Highland and Tesla’s Future
The details are very interesting of course - who doesn’t love to oggle the new features on a car - but it’s what these new features imply about the direction of the company that really catches our imagination.
Because while there is a lot of new tech going into the Cybertruck - the Model 3 is a much better indicator of Tesla’s future.
Because, let’s face it, Cybertruck is an oddity - and that’s on purpose. Tesla could have produced a pickup truck ages ago if that was their only goal, but they wanted a standout product - so we can’t really be sure that the Cybertruck means anything for the future of Tesla’s vehicles.
The Model 3 though? That’s one of their mainline cars - one of their bestsellers. Major changes to this sedan are big signals for wider change in the company - and Tesla even said as much during their Investor Day event back in March.
And the biggest flags we can see while looking over the new offerings of the Model 3 Highland are the updated design language, and the production changes.
Sure some of the smaller things stand out as well - the use of the rounded yoke-like steering wheel with haptic touchscreen buttons in place of traditional control sticks on the steering column are important to note.
This is a risky change that will definitely have to be iterated on as customers provide feedback - but that also means Tesla might hold back using this sort of option on their other vehicles until it’s been thoroughly tested.
But let’s circle back to the big changes to the Highland that point to some future changes across the Tesla fleet.
First, the updated design language.
Tesla as a company has not deviated far from the original look of their cars - Cybertruck excluded, of course. Whether it’s a Model X, S, 3, or Y, you could always tell a Tesla by the soft, rounded shapes of the head and tail lights - and the swooping curves along the body.
The Highland however adds a sharpness to those lines, and shrinks the size of the lights to match the new shape-language of the whole form. This new Model 3 has gained a definite edge that it didn’t have before - and it’s hard to imagine the rest of Tesla’s product line not being updated to match.
Likewise, the interior is sharper, with less rounded edges and more definition to draw a user’s eyes to the larger infotainment screen. These aren’t huge changes, but a simpler, more aggressive visual design helps keep costs down while giving the Tesla look an overdue refresh.
Similarly, the entire production philosophy for the Model 3 has changed. As one of the oldest vehicles in the Tesla lineup, the Model 3 used to take a lot of effort to produce - lots of smaller parts coming together in a specific order - like most modern vehicles. But as they mentioned at the Investor Day event: Tesla wants to streamline that process.
The company learned a lot from their use of Gigapresses with the Model Y and now the Cybertruck. While it’s not likely that a Gigapress device was used for this redesign, the philosophy of reducing parts as much as possible has definitely been passed on to this new Model 3.
More than that, this is a huge flag that Tesla is waving. They’re advertising that their priority going forwards will be to make the process of assembling their vehicles easier, and more efficient in order to save on money, and to produce more cars, faster. And to do that, they’re going to have to update their older models in a similar fashion to what they accomplished with the Highland.
The real proof that these changes are going to be used in the future are on the horizon too. Project Juniper - the Model Y redesign - was discovered not long after word of Project Highland first got out in late 2022. We know from an interview with Tesla’s Chief Designer Franz von Holzhausen - also from 2022 - that the Model S at least is being actively worked on.
And of course, there’s the new, unnamed model that Tesla teased at the Investor Day event. This new vehicle will not only be more affordable than even the Model 3, but it looks like Tesla intends to use their new facility in Mexico to test out some of the production changes debuted with Project Highland on a much larger scale - using this new vehicle as a guinea pig.
These next two or three years are going to be big for Tesla, as they basically overhaul their entire company to take advantage of the new technology they’ve been developing. Should they stick the landing, we should be seeing a design refresh of their entire line of vehicles - plus at least one new entry - and some very slick, automated production lines to drool over.
Project Highland is just the start.