's on the road
because there is no open air grill.
When the bugs hit the front of your car,
they're hitting your car's paint.
Now with that said, it's
not just going to be bugs,
but it's going to be rocks as well.
So if you have the means to do it,
and I know it's going to
be several hundred dollars
to have this done, but as
soon as you get your Tesla,
I highly recommend taking it to a shop
and getting a ceramic coat
put on your front bumper.
And the last thing, this
is the biggest thing
that I wish I knew before
buying my Tesla Model 3.
This is something you can do
before you even buy your car,
but it's going to be extremely helpful
once you own your car, and that is joining
all of the Facebook
groups for Tesla Model 3s.
No, you're not going to be
just joining these groups for fun.
The reason you're joining these groups
are to look out for
when people post about,
one, maintenance deals,
and two, upgrade deals.
I did not know until recently
that this was a thing,
but Tesla does promotions on
their maintenance services,
where they come out to your driveway
and perform the maintenance.
And two, they run promotions
on upgrades for the vehicle.
Currently, the upgrade that is available
is the full self-driving.
And to my surprise,
they lower that price
every once in a while.
This is typically at the end of quarters,
but if you're joined into
these Facebook groups,
you will get notifications
when people start talking about it.
Now coming back to the
maintenance promotions,
this was something I had no
idea about until recently
when I saw it in a Facebook group,
someone had posted in the Facebook group
that they found out that tire
rotations were on promotion.
Instead of $120 or $130
for the tire rotation,
they were down to $35.
So what did I do?
I went directly onto the
app, scheduled maintenance,
and for a grand total of $37,
I had my tires rotated in my driveway.
I hope you enjoyed this video.
All I ask is that you
like it if you enjoyed it,
and you share it with someone
who's interested in buying a Tesla.
Hopefully, this can save them time.
Hopefully, you learn
something from this video,
and all in all, if you have any questions,
let me know down in the comments,
and I'd be happy to help you out.
