There has been much speculation that Tesla’s best-selling vehicle, the Model 3, would one day see it come with a 100kWh battery pack option. Last year Tesla hacker @greentheonly found Tesla added source code hinting at the new option.
Today new evidence has been revealed showing there are units in the wild already outfitted with the bigger battery. Twitter user Zeus M3 posted a screenshot from the display of a Model 3 in Factory Mode, showing the huge battery pack.
hey @greentheonly look what we found here 🙂 pic.twitter.com/mQ9SIPoXDq
— Zeus M3 (@zeus7f1) June 15, 2020
Green responded to the tweet by saying he has knowledge of more vehicles in the wild already outfitted with the 100kWh battery pack, but that is the first publicly revealed unit.
Currently the biggest battery available in the Model 3 is the 75kWh pack in the Long Range and Performance variants. This can give the Model 3 a maximum range of 518km. The additional energy from a 100kWh pack could extend the range of the Model 3 close to over 600km on a single charge.
Upon closer inspection there are some other interesting things to take note of in the screenshot.
The first is that the Model 3 with the new battery is metallic silver, a colour that has long since been discontinued by Tesla (unfortunately). How would a new vehicle with a new battery pack have the old colour, unless Tesla was potentially bringing it back?
The screenshot also reveals the Model 3 may one day come with heated wipers, but on this particular vehicle the feature is set to “False”.
Another feature showed in this screenshot that has been speculated before, but denied by Musk himself, is air suspension on the Model 3. For this particular vehicle, it is again set to “False”.
Update: Elon Musk took to Twitter to squash this rumour. Tesla hacker @greentheonly also confirmed it was not real, after being able to root it (access it) himself.
So about that 100kWh model3 from the other day
I am sad to report it turned out to be not real. It did come form Tesla and it has a sticker with a higher weight than usual. We rooted it and peeked inside and nope, it's a regular 74kWh battery in the end which is a disappointment
— green (@greentheonly) June 18, 2020
