Tesla has been in a global sales slump recently, owing to its truly ancient non-Cybertruck lineup and increasingly politically polarizing CEO. The actual automaking wing of the company (rather than the comically nonfunctional robot wing) can’t really do much about the latter, but it can do its best to address the former. Sure, Tesla may not have the budget to actually give the entry-level Model 3 or Model Y a second generation, but it sure can strip out features and undercut the price by a few grand. That brings us to today’s announcement: The $38,380 Tesla Model 3 Standard, the new cheapest entry in the company’s lineup.
The Model 3 now starts at an MSRP of $36,990, a savings of $5,500 from the next-highest trim level, before $1,390 in destination fees. For those desperate enough to preorder a stripped-out base model there’s also a $250 “order fee,” which can’t be refunded even if you cancel your order, and a $10 “tire fee” just to nickle and dime buyers that little bit more. What, are you going to cancel your order over $10? Over $260?
Mechanically cheaper, and even worse inside
For that lower price buyers go from the prior base model’s 363 miles of EPA-estimated range down to 321 miles. At least, according to Tesla — the fueleconomy.gov page doesn’t yet have the new car listed. The new model’s claimed 0-60 time of 5.8 seconds is nearly a full second slower from the next trim’s 4.9-second time, and it can gain 170 miles in 15 minutes of Supercharging, 26 miles fewer than of the Premium RWD model.
Those mechanical changes, though, pale in comparison to the differences in the interior. No one who’s ever had a Tesla rideshare has ever found the interior to be too nice (I recently rode in a Fisker Ocean that put every Model Y to shame), yet that’s where Tesla cut the bulk of the budget to find that $5,500 in savings. The Standard model gets a 7-speaker, subwoofer-free audio system, and it even abandons the higher trims’ radio antenna — no AM or FM here, so have fun contemplating your car-buying decisions in silence if you ever drive through a cell signal dead zone.
The suspension is worse too
That decontenting continues with the removal of the second-row touchscreen, which also forces the rear air vents into manual operation, and with textile inserts on the seats to save money on vegan leather. The front seats also lose their ventilation, and the rear seats lose both their power-operated folding and their heat. This trim loses its microsuede trim and ambient lighting, and the steering column goes to a manual-adjust setup. Even the side mirrors are no longer powered, either for dimming or for angle adjustment.
Somehow, Tesla has even managed to cheap out on the already incredibly cheap suspension. While the Premium RWD trim has “frequency dependent shock absorbers,” the Standard gets “passive shock absorbers.” Expect even more carsickness in this new, likely even bouncier model. God help all of us who take rideshares home from the airport, because they’re about to get even worse.
Could Tesla do no better?
While the comparable new base model trim for the Model Y loses its panoramic roof — or rather, hides it behind a layer of carpet to cut you off from the sun without saving your glass repair deductible from hail — the Model 3 Standard retains its glass ceiling despite being the cheaper of the siblings. That likely means a hot interior, since the Standard isn’t available with the black-and-white interior option from the upper trims that allowed the seats to absorb a little less UV radiation. Here, everything is black, which means everything’s likely to get hot.
So, the $25,000 Tesla is finally here — a few years after it was promised, $13,380 more expensive, and also not a new model. Instead, we just get one of the market’s cheapest-feeling cars stripped back even further, made into even more of a penalty box. When the Hyundai Kona Electric can be had for $34,460, or a Nissan Leaf for just $31,485, it makes one wonder just what the point of a $38,380 stripper model from Tesla really is. Did the company think this would be enough to boost sales, to distract from a CEO that’s made Tesla ownership a moral liability for going on seven years now? I don’t expect it to work.
