Driving a Tesla Model 3 Equipped With Track Mode

Kim Reynolds was invited by Tesla to test the Model 3’s new Track Mode

Transcript

00:00 So good morning, we're at a small airport north of Monterey, California at a beautiful

00:05 facility, beautiful in the sense that we can really drive the car on this open area here

00:10 with a bunch of cones to swerve around and explore what this car is capable of.

00:14 This is a Model 3, as you recognize from our previous stories, dual motor performance.

00:20 That means it's the highest performance version.

00:22 What's new about this one though is it has a feature called Track Mode.

00:25 Track Mode is a new software that's been internally developed by Tesla to deal with all of the

00:30 stability control and performance capabilities.

00:34 It's an amazing system.

00:36 It's not a piece together traction control from this supplier, stability control from

00:40 that guy or whatever.

00:41 It's none of that.

00:42 It's a completely in-house integrated system that includes also the cooling system of the

00:46 car, both for the battery and the motors.

00:49 So they're all designed to work together to allow maximum performance and deal with thermal

00:54 buildup.

00:55 In fact, around here, one thing it can do is it can rely on a lot more regen braking

01:00 to relieve the heat stress loads on the brakes while you're lapping.

01:04 It's an amazing system.

01:06 It really lets you do almost anything with the car.

01:10 You can get sideways.

01:12 You can explore all kinds of things up to your abilities, but it intervenes as necessary

01:18 in a smooth, almost invisible, as I said earlier, wizardly sort of way to let you really have

01:24 a good time and fun driving a car quickly.

01:36 So thank you very much for joining us today.

01:39 This car has really been a lot of fun today.

01:42 We've done a lot of laps, didn't spin once, had some neat experiences, how you can deal

01:47 with and interact with the car.

01:49 You know, electric cars really open up a whole new world of vehicle dynamics possibilities

01:54 because both axles of this car are driven.

01:56 It's two motors.

01:57 You can control using the brakes.

01:59 Really, the torque applied to all four corners, and you can do it almost instantly and inventively

02:05 to let the car drive and respond and slide and drift however you want to.

02:10 It's an amazing experience that never makes you feel kind of stupid or you've gone too

02:14 far or any of those things that traditional stability controls seem to do.

02:18 It's really brilliant.

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