You can learn a lot about a car by paying attention to what its engineers fix with a midcycle facelift. In the case of, the main upgrades focus on refining the old car's cabin, but if you look deeper, you'll find several small but meaningful suspension and chassis changes aimed at delivering more driving refinement.
Also called frequency-selective damping, there's some clever engineering in this technology, but it's neither new nor exotic. Koni developed the idea in the late 1990s and claims it has put more than 1.5 million vehicles on the road with frequency-selective dampers, and it's just one supplier among more than a half dozen companies with patents on selective-frequency valves.Like the car it replaces, the 2024 Tesla Model 3 uses a variable-ratio steering rack.
With the 2024 Model 3 Highland, however, engineers slowed down the steering across the range, meaning a driver needs to input more steering than before to make the same turn. Tesla wouldn't share the slowest and quickest ratios for the old and new car, but it did reveal that the"overall" ratio increased from 10.3:1 to 10.6:1. The goals with these changes are more linear steering response and better predictability and stability, particularly at higher speeds.
The 2024 Model 3 Highland's new forged steel control arm should hopefully solve this problem. The arm now has an enclosed housing for the ball joint with nowhere for water to enter from the top. And while forged steel will rust like any metal that contains iron, it will take longer to rust than the cast part.This change is difficult to spot both in pictures and in person, but the 2024 Tesla Model 3's redesigned knuckles move the steering axis to deliver a more refined driving experience.
Check out the front brake dust shields on the red Model 3 Highland. This car was built with the left shield installed on the right side of the car and vice versa. The shields were installed in this same"backward" fashion at the rear of the car.Tesla would certainly like to rewrite its reputation for spotty quality with the updated Model 3, but here's evidence there's still room for improvement in the system.