The Tesla Model Y and Model 3 are both designed to cater to the mass market. Both vehicles share 75% of their parts since they’re optimized for quick production. But even vehicles that are three-quarters similar have key differences, some of which were revealed in the recently-released Tesla Model Y Owner’s Manual.
From their tow eye hooks to their speakers to their wheel configuration, the Model Y and Model 3 feature subtle differences that make them distinct from each other. Here are 12 of these key differences, as outlined by Tesla owner-enthusiast Tesla Raj in a recent video.
We’ve highlighted some of the key differentiators below.
Tow Eye Hook
Tesla has added a second tow eye hook to the back of the Model Y for added convenience when towing the vehicle from either end.
In times when a Tesla Model Y may need to be transported on a flatbed truck, the vehicle can be placed in Transport Mode and winched by way of a tow eye hook and onto the back of a flatbed truck while its wheels remain free-rolling.
Compared to the Tesla Model 3, which is equipped with a tow eye hook only in the front of the vehicle, Model Y has a cover on the right side of the rear bumper to conceal the second tow eye. This can be seen in the vehicle’s diagram in the Model Y Owner’s Manual.
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- Tesla Model Y frunk tow eye (Credit: Ben Sullins)
Emergency Door Release Handles
The Tesla Model 3 met some criticism when it was produced with emergency release handles only available on the front doors. Tesla addressed the issue in Model Y by adding emergency release handles on all doors. The Model Y rear emergency release handle is located under a flap inside the bottom of the rear door pocket.
Emergency release handles are only required in situations where the vehicle does not have power. “In the unlikely situation that Model Y has no power, these electrically-powered buttons at the top of the door handles no longer work. However, the doors are equipped with mechanical releases so that you can still open them,” notes Tesla in its Model Y Owner’s Manual.
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- Tesla Model Y emergency door release (Credit: Tesla)
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- Tesla Model Y rear door emergency release (Source image: Eweaver1983271 via Reddit)
Trunk Space, Rear Seats, and Legroom
No surprises, but the trunk space for Model Y is drastically larger than that of the Model 3. Factoring in Model Y’s taller hatchback design versus Model 3’s traditional trunk and the difference in cargo space becomes obvious. Model Y boasts a massive 68 cubic feet of cargo volume compared to 15 cubic feet for Model 3.
The rear seats of the Model 3 and Model Y are also quite different in the way that the all-electric sedan’s fold 60/40. Model Y, on the other hand, has three seats, all of which could be folded down individually. The Model 3’s rear seats can also be folded down only through the rear, while the Model Y provides two ways to fold down its second-row seats and includes a center passthrough when the middle seat is folded down.
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Model Y has two switches on the left side of the trunk that gives owners ease of access to the second-row seats directly from the trunk. Activating the switch will fold-down each corresponding rear seat.
The Model Y seats appear to be the same design as the Model 3, however, are mounted on risers for better legroom and overall comfort than Model 3. Rear seat legroom in the Model Y is improved over Model 3 by roughly 15%, although it looks like some of it was borrowed from the 2% reduction in front legroom when compared to Model 3. The headroom between Model Y and Model 3 is relatively the same and differ only by 1-2%.
Tesla Model Y vs Model 3 Leg Room
- Front: Model Y – 41.8 in (1,063 mm) vs Model 3 – 42.7 in. (1,085 mm)
- Rear: Model Y – 40.5 in (1,029) vs Model 3 – 35.2 in (894 mm)
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- Tesla Model Y trunk (Credit: Eweaver1983271 via Reddit)
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- Tesla Model Y rear seat fold down levers (Credit: Tesla)
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- Tesla Model Y rear door emergency release (Source image: Eweaver1983271 via Reddit)
Wiring System and Heat Pump
Arguably the most notable difference between the Model Y and Model 3 in terms of core design improvement is the wiring system and heat management. Tesla added a heat pump to the Model Y, which could help the all-electric crossover maximize its range during winters. In addition and as pointed out by TeslaRaj in his video, the diagram for Model Y appears to show a single track for wiring as opposed to Model 3 which has two.
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Teslarati will explore both of these points in detail in an upcoming story.
Wheel Size and Specifications
The Tesla Model Y’s wheels are 9.5 inches wide, which are slightly larger than the Model 3’s 8.5-inch wheels. It should be noted that the Model Y Performance comes with a staggered wheel setup, with the front wheels being 9.5 inches and the rear wheels being 10.5 inches wide.
See more: Tesla Model Y with Performance Upgrade Uberturbine Wheels
Tesla Model Y wheel specifications (Credit: Tesla)
Rear Speakers
Both the Tesla Model 3 and the Tesla Model Y are fitted with a suite of premium speakers that provide a great listening experience for owners. They do have differences in the way that the Model 3’s rear speakers are located on a shelf behind the rear seats, while the Model Y has its rear speakers on the trunk hatch.
Coat Hooks
Both the Tesla Model 3 and the Model Y come with coat hangers, though the all-electric sedan’s is located on the crossbar that goes between the B pillars. The Model Y, with its seamless glass roof, has its coat hangers in the second row.
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Inductive Phone Charger
The Tesla Model Y is equipped with a wireless charging pad, as well as USB-A and USB-C slots. On the other hand, the Model 3 is fitted with wired charging options and a dual USB-A slot. Owners would likely appreciate the Model Y’s wireless charging features, as most flagship and midrange mobile devices today come standard with wireless charging. See Tesla Model Y wireless phone charger.
Rear USB ports
The USB ports of the Model 3 and Model Y in the second row are also different. The Model 3 is fitted with two USB-A ports, while the Model Y is equipped with two USB-C ports. Considering that the two vehicles share 75% of their parts, it would not be surprising if Tesla ends up equipping the Model 3 with USB-C ports in the future.
Tesla notes in the Model Y Owner’s Manual that the rear USB ports are for charging devices and do not communicate with the vehicle like the front USB ports that can be used for recording via TeslaCam.
Power Liftgate
The Model Y is equipped with a power liftgate, which provides owners an automatic and convenient way to open and close the vehicle’s rear hatch by way of the center touchscreen or Tesla mobile app. This feature is not present in the Model 3, which is one of the reasons why aftermarket power truck mods became quite popular in the Tesla community.
See Tesla Model Y’s power liftgate in action.
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A big thanks to Tesla Raj for compiling this info. Check out this video below.
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.
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.
SpaceX stock did the opposite of what most of Wall Street expected this week, when the day designed to be its most dangerous turned into a rally, and the rally kept going.
Thursday marked the first major lockup expiration since SpaceX’s June IPO, making roughly 911.5 million insider held shares eligible to trade for the first time, more than doubling the company’s public float. Analysts and short sellers had spent weeks bracing for a flood of selling, especially after the stock fell 13 percent following its first earnings report as a public company on Tuesday. Instead, shares rose 6.1 percent Thursday to close at $114.92, and by Friday they were trading near $129, up more than another 12 percent on the day.
SpaceX shorts get warned by Musk ally, echoing Tesla’s early struggles
The setup made the outcome notable. Short interest had climbed to roughly 34 percent of the float heading into earnings, among the highest of any large cap stock, with about 95 percent of available shares to borrow already on loan. CEO Elon Musk warned short sellers twice in the weeks before the lockup, writing on X that “the survival probability of firms who maintain a significant short position in SpaceX over time is very low,” then following up on the morning of earnings with “I try to warn them, but they just double down.”
When the newly unlocked shares hit the market and the selloff never showed up, some of that short position appears to have started unwinding. TipRanks reported that options activity shifted toward bullish strategies like put selling and risk reversals following the rally, with roughly $600 million in options premium trading Thursday alone. Retail buyers also stepped in during the earnings dip, according to Vanda Research.
The fundamentals behind the stock have not changed much in a week. SpaceX’s revenue nearly doubled year over year to $7.8 billion, with Starlink subscribers doubling to 12 million and the company’s AI segment growing 247 percent. What spooked investors on Tuesday was the spending side. Capital expenditures jumped to more than $18 billion for the quarter, up from $2.8 billion a year earlier, with AI investment alone rising from $749 million to $15.8 billion. Wall Street remains split on whether that spending is building infrastructure SpaceX needs or outrunning what the business can currently support, a debate Teslarati has tracked since shares first came under pressure.
None of that resolves the bigger question hanging over the stock. Thursday’s release was only the first of nine staggered lockup tranches, with roughly $800 billion worth of additional shares scheduled to become eligible through October, and Musk’s own stake stays locked until next June. If this week is any indication, the market is treating that supply as something it can absorb rather than something to fear, at least for now.
News
The Boring Company’s newest Vegas Station has a permit quietly waiting behind it
Sahara Las Vegas opened a new Vegas Loop station, joining an exclusive two resort transit club.
Sahara Las Vegas opened a new Vegas Loop station Thursday, giving The Boring Company’s underground transit system its northernmost stop yet on the Strip. The station sits at Sahara’s Paradise Road entrance, on the southeast corner of Las Vegas Boulevard and Sahara Avenue, and connects riders to the Las Vegas Convention Center, other Strip resorts on the network and, eventually, Harry Reid International Airport.
The addition makes Sahara the second resort, after Fontainebleau opened its own station in January, to get a stop built at street level rather than tucked into the property itself. Sahara now joins Westgate as the only two Strip resorts offering both a Vegas Loop station and a stop on the Las Vegas Monorail, giving guests two separate ways to get around without leaving the property.
The Boring Company just doubled its tunneling power in Nashville
The bigger news buried in Thursday’s announcement is what comes next. Boring Company has already secured its first permit to tunnel north of Sahara Avenue, extending the network beyond where it currently ends, even though permits to push the Loop toward downtown Las Vegas still haven’t been granted. Crews are also working on a two mile dual tunnel line running from Westgate to a planned station at 4744 Paradise Road, just north of Tropicana Avenue, that Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority CEO Steve Hill has said the company hopes to open in time for November’s Las Vegas Grand Prix.
Ridership has grown alongside the buildout. The Loop moved roughly 82,000 passengers during CONEXPO in early March, a total the company highlighted on its own X account at the time, and the system has now carried more than 4 million passengers through 11 open stations since it began running in 2021. The airport connector tunnels, meant to give the Loop a direct link to Harry Reid, have slipped past their original first quarter target and remain under construction, with Boring Company director Mike Baier saying that a full opening is still a few months out.
For Sahara, the calculation is straightforward. Convention traffic drives a large share of Loop ridership, and a station at the property’s front door gives conventiongoers one more reason to book rooms on the Strip’s north end instead of closer to the convention center itself.
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
