I was really excited to see Twisters. Excessively excited. I was more excited to see Twisters than I was to see Twister almost three decades ago. That film came out in May 1996; Mission: Impossible came out later that same month, and Tom Cruise trumped tornado. I don’t actually remember being that bothered about any of the disaster movies coming out at the time. They all seemed to kind of be B-movie rentals—Dante’s Peak, Volcano, Deep Impact—or they were box-office events like Titanic and Independence Day, which I also didn’t care about. There were too many good indies (though somewhere in there I got really hyped up about Deep Blue Sea, but that had a big shark in it). Now, I will take almost any disaster movie. I will take even a minor disaster movie over Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes or Furiosa or Bad Boys: Ride or Die. I couldn’t wait to see A Quiet Place: Day One, for example, even though that one is technically about aliens. 

Twisters seemed really excited about itself, too. Everyone in it seemed really excited. It was like being at a terrible party where everyone keeps going on about how fun it is in order to bring up the mood. I was sitting next to my brother, who I had dragged to see it, and who had admittedly started to get excited himself after seeing all the good reviews. The reviews were surprisingly good. That has never really been an indication of anything, but when you want to see something enough, you are willing to fall for it. We fell for it. And then we just kept looking at each other throughout it like: Why is this ... kind of ... boring? Other people must have felt this way. People kept getting up to leave—to go to the bathroom, to get snacks—but not in the kind of hurried way you do when something is gripping. I felt like one guy left for a good 15 minutes. I felt like all this coming and going, if perhaps more indicative of how people watch movies now, was definitely not a sign that Twisters was riveting. Say what you want about Longlegs, but for whatever morbid reason, people were glued. And that wasn’t even an action movie.

“It’s another truly amazing gold rush!” Marc Benioff posted on X in September 2023. The founder and CEO of Salesforce was celebrating San Francisco’s AI-fueled revival, touting a report that pegged demand for new office space in the city at nearly 1 million square feet. By February 2024, The Economist was declaring that “San Francisco staged a surprising comeback.”

It looked like quite a turnaround for a city whose epitaph had been written again and again since the pandemic. Just months before Benioff’s exclamatory post, Salesforce had reduced its office footprint, leaving the city’s tallest tower a costly emblem of urban decay. According to the “urban doom loop” hypothesis, reduced demand for office space would lead to a collapse in commercial real-estate values and, in turn, a decline in city revenues and services—which would then push even more businesses and workers out of the city. San Francisco, which famously experienced a major exodus of workers during the pandemic, was long considered the doom-loop poster child. If it could rebound from its struggles, then perhaps the rest of America’s cities would also avoid that fate.

But the comeback is not what it seems, and a doom loop is still possible. Historically, a booming economy has reliably translated into a booming commercial-real-estate sector. Now, however, San Francisco and other so-called superstar cities have entered a kind of Schrödinger’s economy, booming and busting at the same time. City leaders must come to terms with the fact that pre-pandemic office demand is never coming back, and plan accordingly.

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By mid-2022, San Francisco was in trouble. Tens of thousands of people had moved out of the city, notable venture-capital investors had relocated to Miami, and multiple local tech companies—most notably Meta—had announced plans to embrace remote and flexible work permanently. The municipal budget deficit continued to expand.

Nationally, most cities were doing better, but the average vacancy rate was still inching into record territory. In October 2022, Bloomberg’s economic forecast put the odds of a recession at 100 percent, and the situation looked like it would only get worse. Barring some kind of deus ex machina, San Francisco and other cities seemed destined to continue spiraling downward.

And then God stepped out of the machine. In November 2022, San Francisco–based OpenAI launched ChatGPT and kicked off a new technology boom. In 2023 alone, investors poured nearly $30 billion into artificial-intelligence start-ups and billions more into AI-related public companies, many of which are based in and around San Francisco. Economic conditions across the country were equally surprising. The “inevitable” recession failed to materialize. By early 2024, the S&P 500 reached a new all-time high, unemployment remained low, and technology stocks reached a level of valuation (perhaps overvaluation) that exceeded the dot-com bubble. In many cities, including San Francisco, net migration flipped from negative to positive.

[Rogé Karma: Whatever happened to the urban doom loop?]

But something still wasn’t right. In the first quarter of this year, the national office-vacancy rate reached 20 percent, the highest level on record—even higher, slightly, than during the 2022 doldrums. In San Francisco, more than a third of all office space was vacant. In fact, shortly after Benioff’s celebratory X post, Salesforce again shrank its footprint, this time by 700,000 square feet. The AI boom was real, but so was the threat of urban doom. A similar dynamic has been playing out in cities across the country dependent on a variety of other industries.

This is unusual. For decades, office demand has been correlated with macroeconomic indicators, meaning that when the economy is strong, so is demand for commercial real estate. A model developed by the Commercial Real Estate Development Association (commonly and confusingly known by the acronym NAIOP) has done a pretty good job of predicting and explaining office demand based on GDP growth, corporate profits, employment, and other economic indicators since the early 1990s. But starting in 2022, that historic relationship broke down. As the economy emerged out of the pandemic, the model predicted that net office demand would increase by 43 million square feet. In reality, net demand was nearly 90 percent lower than expected and, by the following year, had turned negative, meaning more space was vacated than leased.

What explains the divergence? The obvious culprit is the rise of remote work.

Four years after the initial COVID-19 lockdowns, more than a quarter of all paid workdays are performed from home, according to an ongoing survey by the Stanford economics professor Nicholas Bloom and others. The main reason companies are reducing their office footprint is because they can. As more leases come up for renewal, vacancy continues to rise. Even without a recession, this trend is likely to endure as tenants continue to express a desire to cut down or let go of existing offices ahead of a wave of lease expirations in 2025 and 2026.

Within the academic community, there is some debate as to whether factors besides remote work, such as interest rates or recession expectations, are also to blame for persistently high vacancy rates. One thing is clear: Even if the economy continues to grow and unemployment remains low, high office vacancies will have an adverse impact on municipal budgets and residents’ quality of life. Lower crime, a rebound in tourism, and a slight increase in population won’t be enough to offset the loss of revenue from commercial property and business taxes because of lower rents and lower spending from regular commuters. Cities can diversify their tax base, but that would require changes to the physical environment that take years to materialize, plus direct investment and tax incentives. It would also necessitate a sense of urgency and determination that has been lacking in many cities—particularly in light of the recent “comeback.” Stijn Van Nieuwerburgh and Arpit Gupta, two of the authors of the original doom-loop paper, have recently updated their estimates based on the latest data and project that, despite some good news, “many American cities … will face significant tax revenue shortfalls in the years ahead.”

[Dror Poleg: The next crisis will start with empty office buildings]

Van Nieuwerburgh and Gupta’s latest assessment includes a new concern that was not part of the original thesis. Artificial-intelligence advances may reduce the number of office jobs and improve the quality of remote collaboration. Data from the epicenter of the AI revolution offers a preview. In 2003, the year in which Google first passed the $1 billion revenue mark, the company employed some 1,600 people. Last year, OpenAI required less than half that number of workers to exceed the same milestone. Over the past 18 months, Big Tech companies laid off tens of thousands of employees while growing their revenue and hiring fewer—but higher-paid—AI specialists. The “1 million square feet” sought by San Francisco’s AI companies sounds like a lot, but it is overshadowed by the city’s 30 million square feet of vacant office space and the specter of many more lease expirations in the coming years.

AI threatens to make the connection between economic activity and office demand, and thus between economic activity and city-budget health, even less linear and predictable. The possibility alone is enough to inject more uncertainty into labor and office markets that are already on edge. An economy in which most companies can predict their needs in advance and commit to long-term leases is not returning any time soon.

Ever since the pandemic, many landlords, mayors, and bosses have been going through what one might call “the five stages of office grief.” First, in 2020, there was denial that working from home would have any lasting impact. Then, in 2021, there was anger at employees who wouldn’t return, followed by bargaining on the exact number of days people would spend at the office. By 2022, depression had set in, and cities seemed ready to accept the need for radical change. Now, however, the country’s economic rebound provides new ammunition for those who wish to slide back into denial.

Our cities will be better served by embracing the transition to a world that is less centered around offices. That will require diversifying their economic base, streamlining the construction and conversion of new housing and mixed-use neighborhoods, enhancing public services, and doubling down on what makes urban life attractive in its own right—not just as an employment destination. And the effort must start with the recognition that, in good times and bad, the relationship between economic activity and office demand has changed forever.

On the evening of Super Tuesday, March 5, shortly before Donald Trump effectively ended the Republican primary and earned a general-election rematch with President Joe Biden, I asked the co-managers of Trump’s presidential campaign what they feared most about Biden.

“Honestly, it’s less him,” Chris LaCivita told me. “And more—”

“Institutional Democrats,” Susie Wiles said, finishing her partner’s thought.

It was a revealing exchange, and a theme we would revisit frequently. The Democratic Party, Wiles and LaCivita would tell me in conversations over the coming months, was a machine—well organized and well financed, with a record of support from the low-propensity voters who turn out every four years in presidential contests. Ordinarily, they explained, Democrats would have structural superiority in a race like this one. But something was holding the party back: Biden.

LaCivita and Wiles expected the campaign’s narrative to be controlled by Democrats from the beginning: Trump, after all, had sabotaged the peaceful transition of power after the 2020 election, incited an attack on the U.S. Capitol, and, more recently, faced numerous criminal prosecutions and the possibility of jail time. And yet Biden offered an opening. Already the oldest president in American history, he began to show signs of rapid deterioration in 2023. This would make the campaign a game of survival more than skill, each candidate needing to convince voters that he was less disqualified than his opponent.

[Read: Trump is planning for a landslide win]

In the race to clear historically low hurdles, Trump began pulling ahead. Polls showed him making unprecedented gains with those low-propensity demographics, specifically Black and Hispanic voters—not because of anything he was doing particularly well, but because of apathy and disillusionment within the Democratic base. As far back as springtime, the numbers told a straightforward story: Biden was not going to win. Democrats could only look on, powerless, as the president denied the party’s young bench—and its organizational machine—a chance to change the narrative.

“I don’t think Joe Biden has a ton of advantages,” Wiles told me on Super Tuesday. “But I do think Democrats do.”

She and LaCivita were right to worry.

Biden’s departure from the presidential race this afternoon—hours after his top surrogates had insisted that he would carry on—is the culmination of a remarkable pressure campaign, launched after his calamitous June 27 debate performance and aimed at pushing the president into retirement. On the Republican side, it caps a frenetic four-month stretch in which Trump’s campaign went from cocky about Biden’s deficiencies to fearful of his ouster to stunned at the sudden letter from Biden doing the thing Republicans thought he’d never do.

Republicans I spoke with today, some of them still hungover from celebrating what felt to many like a victory-night celebration in Milwaukee, registered shock at the news of Biden’s departure. Party officials had left town believing the race was all but over. Now they were confronting the reality of reimagining a campaign—one that had been optimized, in every way, to defeat Biden—against a new and unknown challenger. “So, we are forced to spend time and money on fighting Crooked Joe Biden, he polls badly after having a terrible debate, and quits the race,” a clearly peeved Trump wrote Sunday on Truth Social. “Now we have to start all over again.”

For months, in talking with Wiles and LaCivita, I was struck by their concern about the potential of a dramatic switch—Democratic leaders pushing out Biden in favor of a younger nominee. They told me that Trump’s campaign was readying contingency plans and studying the weaknesses of would-be alternatives, beginning with Vice President Kamala Harris. By the time of the debate, however, they believed that Democrats’ window had all but closed. Even in the immediate aftermath—as Democratic officials openly called for Biden to quit—Wiles and LaCivita were betting on the status quo. More than anything, Trump’s allies believed that the president’s stubborn Irish ego wouldn’t let him back out of a fight with a man he despised.

But they couldn’t take any chances. Two weeks ago, according to a campaign source who spoke with me on the condition of anonymity, Trump’s pollster Tony Fabrizio went into the field to begin testing the outcomes of a Harris-versus-Trump matchup. These surveys, conducted across several battleground states, represented the most concrete step taken to prepare for the possibility of a new adversary. Still, with the polling a tightly held secret—I couldn’t verify the results—there were no outward signs of Trump’s operation expecting a reset. When convention speakers reached out to the GOP nominee’s campaign, gauging whether to hedge their speeches with attacks on Harris, they were told to keep the focus on Biden.

[Read: Biden’s greatest strengths proved his undoing]

In many ways, the convention scene was one of a party peaking too early. Campaigns are marathons measured by changes in momentum and narrative, and Republicans in Milwaukee reveled in what felt like a three-week winning streak, dating back to the debate, in which the daily churn of insider gossip focused ever more on Democratic fatalism and Trump’s seeming inevitability. No Republican I spoke with could remember a longer stretch of uninterrupted forward propulsion. And with Biden appearing to dig in, they left Milwaukee believing that this run of luck might never end.

The president’s abrupt exit dashed any such fantasy. Suddenly, Republicans who had boasted last week about expanding the electoral map—pushing into Minnesota and Virginia and other decidedly blue areas—were fretting about the possibility of Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro or Arizona Senator Mark Kelly joining the Democratic ticket, partnering with Harris to put back into play key battlegrounds that just 24 hours earlier seemed to be out of reach.

Given the historic volatility of this campaign—Trump survived an assassination attempt just last weekend—there’s no guarantee that Harris will ultimately succeed Biden atop the ticket. The Trump campaign certainly believes she will—understandably so, given the rapid consolidation of Democratic officials around her following Biden’s announcement—and blasted out a statement Sunday afternoon that tied Harris to her unpopular boss. “Kamala Harris is just as much of [a] joke as Biden is,” Wiles and LaCivita said in a statement. “Harris will be even WORSE for the people of our Nation than Joe Biden. Harris has been the Enabler in Chief for Crooked Joe this entire time. They own each other’s records, and there is no distance between the two.”

This is the essence of what Trump’s campaign believes—that any Democrat who picks up the party’s banner will inherit the baggage that made Biden unelectable. Republicans will point to historic inflation, millions of illegal border crossings, and geopolitical chaos from Eastern Europe to the Middle East as evidence that the entire Democratic Party has failed the American people. “We’ve talked about strength versus weakness, success versus failure,” LaCivita told me before the convention, summarizing the campaign’s strategic vision for the race. “The great thing about that messaging is that it’s not just unique to Joe Biden.”

But messaging is a secondary concern for Democrats. What they need first is a messenger.

It’s true that Harris will struggle to shed some policy-related criticisms; her appointment early in her vice presidency to handle the southern border, in fact, could make her even more vulnerable to immigration-related attacks than Biden was. It’s also true, however, that policy criticisms aren’t what made Biden unelectable in the eyes of most Americans. In an evenly divided and exceedingly polarized nation, Biden lost ground—with his party’s base as well as with independents—because he was perceived to be too old and infirm to serve another four years in office.

Harris is neither of those things. At 59 years old, she is two decades younger than Trump and will have no trouble keeping up with him on the campaign trail or the debate stage. She is also a former prosecutor who, if anything, is known for being too tough on crime. (Trump allies told me they plan to assault her left flank with accusations of Harris over-incarcerating young men of color when she was California’s attorney general.) At the very least, Trump’s lieutenants realize, Harris’s promotion will provide a desperately needed jolt to Democrats nationwide in the form of fundraising, volunteerism, and enthusiasm. Whatever her flaws as a politician—Harris ran a dreadful primary campaign for president in 2020, marked by organizational infighting and awkward sound bites—she does not possess the one flaw that proved insurmountable for Biden.

[Read: Trump versus the coconut-pilled]

Trump’s campaign insists that nothing has changed. Wiles and LaCivita are telling their team that given the obstacles Trump has already overcome—prosecutions, a conviction, an assassination attempt that nearly killed him—a new nominee for the Democrats is just another log on the 2024 inferno.

But they know it’s more than that. They know that from the moment they partnered with Trump, everything they intended for this campaign—the messaging, the advertising, the microtargeting, the ground game, the mail pieces, the digital engagement, the social-media maneuvers—was designed to defeat Joe Biden. Even the selection of Ohio’s Senator J. D. Vance as Trump’s running mate, campaign officials acknowledged, was something of a luxury meant to run up margins with the base in a blowout rather than persuade swing voters in a nail-biter.

The mentality of this Trump campaign, LaCivita once told me, is to spend every day on offense. The team wants to shape the pace and substance of every news cycle and force Democrats to react, ensuring that key battles are fought on the GOP’s chosen terrain. It worked so well that Biden was ruined before his party’s convention. Now the Trump operation is vowing to destroy Harris—if, in fact, she becomes the nominee—in much the same way.

And yet, for a campaign that went to bed Saturday believing that it would dictate the terms of the election every day until November 5, Sunday brought an unfamiliar feeling of powerlessness. For the first time in a long time, Trump does not control the narrative of 2024.

Bill Paxton and Helen hunt make their way through a torrential downpour in a still from the 1996 movie Twister.

A single man’s trip to a local brewery reportedly became awkward today after the absence of a dog or children in tow prompted weird looks from everyone at the family friendly establishment.

“I just came by to try their new triple sour milk stout, but everyone has just been staring at me since I got here—do I have a sour milk stout mustache or something?” said John Berg, wiping his upper lip with a napkin. “And three times now the staff has asked if I was lost, or if they could help me find my dog. Then when I said I wasn’t expecting company the bartender suggested that I might be more comfortable at the sports bar down the street.”

Berg’s attempt to enjoy a beer solo hasn’t slipped the notice of concerned parents and regulars of Urban Playground Brewery.

“At first I figured that he was meeting his wife and kids here, or maybe his partner took their dog for a walk, but he’s been here for an hour alone just enjoying himself— it’s really starting to weird me out,” said Colin Bartlett, shielding his kids from looking at the man. “Breweries are supposed to be a place where you can get a drink while you make your parental responsibilities everyone else’s problem, not for people to actually enjoy a beer in the middle of the day. If he wants to be carefree in public he should really go to a dimly lit dive bar so we don’t have to see it.”

At press time, Urban Playground Brewery announced they’d start checking for proof of child or dog ownership at the door.

When Tesla first hit the mass-market scene with the Model S, it rightfully shocked the world. There was nothing else like it. At the time, no other electric car on the planet was as good, none had even half the range it had, and no one could keep up. It took more than a decade for mainstream brands to get anywhere near the Model S in terms of range, performance, and technology. However, competitors have finally caught up and even Tesla’s more affordable, entry-level car—the refreshed 2024 Tesla Model 3 Highland—has lost its luster. 

The Model 3 I drove was a dual-motor car with the Autopilot “Full Self-Driving” system equipped and subscribed to. I only had a couple of days with it, so I couldn’t test it as thoroughly as I normally would. However, I don’t think I needed to. I got the gist of it in the short time I had and my consensus is this: buy a Hyundai Ioniq 6 instead.

Whether it’s because Elon is afraid of criticism, can’t afford a press fleet, or simply does not care, Tesla doesn’t do press cars. Special thanks to the fine folks at Turo, though, who comped us a three-day rental. If you want to check out this Model 3 in New York, you can find it here. 

The Basics

I can still remember staying up until 2 a.m. on the East Coast to cover the initial launch event for the Tesla Model 3 in 2017. Back then, it was a big deal. Perhaps not as big of a deal as the Model S was originally, but the Model 3 still changed the game. Finally, a semi-affordable electric sedan from Tesla that not only had more range than its competition but cost less. However, it took six years for Tesla to give it any significant updates. BMW, Mercedes, and Audi—its primary internal combustion competitors—would have entirely new models out by then. Now, though, it’s finally been updated and the refreshed Model 3 is better in many ways than its predecessor. But it’s also worse in others.

From the outside, there’s no question that the Model 3 Highland is prettier than the original. Its headlights are slim and sharp, its front end is pointier, and its taillight design is much more upscale. Granted, it still looks like a jelly bean and is incredibly boring to look at in grayscale colors but it’s an improvement over the aging 2017 car. 

Inside, it’s mostly the same, though. Which is to say, it’s shit. I really try not to criticize interior ergonomics or design too hard unless it significantly hinders the driving experience. Even odd interiors will be learned by their customers. However, the Model 3 is almost dangerously bad inside. The seats are miserable (although I hear the new Model 3 Performance seats are excellent), every surface and material feels econobox-cheap, and the ergonomics can genuinely cause crashes.

Like with all Teslas nowadays, there’s no wiper stalk. Or side mirror controls. Or even steering wheel adjustments on the column itself. Everything, and I mean literally everything, needs to be controlled via the massive tablet-style touchscreen, with its dizzying amount of menus and tiny smartphone-sized icons. Not only do you have to take your eyes off the road to use it, but you also have to focus on touching the right icons because they’re small and all very similar looking. The menus have a very similar UI design, color scheme, and font to an iPad, which is great when the car is stationary but maddening while moving. 

It’s infuriating and easily the dumbest user interface I’ve ever encountered, on any device, in my entire life. However, the newest dumb thing Tesla did with the Model 3 was move the gear select controls to the touchscreen. To put the car into drive, you need to step on the brake like normal but then slide a skinny bar upward on the left part of the touchscreen. To reverse, you slide it down. It works OK, but several times in less than two days, it failed to register my swipe. 

There are redundant drive select buttons, though. But do you know where they are? Built into the interior lighting panel on the headliner, between the sun visors. Since Tesla wants the touch slider to be the primary control, the redundant buttons only illuminate when you use them. So if you want to turn on a dome light while driving, you can easily accidentally press a drive button and get a frighteningly loud beep beep as the car warns you that it can’t go into reverse while moving forward. It’s almost like whoever designed the cabin never drove a car before. 

Driving the Tesla Model 3

Thankfully, the Model 3 is still as quick as ever, so you can enjoy a little speed to make yourself forget about the frustrating controls. Two electric motors make 394 horsepower and 377 lb-ft of torque and launch the little Model 3 forward hard enough to make you forget about the Performance model. 60 mph arrives in 4.2 seconds, just 0.5 seconds slower than the BMW i4 M50. Buyers certainly don’t need anything quicker and, by the seat of the pants, the dual-motor Model 3 feels practically just as quick as that BMW. 

When the Model 3 originally came out, I remember hearing that its driving dynamics were genuinely close to cars like the BMW 3 Series. I was told that it was among the best sports sedans in the world. Now that I’ve driven one, I can finally, honestly say… bullshit. It’s good, don’t get me wrong. But it’s far from great. Its steering is hyperactive to the point of feeling incredibly fake and it self-centers with such an artificial rubber-banding that it actually becomes annoying. It’s accurate but there’s zero feel and the ratio is so quick that it feels overly twitchy at speed. 

Then there’s the ride, which is brittle. On smooth surfaces, it feels planted and solid. However, sharper bumps can upset that planted feeling. It isn’t horrible, but it’s certainly not as composed or as comfortable as something like the BMW i4 or Polestar 2. It’s more on par with the Ioniq 6. While it can be fun through twisty corners, it feels too rubbery and artificial to be genuinely engaging. So, it’s an OK sport sedan but far from a great one. 

Now, here’s the part where I get to talk about Elon Musk’s infamous “Autopilot with Full Self-Driving.” With the system set to its most comprehensive setting, allowing it to “drive itself” to the fullest of its abilities, I tested it on both normal and stop-and-go roads and highways. For the most part, it works well. It keeps itself in a lane perfectly, it shows you exactly what it sees and what it’s doing, it can stop at red lights, and it can follow traffic just fine. I also like that it tells you why it’s doing certain things, like, for example, changing into a faster lane to better match your desired speed, which I appreciate. 

It ain’t perfect, though. Twice, it failed to recognize a lane split, choosing to take a highway exit instead of staying straight. And when you need to correct it, the steering wheel aggressively tries to stay its course. Then, when you finally do correct it, Autopilot disengages, requiring you to start it again. Tesla needs to tone its aggressive throttle down, too. Even in its “Chill” setting, it accelerates too quickly from a stop and I had to quickly act to disengage it when it tried to quickly move around a cop car that had pulled another driver over. It’s impressive, there’s no doubt, and among the best on the market, but GM’s Super Cruise is still the superior, more nuanced system. 

The Highs and Lows

Without a doubt, the best part of the Model 3 is Tesla’s charging experience. Using a Tesla Supercharger is, by far, the easiest public EV charging experience out there. Simply drive up to a station, plug in, and walk away. There’s no fussing with accounts, credit cards, payments, screens, mobile apps, or anything else. You just plug in. That’s it. You can see why other brands like Ford and Rivian are going to start using them. But the Model 3 is also a quick little car that makes easy work of slicing through traffic and merging onto highways. Forward visibility is impressive. The dual wireless phone charging tray is pretty great and the rear touchscreen will make kids in the back seat go “Ohhhhh” and “Ahhhhh.” 

Unfortunately, there are a lot of low points. The interior just feels cheap and underequipped, especially for the price. The $28K-to-start Hyundai Kona is nicer inside, and its ergonomics would infuriate me every time I drove it. There was a sharp edge on the rear passenger door, so I cut myself when opening it once—an Easter egg tipping its cap to the Cybertruck, perhaps. It’s also noisy inside, with tons of wind and tire noise at high speed, even with double-pane windows. And the car seat LATCH points in the rear are difficult to hook onto. 

Tesla Model 3 Features, Options, and Competition

The Tesla Model 3 is one of the more affordable EVs in its class, with a starting price of $40,380 before federal and state tax incentives. The long-range AWD model I tested starts at $48,880 before it all. However, it comes relatively well-equipped with heated seats, the massive touchscreen that controls damn near everything, a rear seat screen, and all of its other snazzy gizmos as standard. As of this writing, the Model 3 is also eligible for the full $7,500 federal tax incentive under the Inflation Reduction Act.

There actually isn’t much of an options list to speak of for the Model 3. You choose your powertrain, color, wheels, and whether you want “Full Self-Driving Capability.” The latter of which—despite it being a misnomer at best, bald-faced lie at worst—costs $8,000. Every color except for Space Gray is an optional extra, with prices ranging from $1,000 to $2,000. Since my test car was Space Gray with the basic wheels (the only other wheel option costs $1,000) and FSD, its as-tested price was $57,130. 

The Model 3’s closest competitor, in terms of price, performance, and quality, is probably the aforementioned Hyundai Ioniq 6. The BMW i4 is much nicer inside and the better sports sedan but it’s significantly more expensive, with a starting price north of $60,000 for a dual-motor car. The Polestar 2 is pushing 60 grand if you’d like the AWD version. Meanwhile, Hyundai will sell you a fully loaded Ioniq 6 Limited with a dual-motor powertrain for under $55,000 before incentives. Its only downside is being low on range compared to the Model 3, with just 270 miles compared to the Tesla’s 341. However, Hyundais will be able to use Tesla’s Supercharger network starting in Q4 of this year. 

Range, Charging, and Efficiency

With 341 miles of range, the Model 3 bests every one of its competitors. The only EVs on the market with a higher range cost significantly more, such as the Lucid Air and Mercedes EQS. During my time with it, however, I averaged over 3 miles per kWh, which is pretty dang good. 

More important than range, though, is charge speed. If you can charge up quickly and conveniently, outright, full-charge range becomes less of a concern. And there’s no easier charging solution than Tesla’s Superchargers. They just work brilliantly. If you’ve ever fussed with an Electrify America station, you know that charging any other electric car can be maddening. You plug the car in, wait for the station to connect, either link your account or pay with a card, wait again for it all to initialize, then it starts charging. It is routinely a multi-minute process before electrons even begin flowing. And that’s if it actually works properly, which is far from a guarantee. However, there’s no fuss with a Supercharger. You simply plug in and walk away. When you’re done, you press the button on the charging handle or a button on the interior screen, charging stops, and you unplug and drive away. 

Value and Verdict

The 2024 Tesla Model 3 is fundamentally a good car. It’s quick, handles well enough, and has great range. However, it also comes with a lot of aggravating baggage. Just unlocking the car is annoying, having to either trust the mobile app to work properly or use the little keycard (which does not act like a keyless entry fob, you have to tap it against the B-pillar). It also feels as cheap as a ‘90s Corolla inside. Now that mainstream automakers have electric sports sedans, the only advantages the Model 3 has are range and charging—which, admittedly, are a couple of big, big advantages. But as more and more automakers switch over to the NACS port and gain Supercharger access, the latter advantage is about to become moot. 

Everything great about the Model 3 inherently—its smooth electric power, decent handling, and gas-free driving—can also be said about the Hyundai Ioniq 6. And while the Hyundai lacks the Tesla’s outright range, it’s more affordable, has a much nicer interior, comes with a far better warranty, and has a much wider dealer network (a quick search shows 820 Hyundai dealers in the U.S. versus 240 Tesla stores). Subjectively, I also think it looks far more interesting.

The Model 3’s importance to the market can’t be overstated, as it was a game-changer when it first came out in 2017. But since then, the competition has caught up and its luster is lost. Unless you simply must have the electric compact sedan with the most range, it’s hard to see why anyone would buy one over the current, and future, competition.

2024 Tesla Model 3 Specs	RWD	Long Range AWD
Base Price (as tested)	$40,630	$48,880 ($57,130)
Powertrain	single-motor rear-wheel drive | 57.5-kWh battery	dual-motor all-wheel drive | 82-kWh battery
Horsepower	271	394
Torque	310 lb-ft	377 lb-ft
Seating Capacity	5	<<
Curb Weight	3,891 pounds	4,030 pounds
Cargo Volume	21.0 cubic feet | 3.1 cubic feet (frunk)	<<
0-60 mph	5.8 seconds	4.2 seconds
Top Speed	125 mph	<<
Max Charging Speed	170 kW	250 kW
EPA Range	272 miles	341 miles
Quick Take	The Model 3 is still a good car but, now that its competition has caught up, it isn’t as special as it used to be.
Score	7/10

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