I can’t actually show you any of the Tesla Model 3s I've ridden in or driven, because all my conversations were off the record, for reasons I’ve already hinted at. Instead, you get a black box over what I cannot confirm was a Model 3, at a location I cannot disclose. But none of that matters.

The Tesla Model 3 is the purest essence of new. The old? If innovation is binary, then there is only one contender for this face-off. A car that is all hardware and no software. Pitting a modern sedan against the 3 would be suicide, which is why we need a car with no software to understand what Tesla is doing. A car that is the purest distillation of the old that you can still buy, and that has more in common with the Model 3 than you’d think.

Tesla speaks directly to these so-called digital natives; everyone else is in the stone age. Why? Because innovation is binary. Something is innovative, or it isn’t. One flaw is failure. But it’s not hardware flaws that are deadly, it's software. Hardware can fail all day long—we expect it to fail. Not software. Legacy carmakers are selling packages wherein they design the cosmetics but buy the software. It's almost 2018; if it isn't upgradeable in the field, by the user, it's essentially dead to that user.

Innovation is all or nothing. No matter how much “innovation” customers think they’ve bought, the next five generations of customers aren’t going to put up with a car, at any price, that has Bluetooth and infotainment inferior to their latest phone.

The only fair comparison? The old vs. the new. When legacy carmakers talk about innovation, they’re merely packaging “innovation” they buy off the shelf from the same Tier 1 suppliers as everyone across town. Bo-RING. Sometimes they do something really interesting, like Cadillac or Audi, but mostly it’s the same shtick.

The genius of the Model 3 is the inversion of expectations and total break from the past. Its only forebear is the Model S. Spiritually, maybe even the Citroën DS. Every design “flaw” is a feature, not a defect. One can’t compare the Model 3 to anything else on the market, because Tesla is selling an idea—albeit one with functionalities attached.

One thing is certain: When the auto sector as we know it is annihilated, it will be because of the Model 3. Based on what I experienced, everything in the Model 3 will be duplicated by everyone else, except for the public relations and mythology, which no automaker outside of the hypercar circles understand.

If you want to understand the Model 3, read retired auto exec and hobbyist bomb-thrower Bob Lutz’s screed on the future of the auto sector . He thinks dealerships, car magazines, legacy auto makers, and human driving have 20 years left. I think it’ll go quicker than that for some, slower for others.

Week after week I pit my Morgan 3-Wheeler, both the best and worst car of all time, against the best new and used cars on the market. My Morgan—unreliable, finicky, weird, and lacking in obvious features—always wins. Why? Because it delivers the highest pride of ownership and driving excitement of anything on the road today. It defines "authentic." Because when it comes to narrative, everything else on the road is junk. I will forgive anything it does, or doesn't do, at any price.

Put a Tesla Model 3 next to a my Morgan and something strange happens. The crowd that would otherwise flow to Malvern’s magical rolling casket parts the sea like Moses and gathers around Tesla’s creation. The past loses its luster as the future bursts into light.

For the first time, the Morgan loses, and with it the past, dragging down all the hollow innovation coming out of Japan, Detroit, and Germany.

The Tesla’s central gauge cluster? The Morgan has one, too, but it doesn’t do anything. I have to suction-mount my iPhone there. The Model 3? The screen replicates everything I want my phone to offer while I’m driving. All the buttons critics think people will miss? There’s a reason Blackberry died. Have you seen an IPhone X? No buttons.

The Model 3’s spartan interior? Gorgeous. Clean. Devoid of the BS nonsense and clutter we’ve come to mistake for “design.”

Performance? The Morgan’s performance sucks, yet I still love it. The Tesla Model 3? Tesla has already commoditized EV performance for those who get it. The slowest Model 3 variant will outperform most of the so-called sports cars ever made. Old news.

Comfort? If DeMuro can fit in a Model 3, anyone can. Is he 6’4”? I forget. No one cares. I fit in the car perfectly with my second ex-fiancee behind me, and we’re both six-foot tall. Tesla wins.

Despite all the promises from the legacy car makers, Teslas remain the only cars on the road that function like phones. They can break all day long, but those wireless updates speak directly to digital natives. Every day, the supply of potential customers who expect software updates to come standard increases. Does it matter if the Model 3 has production delays? What about panel gaps? Guess what: no one really cares. I certainly wouldn’t. None of the kids or parents I saw gawking over the Model 3 cared. I’ve seen this happen multiple times.

The hardware details are irrelevant. I could go on and on, but DeMuro’s already done it. The Model 3’s details? Nobody cares, and no one should, because…

What Is Tesla’s Big Secret?

While the media and auto sector slept, a weird Model 3 story recently unfolded that tells us more about Tesla’s future than the Model 3 itself.

Remember Cannonball Baker? He’s the guy they named the illegal race after. He set dozens of cross-country driving records in the first half of the 20th century. Speed limits barely existed. Same for the interstate system. His motivation? Bought and paid for by internal combustion car makers to prove the reliability, safety, and fuel economy of cars as we know them today.

The cross-country Cannonball record times went from 271 hours, in 1915, to under 29 hours in recent years. The rate of improvement, however, has slowed to almost nothing; internal combustion has nothing left to give.

Electric vehicles, on the other hand, have loads of untapped potential, as proven by a small group of people taking EVs in Cannonball Baker’s footsteps. EV record attempts were sparse until the arrival of Tesla’s Supercharger network, but within the last four years we’ve seen incredible improvement in cross-country times.

The Tesla Model S was the first EV to get cross country in a time that wasn’t laughable, with total hours logged in the mid-60s. Then a team made the run in a P85D in just over 59 hours.

Then I joined another team who got across the country in 58 hours, 55 minutes (again in a P85D).

Then I joined another team in a 90D and drove across in 55 hours. A bigger battery pack in the same car doesn’t explain the enormous time improvement, nor did our attempt to optimize our speeds, or use the expanding Supercharger network.

Something is happening, and it’s in Tesla’s battery management software. Let’s keep going down the rabbit hole.

A few months later another team—in a P85D, not a 90D—got across in just over 51 hours. That’s an improvement of over three hours, with the smaller battery.

Something is happening at Tesla.

Then, in the biggest mystery of all, a Tesla Model 3 appears on Instagram, sitting on a pier in Manhattan Beach. Approximately 50 hours later, that car appears on Instagram parked in front of the Red Ball Garage in New York City—the traditional start line of the real Cannonball Run race.

How did a Tesla Model 3 get across country over an hour faster than a Model S P85D? The Model 3 is lighter and more aerodynamic than an S, but its largest battery pack is rumored to be a 75. No one’s talking. Not Tesla, and not the alleged drivers of the Model 3 that allegedly set this alleged record.

Why? Who knows? Any potential evidence of this new record has disappeared.

Something is happening.

Tesla claims the Model 3’s longer-range model will go 310 miles.The EPA says the Model 3’s range is actually 334 miles.

I’ve done this more than anyone, in ICE cars and Teslas, and I think Tesla is improving their battery management software faster than they, or anyone else, is improving battery hardware.

What is happening? Information control. Managing expectations. When the public gets their 3s, they will marvel over how much better the range is than stated. By which time Tesla will have released another software update.

Where was the legacy media on this? Blind. Talking about panel gaps. No one cares.