What does ‘standard’ get me?

For buyers looking for the $35,000 base model of the Model 3, the only way to get one without trekking to a store is to make a phone call.

When it announced the sales change, Tesla said the “standard” Model 3 was actually a software-limited version of the more expensive car you can buy online. That means the range of the car on a full charge is restricted, for example, not by battery physics but by software that aims to keep it that way.

A Tesla sales representative on Long Island explained this, too, and said a buyer could pay the difference for a more capable version at a later date and the car would be updated over the airwaves.

What if I don’t like it?

For me, the biggest point of confusion had to do with test drives. Tesla says on its website that you can drive a car for a week, or less than 1,000 miles, and still return it. A sales representative in Westchester County repeated this.

He also said that if I did a test drive before buying I’d have only one day to return the car, so I reasoned it was probably better to buy first, drive later.

What I was told, however, conflicted with the policy as Elon Musk, Tesla’s chief executive, recently stated it on Twitter: that returns were possible within one week regardless of a test drive.