Tesla Model 3 - long-term review

Welcome to the electric economy. A surveyor recommended my rooftop solar panels need more weighing down against the wind. So it’s off to the builders’ merchant in the electric car to buy some blocks. They fit in the boot easily enough, and of course the Model 3's ride is less lumpy than usual for the short urban trip home.

In an annoying irony, the car isn't actually charged by those panels. I don't have off-street parking so have to use public overnight posts in the next street. Which is no particular bother, but it is multiples more expensive.

In other boot-related news… most of us haven't got used to the idea of the front boot, aka froot or frunk if you're American. Even most electric cars don't have one. So when Top Gear editor Jack Rix used the Tesla for several weeks, he forgot there was some of his kids' bedding, left over from a holiday trip, in its froot.

And because I too seldom have need for that space, I didn't notice for weeks.

The other day I had to leave the car parked at the Top Gear office, so figured I'd hand the bedding over to the boss. But I had departed by other means of transport by the time he swung by. Didn't matter. I just used the Tesla app to open the froot lid when he was standing alongside the Tesla, and all was well.

I've had many cars for many years with remote-control apps. They're brilliant for EVs when you aren't charging at home – see above – so you can monitor the charge remotely and avoid over-stay fees. They're also useful, we're told, for getting delivery drivers to drop parcels in your car when you're out but the car's at home. Hmmm, I've never seen how this is a viable use-case because when most people go out, they take the car. And I do little shopping online anyway.

But doubtless some canny car advertiser could confect a "Tesla cares" advert with a storyline about a child getting back his or her long-lost favourite duvet. It'd be a right tear-jerker.

As we're into winter temperatures, efficiency has fallen, by about 10 per cent on the motorway. But it remains about 10 per cent better than the ID.3 that preceded it, in similar climate.

I have a feeling some of the Model 3's efficiency is down to its insistence on very high tyre pressures – 2.9 bar or 42psi. As winter closed in, the pressure warning came up on the screen. So I touched it to open the bigger window that shows all four pressures. Each of them had lost the same amount, about 0.3bar. So I figured this wasn't some freaky coincidence but just a demonstration of the universal gas law pV=nRT in the falling temperature – V, n and R being constant when there's no puncture.

I left them them at the lower pressure for some slow driving because the ride felt better than I remembered. Sure enough after I pumped them up the suspension is back to its old rattly percussive self. Should've bought some spare concrete blocks.