A Canadian shop has figured out how to hack the Model 3 so that customers can enjoy Tesla’s Acceleration Boost feature without buying it from the automaker, Electrek reports.
The Model 3 is Tesla’s budget model, and offers mid-pack performance for a reasonable price. The only thing setting the base trim apart from faster versions is a few lines of code, which Tesla will sell you for US$2,000.
Now you’ll no longer have to shell out nearly as many clams, though, as a shop in Quebec called Simon André has just figured out how to fit Tesla’s Acceleration Boost to a 3 for only $1,100.
The shop figured it out when it cracked open the vehicle’s power inverter while converting a single-motor Model 3 into a dual-motor car; it found it was able to add the 50-horsepower Acceleration Boost feature along the way.
The discovery pushed the shop owner to open Ingenext, a new company that’ll offer customers that half-price Acceleration Boost, as well as a few other upgrades for the Model 3, including a 150-horsepower boost up to Performance spec. That mod requires some hardware tweaks, though.
Ingenext has partnered with Electrified Garage on the mods, a company backed by Rich Benoit of RichRebuilds. Rich is famous for taking apart broken Teslas and re-engineering them — and throwing shade at Tesla at the same time.
Obviously, if you start to mess around with Tesla’s proprietary software systems with third-party upgrades, your warranty is going to be voided, and you could possibly be barred from services like Supercharging or having maintenance done at a Tesla dealership.