Tesla Model 3 facelift coming next year

Tesla is reportedly working on a fairly major overhaul of the Tesla Model 3, Australia’s favourite electric car, including a fresh cabin design that’s intended to lower production costs and make for a more user-friendly ownership experience.

The intel comes from Automotive News, which cites four anonymous sources within Tesla claiming to have knowledge of the project which is supposedly codenamed ‘Highland’.

Odds are the as-yet-unconfirmed cabin revamp will form part of a wider facelift for the Tesla Model 3, carsales’ Best Electric Car for 2022, as the battery-powered mid-size sedan comes up against increasing competition from Korea (Kia and Hyundai) and China (Polestar, MG, GWM-Ora etc).

Two of the sources said the facelifted Model 3 will enter production in the third quarter of next year and will likely include some subtle powertrain upgrades to match the reworked interior and cosmetics.

We can get a rough guide as to what’s coming via last year’s update of the bigger and more expensive Tesla Model S sedan, which scored a new infotainment system, new displays front and rear, tweaked exterior styling a dramatic reduction in the number of physical button/toggle controls around the cabin.

Most of these attributes already define the Model 3’s cabin, so the simplified makeover could refer more to the electric sedan’s production as opposed to the physical layout.

Tesla has already been reducing the number of components fitted to each vehicle through the installation of huge moulding machines at its production plants, yielding bigger and more complete components.

Logic would suggest the same updates would eventually flow through to the newer but closely related Tesla Model Y, which is essentially an SUV version of the Model 3.

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