Six months and nearly 9,000 miles into living with a 2026 Tesla Model 3 Long Range rear-wheel drive, the surprise in this Out of Spec Reviews update is not the electric part. It is the software. The car is a leased inventory unit the team picked up around the holidays for roughly 300 dollars a month, and the owner, a first-time EV driver named Sam, describes Full Self-Driving as the feature that changed how he uses the car. The video reports the Model 3 runs an 82 kWh Panasonic pack, showed full battery health at delivery, and is being retested every six months to track how it ages. The takeaway from the conversation is that the driver-assistance system, not the drivetrain, is what pulled a lifelong gas-truck owner into an EV.
Leasing reframes one of the biggest worries first-time EV buyers raise, which is long-term battery degradation. On a lease, the pack's value at year five is the leasing company's problem, not the driver's, which makes an aggressive monthly price like the one described here easier to justify than the same car bought outright. That is the buyer angle the video does not dwell on but which matters: a cheap lease turns a fast-moving software product into something you can walk away from when the next version lands. The hosts add a related detail buyers should note, which is that these packs are not balanced below a certain charge level, so the car benefits from an occasional higher charge even if you normally keep the state of charge low. The flip side of the whole proposition is that the value here is tied to a driver-assistance feature that remains supervised and varies by software version, so a buyer is effectively betting on a roadmap. For someone curious about EVs and assisted driving without a long commitment, a short lease is a reasonable way to try both and bail if either disappoints.
The hosts say roughly 61 percent of the car's driving has been on FSD, including a version they refer to as 14.3.4, and Sam recounts both the highlights and the limits. He praises how the car plans charging stops and parks itself on road trips, describes saving time on a route the navigation rerouted, and tells a story of the system once routing them up a mountain to a locked gate before he took over, which the hosts use to explain why supervision still matters. On durability, they note the car came through a slushy winter on Michelin Primacy all-season tires and report no rattles or squeaks after nearly 9,000 miles. The hosts stress that snow performance comes down to tires more than drivetrain. The one consistent complaint is the door handle, which Sam found awkward and which froze shut in winter, though he says a software update now lets the phone pop it open. The video also covers a body shop repair after the team dented the side during avoidance testing, a self-inflicted incident rather than a fault with the car, and notes the first repair attempt had to be redone before it looked right.
Bottom line: This is the clearest example yet of a pattern worth noticing: for a lot of new buyers, assisted driving is the hook and electric is just how the car happens to be powered. If that describes you, a cheap Model 3 lease is a low-risk way to find out whether the software earns its keep before committing real money. Just go in knowing the system is still supervised, that behavior shifts with each update, and that the headline feature is the one most likely to change under you. As an ownership story, this one is mostly a quiet endorsement.
Commentary on a third-party video. Figures and claims are as presented in the source and have not been independently verified. Spotted an error? Tell us and we will correct it.