Tesla Model 3 Performance 2025 review: More power, new dampers and seats for updated electric car

The 2025 Tesla Model 3 Performance has finally made its international debut, bringing with it earth-shattering, uh, performance – but this time it's out to prove that it's more than just a straight-line weapon, as serious upgrades have been made to improve its handling.

Building upon the 'regular' Model 3 facelift that entered the fray last year, the Performance adds a new, higher-output rear-mounted electric motor to bring combined power to 380kW and torque to 740Nm, resulting in a 0-100km/h sprint time for three seconds flat. But there's more, as adaptive dampers make their debut in the series alongside variant-specific front sports seats, plus more.

In this expert review, CarsGuide Contributing Journalist Stephen Corby travels to California to get behind the wheel of the new Model 3 Performance to find out if it's become a bonafide sports car with its first significant update. Hold on!

#Tesla #Model3 #Review
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Timecodes:
00:00 Intro
00:35 Design
03:09 Practicality
03:49 Pricing and features
04:29 Under the bonnet
05:15 Efficiency
05:49 Driving
11:43 Safety
12:15 Ownership
12:38 Verdict
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CarsGuide - Go beyond the test drive

[whynotstartusingyourbrain]

What a boring review of such an exciting car.

[SoCalTropicalgardener]

Why bother doing a review if you’re that biased??

[phazyblue]

This is an annoying review, talking about Trump and often admitting that he is not reporting on the car but rather his prejudices about Tesla.

[explosev]

They gave this guy early access over other reviewers? No wonder tesla's whole marketing team was fired lol

[Georgeg]

Alright CarsGuide if I wanted to know what my Dad thought of a Tesla I’d ask him, not send this guy halfway across the world…

[sebastianfung]

5:28 dude gets a text message on his phone and doesn’t even edit that out! The height of professionalism

[MrOddFox]

There are maybe 2 car reviewers over 40 that aren’t just using every car review as a platform to complain that things aren’t the way they used to be.

[Arthur-xpyi]

Wow what a negative way to display such a wonderful car. Must have been hard to come up with so many snarky comments.

[chucknorris]

Didn't think it was possible to fall asleep watching a car review video.

[raymondjohnson]

Never seen a performance car driven so slow!

[marcusaurelius_]

this is faster than my hurucan evo and my m3 competition xdrive ... i am ordering one

[tomorrow-man]

why does he keep making snide 'elon musk' comments ? Is this meant to be Australia's finest car journalist

[chucknorris]

Poor audio quality. What's going on guys? This is amateur hour.

[gregbaniak]

It looks like you did not drive Tesla before....some comments are odd.

[zzicdvh]

You’ve done this long enough to get your audio (especially voice over) right. This is not watchable. Hundreds of videos to show you how to do the audio correctly.

[alex]

Apparently the arrogant reviewer thinks he is smarter than Elon Musk.

[schraderclemens]

Who shot this video? The colors look awful, way too blue. The dynamic range is bad, in some shots in the car the sun seems to blind you. If you shot this video on a new iPhone the video quality would have been better. Also on the voice-overs the audio quality is bad. It sounds super tinny/echoy. Again, using the 20$ wired apple headphones gets you better audio quality than this. Crazy that you are one of the channels chosen by Tesla for pre-release videos.

[BradsHacks]

6:48 The suspension is adaptive rather than active. The damper stiffness electronically adjusts in real time, but there is no high-speed actuation of the height of each corner like the Taycan Turbo GT with Porsche Active Ride, the S-Class with E-Active Body Control, or the BYD DiSus X. Only systems that can impart kinetic energy into the suspension are classified as active.

[adiosadios]

car looks like a blast, he's a bore

[peterpark]

of course boomer is not impressed with ev. They wanna hear good old engine noise.