The Tesla Model 3 and Model Y are the electric automaker’s two mass-market vehicles that were aimed toward making electric transportation a mainstream idea. The two cars share 75% of the same parts and have been referred to as “siblings” by Tesla enthusiasts. But how do the Performance variants of the two vehicles compare in terms of handling, acceleration, and efficiency?
The Kilowatts YouTube channel aimed to answer that question for the consumer, the enthusiast, or even the curious. How would Tesla’s mass-market sedan match up against its mass-market crossover?
Three tests were performed to compare the two vehicle’s performance in the three different categories. While handling tests can be subjective, the other two were based purely off of data that proved to show the Model 3 Performance was the superior vehicle in a 0-60 MPH assessment and efficiency. But the Model Y wasn’t far behind in either category and for a crossover, that speaks volumes.
A comparison of the two vehicle’s Performance variants shows the cars are strikingly similar in acceleration, range, and 0-60 specifications.
Model 3 Performance
- 299 miles of range
- 75 kWh battery pack
- 162 MPH top speed
- 3.2-second 0-60 MPH
- 20″ Gray Performance Wheels
- Performance Brakes
- Carbon fiber spoiler
- Lowered suspension
- Aluminum alloy pedals
Model Y Performance
- 280 miles of range
- 75 kWh battery pack
- 155 MPH top speed
- 3.5-second 0-60 MPH
- 21″ Überturbine Wheels
- Performance Brakes
- Lowered suspension
- Aluminum alloy pedals
The 0-60 MPH comparison of the two cars performed by The Kilowatts proved the Model 3 was superior in acceleration. It came just .15 seconds over its estimated 0-60 time that Tesla specified on its website at 3.35 seconds, while the Model Y recorded a 3.72-second time.
Even in efficiency, the Model 3 was around 5% more efficient, registering 275 watt-hours per mile compared to the Model Y’s 295 watt-hours.
The two electric vehicles are remarkably similar in build, performance, and efficiency, and the company’s entire fleet continues to improve thanks to software releases that positively impact performance and battery tech.
Tesla has made battery manufacturing and technology a key focus of its company’s development through the past few years. Improvements in battery anodes and electrodes, along with developments in cell-life preservation, have allowed the company to become the first automotive manufacturer to produce an electric car with 400 miles of EPA-estimated range.
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Tesla Model Y gets the full ‘Jay Leno’s Garage’ treatment: ‘It is fun, and it is addictive’
Although the Model 3 and Model Y continue to be Tesla’s two most popular sellers, each vehicle appeals to differing needs in practicality and performance. Both cars offer white-knuckle acceleration packed with efficient range ratings that allow for long-distance travel. However, the decision of which vehicle to purchase comes down to what the owner personally needs.
The Model Y crossover has more cargo space and caters to those with small families. The Model 3 provides plenty of space for owners but is not quite as big as its sibling in the Model Y.
When choosing which to buy, it all comes down to personal preference. While the Model 3 currently offers slightly faster speeds and better efficiency, the Model Y offers cargo room that would be great for anyone who is hauling the kids to and from soccer or picking up the weekly grocery haul.
Watch the Kilowatts Model Y and Model 3 comparison video below.
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Elon Musk
The Boring Company’s newest tunnel vehicle runs on Tesla parts and no one is driving it
The Boring Company’s new tunnel vehicle runs on Tesla Model 3 batteries and drive units.
The Boring Company just introduced a new piece of hardware, and it runs on parts pulled straight from a Tesla showroom. Liner Truck 3, unveiled in a post from the tunneling company’s official X account, is an all electric vehicle built around Tesla Model 3 battery packs and drive units, purpose built to move concrete tunnel segments to the boring machine face without a single person underground.
Introducing Liner Truck 3 — our latest fully electric tunnel vehicle.
– Tesla Model 3 battery and drive units
– Transports 22,000+ lb of concrete segments to the boring machine
– 28 miles of range
– 12 mph max operating speed
– Remotely piloted from Global OCC in Texas, with… pic.twitter.com/XB7FgSXnpy— The Boring Company (@boringcompany) August 7, 2026
The job itself is unglamorous but critical. Each precast segment run weighs more than 22,000 pounds, roughly the load of a full cement mixer, and Liner Truck 3 hauls that weight repeatedly between the surface staging area and wherever the Prufrock machine happens to be cutting.
The Boring Company said Liner Truck 3 is piloted remotely out of its Global Operations Control Center in Texas, extending the Zero-People-In-Tunnel approach the company has spent years building toward. An earlier version of a ZPIT liner truck was already tested at the company’s Bastrop, Texas research tunnels, and a factory tour released last month showed an employee flying a fully loaded liner truck with a PlayStation controller. Liner Truck 3 looks like the production version of that same idea, cleaned up and pushed into daily use.
The timing lines up with a company digging in more places than it ever has before. The Boring Company now has multiple Prufrock machines active or arriving in Nashville, where Music City Loop construction has been accelerating since February, and its Vegas Loop network keeps adding tunnel mileage on a near monthly basis. Every one of those projects depends on getting concrete segments to the cutting face fast enough to keep the boring machine from idling, which is exactly the bottleneck Liner Truck 3 is designed to remove.
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It also reinforces something Tesla owners have watched happen gradually across Musk’s companies: passenger car hardware finding a second life in heavy equipment. Model 3 drive units already move people through the Vegas Loop, and now the same components are hauling concrete underground in Nashville and wherever The Boring Company digs next. Whether that kind of component reuse extends further into TBC’s equipment lineup, or into other Musk owned industrial hardware, is the next thing worth watching.
Firmware
Tesla unlocks in-car web conferencing to extend Google Meet, Teams and beyond
Tesla’s Summer Update lets owners join Google Meet, Teams, and Discord calls via cabin camera.
Tesla’s 2026 Summer Update, which just began rolling out to customer vehicles, now links the built-in web browser with the in-cabin camera feed and microphone input, thereby letting owners join video calls on nearly any browser-based service instead of just Zoom.
The change appears in Tesla’s own release notes for software version 2026.26 under “Web Browser,” which states that the vehicle can now use its interior camera and cabin microphone when a website requests access, with permission granted the same way a desktop browser handles it. As NotATeslaApp notes, this feature opens the door to Google Meet, Microsoft Teams, Discord, and other webcam-enabled sites to activate the in-car cabin-facing camera. The feed automatically crops and zooms to center the driver in frame.
Tesla has offered in-car video calling before, but only through a dedicated Zoom app that launched at the end of 2022, a stripped-down browser preloaded with Zoom’s own web client and gated behind Premium Connectivity. Opening the full browser to any camera-requesting site removes that walled garden. Elon Musk first called video conferencing “definitely a future feature” back in 2020, when the pandemic pushed remote meetings into daily life, so this update effectively finishes something Tesla has been promising for six years.
Tesla Summer Update begins rolling out: a look at the new features
The feature keeps the same restrictions that applied to Zoom on Tesla vehicles. It only works while the car is parked; shifting into Drive disables the camera feed, according to the release notes. It is also limited to vehicles running Tesla’s AMD Ryzen infotainment hardware, meaning older Intel-based Model S and Model X units, along with early Model 3 and Model Y builds, don’t get it.
Turning the browser into a general entry point for the in-cabin camera, rather than routing everything through one local app, widens the number of third-party sites that can ask for access, even though Tesla’s permission prompt.
With the Summer update only days into its rollout, be sure to stay with us on TikTok and X to see the latest video demonstrations.
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Elon Musk escalated his monthslong feud with Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey this week, pledging that his own AI video tool will produce a competing version before the year is out. Responding to a fan-made, AI-generated clip of the ancient epic, Musk wrote on X, “Before this year ends, Grok Imagine will make a full-length movie of The Odyssey that is historically accurate and true to the art of Homer.”
In June, Musk quoted an xAI-shared trailer built entirely with Grok Imagine Video 1.5, a two-minute-plus reimagining of The Odyssey styled after a 1970s classical Hollywood epic, and predicted “full movies by the end of the year,” as Teslarati reported at the time. That trailer, built from 36 consistent shots by a single creator, was Musk’s proof of concept. This week’s pledge turns that prediction into a specific commitment, tied directly to Homer’s text rather than a generic demo.
Before this year ends, Grok Imagine will make a full-length movie of The Odyssey that is historically accurate and true to the art of Homer https://t.co/bVHzUmY9WN
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) July 22, 2026
When a fan separately proposed that Musk fund a live-action alternative, to “give Mel Gibson $100 million to film an Odyssey adaptation with painstakingly historically accurate ships, armour, weapons, and casting, with all dialogue taken straight from the original poem and delivered in Homeric Greek,” Musk replied with two words: “I’m down.”
The Grok Imagine pledge lands as the tool’s underlying infrastructure has changed hands. Grok is no longer a standalone product, it folded into SpaceXAI after SpaceX’s acquisition of xAI closed in February, meaning the compute behind any Odyssey production traces back to the same Colossus supercomputers now bundled into SpaceX’s pitch to investors. Musk has separately said SpaceX’s own engineering data is being fed into the next major Grok training run, a two trillion parameter model he’s called the “2T run.”
Whether Grok Imagine can sustain a feature length narrative, rather than a series of impressive individual shots, remains the open question.
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The Boring Company’s newest tunnel vehicle runs on Tesla parts and no one is driving it
Elon Musk and SpaceX shrugs off the trading day Wall Street feared most
