Tesla Model 3 Spotted In The Wild In California (VIDEO)
After years of successfully keeping the Model 3 under wraps, it seems that the secret is out and Tesla is taking Model 3 to the streets. Numerous reports of the Model 3 are hitting social media networks this morning, showing the car roaming public streets in daylight, flaunting its newfound celebrity status.
A silver Tesla Model 3 is pictured following a Tesla Model S that has been fitted with a rear hatch–mounted camera system zooming down a main street in Marina del Rey, California, which is a beach town just north of where the car was officially unveiled on Thursday. A reddit thread shared the news with one enterprising redditor digging in a bit to bring out the creepier side of the internet when he posted the exact address where the Model 3 was spotted.
In addition to being so excited about finally pulling the covers off the new kid in town, Tesla people must be so excited that they don’t have to keep it secret anymore. I’m sure the energy of the place has shifted from a nervous, tense energy to a more jovial “we did it!” feeling, and the fact that they are touting it around town on the main street of a big city right around evening hours speaks to that.
Check out the links of the pics (1) (2) and the video below to get your fix of the Model 3 roaming around town:
And, again, if you missed our exclusive video from the unveiling — from several spots along the test track where only we were recording — here it is:
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Nice, and with a Model S in front of it carrying what looked like a prototype sensor package, presumably auto-pilot related.
I’d guess just a regular camera, so they can track body movement, etc, for the suspension, and body shifting, that kind of thing.
Nice. And, not that anyone else cares, but I saw my first Model X in the wild today, up close in a parking lot. So for me anyway, one day after the Model 3 birthday, I’m happy. Gorgeous. I. Want. That. Car. Now, back to financial realities….
Oh, and the falcon-wing doors? They’re really nothing more than the same liftgate on the back of every single SUV and minivan out there for years, except with one extra hinge, and a much better implementation. They’re not “complex” – they’re cool and functional.
How functional they are if there is rain or snow and you open your roof wide open not to mention it will let all the warm air out if it is could outside;
True enough; ice, snow. Think about those experiences when one comes out in the morning/after work and finds 1/2 an inch of ice covering the entire car. With conventional door handles, it’s a battle of pounding and chipping just to get the door handle to begin to move. Then the door itself won’t move until enough ice is chipped away. And that’s a conventional door on a car, battling all this in freezing cold conditions outside. Anyone who has ever taken a car (or an SUV, I might note!) skiing or snowboarding regularly has had countless of these experiences. Anyone who has ever traveled by car anywhere in upper-middle america has had countless of these experiences.
Whatever. I still want a Model X. I’ll be very old before they depreciate enough for me to get one.
When I lived in Michigan I usually had a garage to park in at night. The short period when I had to park on the street I’d just take some hot water out with me in the morning, when needed, and melt the door open.
I parked my model S overnight outdoors in an ice storm on my trip to Michigan. In the morning, it was covered in a sheet of ice.
I hit the key to turn the car on. The door handles broke through the ice. I was able to open a door and turn the heat on, while the car was still plugged in. (If I could have used the app, I could have done this without opening the door, but I had no connectivity in Canada.) Anyway, the car’s internal heater melted the rest of the ice *while running on shore power*.
Very convenient.
How long does it take to melt the ice?
I would expect it’s far faster than melting ice off the windshield with an ICEV since one has to first wait for the engine to heat up enough to send any heat to the heating core. Gotta warm the block up enough for the thermostat to open and then warm up the system coolant enough to give off heat.
Owner experience with the X is very limited at the time. I’ve seen only one comment from an X owner who said that the doors were great in the rain. You could stand in the dry and fasten kids into their car seats type stuff.
I doubt heat loss would be very different than when you open a regular door. Either way you’re going to get a big air exchange. Most of the energy you’ve put into heating the car will be stored in the mass you’ve heated up.
Snow. If there’s snow on top of your car you should clean it off, regardless of what sort of doors you have. I’ve never had large accumulations of snow on top of my car while driving. If it did happen then the driver and/or front seat passenger can clean off enough to open the falcons.
Ice. I’ve been caught in freezing rain and had to work to get the door open. Regular door. Used my shoe strings to pull the door handle as I laid in the front seat and kicked the door open.
I guess there could be a similar event with the X. Once someone got a regular door open then people sitting in the back could climb over or whoever was outside could get some hot water and melt them free.
We’re talking very low probability events when it comes to getting frozen into your car.
Tesla’s have pretty big batteries. I wonder if it might be possible for them to incorporate a heating element around doors to melt them open in a practical way.
I wonder how often frozen doors are a problem. It’s been decades since I lived in Michigan and I don’t remember friends who parked on the curb having big problems.
I’ve lived years in the CA mountains where snow regularly occurs and the fish pond in front of my house spends most of the winter frozen over. I’ve never had to work to get a door open and I always park outside.
Is there some place where it’s worse?
See my testimonial above. If you can turn the cabin heating on, you can melt the ice from the inside.
The movement of those doors is complex, don’t kid yourself.
I’m not convinced ‘touting” is really the right word. Honestly, I hope they have the whole engineering and design teams driving these things around under real world situations this year to shake as many bugs out before they start making them by the hundreds of thousands.
This is exactly what they’re doing. GM has massive facilities where they do testing like this, but I don’t think Tesla does yet. So the teams drive em around on the streets to gain real world experience. The car in front of it had some sort of camera system on it. They make have been looking at how the suspension was tracking over the road with potholes, etc… If you end up with an overdamped shocks, you can end up with the car juttering over bumps. To lose and the car bounces. Even with a perfect design, there is still a lot of tuning that you need real world driving to settle up.
I agree with the burn in…this just looks more like they are shooting a commercial or getting some extra data…but on a major street in southern california. This isn’t on a test track or hidden away…but right out there in public for everyone to see. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not complaining…but yeah, seems a bit more than just getting some miles in.
Extra data maybe, but commercial? I think before Tesla makes a commercial, they need to figure out how to produce all of the cars that people ordered in a relatively timely fashion, which based on Elon’s tweets, he is clearly focused on.
It looks really small, almost half the size of the car in front of it.
20% smaller than the Tesla S, the car in front of it.
The Tesla S is not a small car.
Ya, the Model S competes in the Full Size Luxury class, aka “The land yacht” class.
This car is around the same size as a BMW 3 series, perhaps a little longer.
The front is growing on me as well. That drone operator at the unveiling needs to be taught how to show off the car. We got nothing but nose hairs, when we should have been seeing some of these beautiful side / top angles.
The Model S is rather a BMW 5 competitor with the price tag of a luxury car.
Gotta remind the people that went from a Merceded S class to a Model S about that distinction.
They sure know what they like about the Model S and on what parts they traded down and will miss the S Class. Some might even have keept theirs.
There is also a long wheelbase S Class and Chinese people like to be driven around. Thats ptobably why they rather buy a luxury car that offers room and more quality inside.
“land yacht class” – true enough. For most of the US, except urban dwellers, footprint of car doesn’t matter and bigger is better. For Tesla, it gives space and battery while keeping aerodynamics. Note that in most of Europe, Asia, and urban America, people need cars that fit in awkward parking situations; very tight and vertical. It’s not even a preference issue, but rather a true need for many. So far, the Tesla market aims for people with money, who even in San Francisco or Boston, are more likely to have a decent place to park it.
Also, EVs, by definition, bias toward people who own their homes and can put in a charger. The 1/3 of the US who rents are pretty much ICE candidates for now, unless chargers are legislated for rental properties some day.
One city in CA is not requiring new construction such as apartment buildings to install the conduit for individual outlets in their parking lots which will make wiring easy in the future.
At least two utility companies (PG&E and SoCal Edison) are helping to pay for charge outlets in workplace and apartment building parking lots. They’re shooting for tens of thousands of new places to charge. That’s a new market share for utilities.
I think you meant to say “now requiring”. Anyway, love what you are saying about installing outlets. By the way, I was in a hotel in Virginia in a small town the other night. I talked to the desk clerk, noting that I noticed that they didn’t have a level 2 charger. He said he would talk to his manager about it.
Tesla is paying the cost of installing Destination Chargers at hotels and restaurants. Hardware and labor.
I think they have a limit of two per location and require that they be installed in a ‘reasonable’ place, not at the furthest place from the entrance. Something like that.
They expect to have 15,000+ installed by the end of 2017.
Pretty stoked right now.
But probably not stoked enough to want to sit through a twenty minute video showing the same cars driving up and down the same stretch of road, in the dark.
Sorry.
Agreed. I don’t have *that* much time…
I think even Tesla fans *with* that much time wouldn’t want to spend it watching that video! Sorry x2.
On the flipside…we spent two hours watching and absolutely loved it. Granted, seeing in person and on youtube have completely different levels of appeal 🙂
Gorgeous!