Kim Reynolds was invited by Tesla to test the Model 3’s new Track Mode
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MotorTranscript
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.
02:20 [00:03:10] [silence]
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