A customer in Malaysia received a Tesla Model 3 Highland that was equipped with two different front door panels for each side of his vehicle. The existence of this rather “unique” unit was highlighted on X (formerly Twitter) by the President of the Malaysian Electric Vehicle Owners Club (MyEVOC), Shahrol Halmi earlier today.
Tesla implements different materials for Model 3 RWD and LR’s door panels
As you may know, there are currently two versions of Model 3 Highland in Malaysia: the base Rear-Wheel Drive (RWD) option and the higher-end Long Range (LR) variant. Aside from their performance and WLTP-rated range, another factor that separates them apart is the material on their door panels.
Specifically, Tesla implements fabric door panels on the base RWD variant while the LR option receives suede panels although this applies only to the default black interior. For customers that choose the optional white interior which costs RM5,000 extra, the material would be the same regardless of whether they choose Model 3 RWD or LR.
Since the Model 3 LR variant comes with 17 audio speakers as opposed to just 9 on its RWD counterpart, its door panels also should have additional speaker cutouts.
This Malaysian Model 3 has both RWD and LR door panels
As for this particular Malaysian customer, his unit is the LR variant. While the right door of his Model 3 was fitted with the correct panel, the left door has the RWD fabric panel instead and is missing the additional speaker.
Elon Musk has previously praised Gigafactory Shanghai for building the “highest quality” Tesla EVs. As all Model 3 Highland for the Malaysian market came from this particular factory, we are slightly baffled and amazed at the same time to see that this model somehow managed to pass the quality control at Gigafactory Shanghai.
Of course, this is just one unit from probably hundreds or thousands of Model 3s that Tesla has earmarked for Malaysia. Then again, let’s not forget that we are not talking about some tiny gap but instead a whole door panel with speakers inside, in addition to the fact that this car costs more than RM200,000.
Meanwhile, we have since tried to reach out to the said customer to obtain more information about his Model 3. At the same time, we are now reaching out to Tesla Malaysia to learn about their side of the story too and what kind of action it has taken to rectify the issue.
We will update this story once we receive additional information, so stay tuned. In the meantime, you may want to check out our first drive experience with the new Model 3.
