Own a Y, and absolutely couldn’t explain how much I love this car.
That said I am running into a complaint: somebody backed into me in a parking lot last week. The car is still mechanically fine, but with a damaged panel and bumper now. This is a bummer for me, since I’ve been meticulous about washing it, always parking at the end of the lot, etc. car detailing has actually become a hobby as a result of enjoying taking care of this car.
The problem is that Tesla simply doesn’t have the parts to fix this right now. I made a service appointment, and they sent me a message the next day cancelling it due to a parts shortage.
So I’m kindof at a loss now. My car has a dented/scratched panel, and I can’t even get it fixed. I’d be really frustrated if this was something preventing it from driving.
That said, there’s a reason the for the parts shortage, long order wait times, etc. The model Y is basically a perfect vehicle. I can’t recommend it enough.
(And this article is just a cherry on top. We bought this car originally because we knew it was really safe, and we just had a baby. So reading this is just affirming.)
I got a Ford Escape 2014 a while ago. I needed something cheap and decent enough. I don't love it, and I don't spend much time on it. It has never had issues in spite of common jokes about Found On the Road Dead which I think may be behind the times.
The thing about a large volume manufacturer with a developed dealer network is: when someone backed into it in a grocery store parking lot and destroyed the bumper, I thought I would be making phone calls, waiting for parts, getting it in, etc. But the very first phone call to my dealer, and they had the part for this 6 year old car just sitting there on the shelf. Installed and back on the road the next day.
I have a friend who has a 2008 Honda that got hit and my wife has a 2003 Lexus that got hit. Both have parts readily available even in this supply chain crunch. Tesla has never been up to snuff when it comes to parts. If you own a Tesla then you better pray you don't need a part because the Tesla service horror stories are practically legendary at this point - and that was before "supply chain issues."
Tesla is the only car brand almost not affected by chip shortage. Because they adjust parts super fast. They will beat their production estimate in 2021. Ford service will never come to your home unlike tesla. Their service is far more superior to ford. Yes, if you have non critical issue it will be hard to get an appointment, but it's not tesla's fault. It's monopoly of dealership, and regulations. They not allowed to open as many services as they want.
We test drove the Y and passed on it. We found the visibility out of the back poor, all the mirrors tiny, and the headrest also tiny and my head kept rolling off it. Do you not experience these problems?
The rear visibility felt weird when I test drove it for sure, coming from a normal sedan. But, over a year in to ownership, it never feels tiny when driving it. All the cameras and sensors make it a MILLION times better to maneuver in small spaces than my old car. It was more a matter of getting used to something different (and I'd argue objectively better) rather than an overall downside.
As for the headrest, I've never thought about it once myself.
> Why is it objectively better to have less rear visibility?
Because it's an artifact of the tapered afterbody that makes the cars the most energy-efficient on the road. Teslas beat every other EV on range, and the tiny handful of cars that do better (Lucid Air being the most notable) do so with significantly larger batteries. Everything has tradeoffs.
FWIW: a few years of driving a van in my youth cured me of reliance on the center mirror anyway. This is very much an ejectable feature in my mind, something very much worth trading for ~30 miles of extra range or whatever.
There are plenty of other quirks like this. The Y has a very poor turning radius (to reduce the void size in the wheel wells) too. It only comes in five boring colors. The third row seating is real and useful, but the headroom is comically small (same tapered afterbody). Everyone has their own list. The car isn't perfect.
But it's absolutely as close to perfect as anything else I've driven.
I think the Air is sort of the exception that proves the rule. Though it's also early and independent verification on production vehicles is still in the future. They're only barely shipping right now.
I didn't say the Mach-E was more efficient. I said you get more battery for your money.
In the end what's going to matter to most people is how far they can drive for the money they spent.
You should also watch the video. Tesla's EPA range figures are inflated. You need to do range tests in the real world (like in the video) to see more practical results.
> I didn't say the Mach-E was more efficient. I said you get more battery for your money.
In response to my point that Teslas were more efficient than other cars, though. I guess I don't understand "battery for your money" as an advantage. If you buy a pickup instead of a sedan, do you usually claim that it has "more fuel tank for your money" when people complain about gas mileage? Ford ships a slightly cheaper car with a significantly more expensive part. That's bad for Ford and at best a wash for the consumer (though it does cost more for electricity, that's a small pert of operating an EV). That's a disadvantage, right?
> I don't understand "battery for your money" as an advantage.
Why would I spend more money for less battery when I can spend less money for more battery? More driving range is an advantage.
> do you usually claim that it has "more fuel tank for your money" when people complain about gas mileage?
These are EVs, not ICEs. Live in the real world, not a rhetorical one.
In any case, for EV pickups you absolutely want more battery for your money. You want it for range, you especially want it for towing range, and you also want it for vehicle to load applications:
This is getting very Gishy. I'll just repeat the original point upthread and depart: Teslas (and the model Y in particular) have poor rearward visibility because of a tapered afterbody, and this was done as a deliberate design decision (one of many) that makes them the most aerodynamic cars on the market. None of that has to do with towing or V2L.
Mercedes got one good test from Edmunds that looks a little better in terms of km/kWh than a Model S (but not the Y or 3), and one duck from Nyland that showed them way behind. If you're trying to claim that car is clearly better then the only thing you can possibly be citing is... advertising materials. Practical realities say the production EQS fell way short of where it claimed it was going to be last spring.
Again, the only car out there with a realistic claim (i.e. in independent testing) to be significantly better than a competing Tesla is the Lucid. And not by a lot, but it looks real.
You claimed Tesla had superior aerodynamics to any other car on the market. That's factually not the case.
I always find it funny that people get so bought in to something as trivial as a car brand that they're unable to differentiate fact from fiction any more.
That's the power of advertising I suppose. They've advertised at you and it worked.
Not sure how you'd get to objectivity, but there are tradeoffs. The M3 and MY have higher rear which provides more trunk and rear passenger space. I drive an M3 and usually keep the rear seats folded down to add a little more visibility out the back. Cameras and visualization compensate sufficiently in my view.
It's to me a minor negative in a long list of positives, and not a reason to avoid Tesla.
The Y's overall visibility is objectively better than my old sedan. It's also really hard to have that really aerodynamic shape and good rear visibility. The Y's visibility reminds me of a Prius in a lot of ways.
I've never thought once that the rear visibility was a problem on the freeway.
FWIW We went with the VW ID.4. $20k cheaper with federal rebate, and absolutely love it. Doesn't feel cheap. No issues with visibility or headrest size, prefer mechanical door locks, and appreciate not having a single offset screen. Wish CarPlay was a little more integrated with the rest of the car, and I miss physical buttons for things like setting temperature (which is even worse on a Tesla Y as there are no buttons, but it seems at least their touch screen has more things visible at once than the VW does). Having to touch a touchscreen while driving is difficult, even as a passenger, because unless you're on the most perfect road ever the shaking will make it hard to tap your target.
Same here. I needed a larger car that can seat my family of five (3 kids). Everyone was cramped, the visibility was poor, especially with everyone in the car and I just can’t get over having the dashboard in the center. It’s a shame because I really love the acceleration, I love the technology, and I would love having an electric car. Model X would be a great fit, but not for a 6 figure price.
In the end I got a Subaru Ascent, which is a better overall fit for my family than the Y, but I’m not excited about it like I am a Tesla. It’s basically a glorified minivan (actually, it’s even a little less utilitarian than our Odyssey).
But there are some exciting new electric cars and vans coming, and I’m really looking forward to the next generation of electrics!
Model Y owner, visibility is definitely not an issue. If you used to drive an F150 maybe, but apart from that is very spacious car. I'm 6'3 and I have 6'4 friend in back of me with no issues. I can also do a camping mode in the car.
This is by far the best car I ever owned. It's nothing even to compare with. My friend bought 2 years old BMW, and I feel like there is a 10 years gap between bmw and tesla.
I guess you just biased against tesla. Check the videos about their car seats on youtube. they are one few companies that don't outsource Car seat production because of ergonomics.
While I agree with you that the rear visibility seems really bad, you eventually get used to it. Don't get me wrong -- that's not a valid excuse but in my experience I've never felt like I couldn't see what's behind me. Suggesting that's what the cameras are for is, imo, a worse excuse.
As for the head "rest", technically it's a head _restraint_ not a head _rest_. Your head shouldn't be resting against it while driving.
It's a typical first impression before I bought model Y i saw one youtube review one person criticized the seats. He had some back pain issues due to some medical conditions. After he drove model Y on o long distance 500+ miles he said he's taking his words back.
It almost scared me away also because it looks visual but I can confirm seats experience of tesla is very good. Musk in interview to Munro told they tried several contractors to produce a comfortable seat. Most cars outsource seats. They ended up producing their own with better ergonomics. They invest a lot with distributing the pressure/weight across entire seat.
The rear visibility came up a lot in reviews early on. After a day or so of driving, it becomes unnoticeable and doesn't actually cause a problem in practice. On top of that, you can turn on all three rear facing cameras while driving for amazing visibility.
I don't use the headrests, but I've found the seats to be amazingly comfortable on long road trips.
The rearview mirror itself has a light filter which works in concert with the light filtered by the back window such that the interior of the car does not show up on the mirror, but everything coming through the window is perfectly clear.
So if you were looking at it going "this is too dark" it was probably misunderstanding a feature.
In terms of the amount of space you can see, it is sufficient.. but also the 3D rendering will give you a much better idea of what's behind you than any mirror.
Actually I wasn’t concerned with the darkness, just total visibility.
My understanding is that the 3D rendering is meant to be a subset of what the car sees, and not a safety feature. If that’s the case, I saw it miss all kinds of cross traffic and other cars that should have been in it… and that was just on a short car ride plus the few times I’ve been in other Teslas.
> but also the 3D rendering will give you a much better idea of what's behind you than any mirror.
I don’t buy this. To me it’s a poor substitute to look down at a display rather than a quick glance out in my rear view mirror to learn the distance to the car behind and it’s acceleration curve, who is behind me, etc. I much rather rely on my human eyes to gather all the information I’m looking for than an abstracted subset by an inferior camera with latency, and then having to extrapolate distances.
They shouldn't have cancelled, they should have pushed your appt out based on what their estimated date is. I'd make another appt and push them to order the part. You can find the part and reference it by number so they have no excuse. Instead of just asking for it to be fixed, ask for a quote and if they could order the part(s) for you. Then you can figure out if you want to try the repair yourself or have them do it once you get it.
I used it recently after hearing they were telling people they couldn't install all season tires on the 21" wheels, but if you reference the new tires by part number (they're new tires) they were able to get a quote and order them.
Hate to break it to you but you will be waiting months to get it fixed. I’ve been waiting on parts for about 3 months to get mine fixed for relatively minor damage. got rear ended by a pickup truck.
The Gigafactory in TX is going to certainly help with this as it will massively increase the amount of Y vehicles and parts being produced domestically.
Not that it is going to be a magic fix, but they know it is a problem and are opening the factory with the Y only so they can fix some of the backlog. My wife has a Model Y and I have a Model 3. My 3 got hit by an idiot who ran a red light after having it for a month (in Sept 2018) and I had to wait for 2 months to get the new seatbelt tensioners after a tesla approved body shop fixed the cosmetic work.
It's also insanely expensive to service. I had an Amazon van back into my parked M3. Left a small indent on the right rear quarter panel. Total cost to fix (for Amazon) was $3k CAD.
I disagree. I have been waiting 3 months for parts, in the mean time my sensors collision don’t work and I have constant annoying dash messages saying my sensors don’t work.
Yes. There are many vehicles which earn the highest rating from IIHS. It's more useful to think of vehicles which can't pass every test as deficient; except for new tests, which are designed so that most vehicles fail the year they introduce the test. Most vehicles start passing new tests after three model years.
The summary of this thread is that the only complaints anyone has is that it is too hard to get a Model Y or parts for a Model Y, both indicative of just how successful this car is.
My wife and a friend both have cars in the shop after getting hit. No problem with parts. Tesla is practically legendary at this point for having long waits on parts - and that was before the "global supply crises."
They will beat expectations of production. They adjust their lines super quick and almost not affected but shortages.
Their limiting factors are Giga Berlin and Giga Texas that will be live in Jan-Feb. It's an additional million cars a year.
Now if they would only deliver mine, 100 days and counting since I ordered it. Price has gone up $5K since I ordered (I'm locked in but can't change anything)...
If that's of any consolation, a friend of mine ordered a Volvo XC 60 now (mid December 2021), and heard they expect the delivery to be in August 2022. 9 months from now.
Could be worse. My buddy ordered a basic trim Jeep Wrangler. Was supposed to get it in September then didn’t hear anything. 2 weeks ago he went to the dealership to find out his order was cancelled by the factory and had to fight his way up 3 levels of managers until they told him and gave him his money back for the deposit.
I feel truly lucky to have bought a car in Oct 2020. I dream of selling it for that sweet above-what-I-paid price point... but these stories help sober me up
> I feel truly lucky to have bought a car in Oct 2020. I dream of selling it for that sweet above-what-I-paid price point... but these stories help sober me up
Similar story. Bought a specific car that felt like it was already at the bottom of its depreciation curve October 2020, and nine months later, other dealers offered me 26% more than I paid for it.
Odd question: would you need to report (and pay tax on) the capital gains if you did sell the car for more than you paid for after buying it 12 months prior?
"KEY TAKEAWAYS
Personal use property is used for personal enjoyment as opposed to business or investment purposes.
These may include personally-owned cars, homes, appliances, apparel, food items, and so on."
"Technically, the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) considers personal use property a capital asset and treats it differently than other types of property or assets.2 Taxpayers cannot deduct losses on the sale of personal use property, while a gain on the sale of such property is subject to taxation.3"
To chime in on the pity party; ordered a Ford Mustang Mach E at the start of April 2021. Original estimate was 3 months to delivery. Currently the delivery estimate is 10 months, but no one seems to be able to tell if that's real or not.
At current pace, ford will produce around 64k ME annually when they reach a year of full production. That is about 1/5th of Tesla's 2020 US production.
Meanwhile Tesla's Texas model Y factory is about to open and add another 500k to their annual capacity.
If demand is similar for both cars, I think you will be driving a Tesla sooner.
Mach E manufacturing is a joke. They recall all cars produced until summer because roof fell off. Right now they stop sales because of seat-bells. They have door opening issues all the time(check youtube).
Ford's overall EV production in their only Mexico plant in 2021 will be ~40k. While Tesla added Giga Berlin in Giga Texas in January, that pushes their production capacity to 2 millions/year. 2022 probably will be 1.4-1.5m tough.
Buying EV from Ford nowadays is like buying a car from a small startup. Even Rivian and Lucid will beat them in 1-2 years lol
The problem with form they don't make money on these EV's for them it's an experiment you're paying for. They makes production artificially low since they don't know what to do with EV's. Electric F150 planned volume is also a joke.
It's just amazing how big a knee in the demand curve there was. I ordered mine in April and got it in eight weeks, which seemed like an impossible wait at the time. Now I feel like an old timer.
And it's not like production got stymied, Tesla's producing 70% more cars now than they were a year ago and they're still sold out for 6-12 months.
With a date that soon, you must have ordered the Performance, right?
I ordered a non-Performance Model Y LR late October and the delivery estimate was May. Then it moved to June. Then three days ago, I got notice it's ready for delivery and they want to deliver between Christmas and the end of the year.
I'm planning to go through with it, but I'll be looking at it closely. I guess I'm hoping it's one that someone rejected just to try and get the BBB tax credit next year that may or may not be actually happening. It'll be a little disappointing if I jump through all these hoops only to find clear issues that led to a rejection.
For what it’s worth, I ordered my Y in August and it shipped in late November. During that time, the estimated delivery date bounced around a lot, going as far back as February and then it abruptly jumped back to late November (the jump happened in mid November).
It’s a great car; my only qualm is that they didn’t have enough parts so they delivered mine without a USB hub or wireless phone charging function—all well and good, better than delaying the delivery; however, the fact that this was either not caught by Tesla’s inspection team or not reported is fairly disappointing.
Out of stock is the main headwind for my side project https://app.electrade.app (trying to simplify the EV leasing process). Everything's out of stock. Always.
High gas prices are tailwinds though, so hopefully things will pick up when supply chains catch up. Also, all cars are facing delivery issues, so it's not only EVs :)
They must be becoming mainstream now. I bought my 2019 by walking in off the street when I saw a batch show up at the local showroom. Same day, had to wait for prep but picked it up that afternoon like three hours after I put the order in online.
Yes its a long range, they are optimizing for profit where MYP > MYLR and if your car has Full Self Driving (+$10K margin basically) they seem to be delivering those first per threads on tesla motors club.
The way I read that is that they have their price locked in(The price they are paying is 5k less the current asking price) but they are unable to make any changes to their order: trim level, battery range, etc.
Worth noting that many of Tesla’s serious competitors are winning this award on most of their models, e.g. Mercedes, Audi. And pretty much every model made by Volvo is a Top Safety+ winner.
Perhaps regulators should take on a different approach...
> Car manufacturers that sell more than 1 million vehicles shall pay $1M per driver, occupant or pedestrian death that occurs involving a car sold by that manufacturer. The payment shall be made irrespective of cause of death, state of maintenance of the car, or fault of any accident.
This gives car manufacturers a direct, ongoing and financial incentive to make cars safer, not just to pass safety tests.
And optionally, a car company can choose to increase that $1M number to $5M or $10M or even higher, and is then given a star rating for doing so that they can use on marketing material.
You don't have a moral case for that kind of rule though. The end doesn't justify the mean. If a drunk person drives his Chevy through a crowd and kill 10 people, why would GM pay 10 millions?
Our country was built on personal responsibility and accountability as core values. This applies to businesses by extension (business = shareholders).
It's better to simply mandate a certain minimum. Seat belts, backup cameras and ABS are examples.
That's why this only applies to companies who have sold 1 million cars... The individual drunk idiot then disappears into the noise, which will apply equally to all car companies.
Consider the proposal less of a fine for each death, and more of a taxation based on death rate.
You saying there is no moral case for it does not make it so.
I think the idea that was proposed is at least academically interesting to consider. If you can’t see why, maybe you should dig into why your moral values are what they are: what tradeoffs are you making?
Volvo still beats Tesla in real-world safety [0]. There is not enough data on real Tesla Model Y crashes to compare. It's possible that the Model Y will be safer than Volvo vehicles in real use.
IIHS data shows that Volvo and Subaru vehicles are the safest in their price categories.
Does anyone know how big of a deal it is to not have radar on newer Tesla 3s and Ys? I don't know which month was the last one to have radar, but it was some time in 2021.
From the article it looks to be April and has improved the model y rating from good / acceptable while model 3 earns a superior rating in both crash avoidance tests from advanced rating
It isn't something you'll find out from crash tests. It's easy to make vision based automatic braking work perfectly in highly controlled test conditions. Making it work properly on the road is a whole other matter.
I've got a vision-only model Y. I don't know how good the radar-based ones are, but I do know the vision-based adaptive cruise isn't great. Does a fairly poor job of maintaining a consistent distance to the car ahead, compared to other cars I've driven. I also had to turn the automatic emergency braking to its minimum sensitivity setting after it slammed on the brakes a couple times for no reason.
So I don't know if the radar-based was better, but the vision-based isn't very good imo. (FWIW the vehicle's been great otherwise.)
Agreed on the adaptive cruise. Glad to know there is a braking sensitivity. It gets very jumpy about oncoming traffic on curves and hits the brakes for no reason. The cars following me loved when it did that twice in ten minutes.
They turned my radar off when I got the FSD beta. It's hard to tell what is from losing radar versus getting FSD itself, but I think I liked the radar better. It seemed to perform better and have less phantom braking.
Do you have a source for this? I'm only seeing that the radar permanently stops working if you opt in to FSD, with no way to reactivate it. But this only happens if you enable FSD.
That isn't what the parent said. If the highest rating is set such that vehicles that achieve it demonstrate a high level of safety, it would then be preferable if all vehicle makers strived for this rating. Assuming you want to drive a safe vehicle, it would then also be preferable if this rating was also the most common since that would indicate that most vehicle makers are building vehicles with a high level of safety.
Actually it is what was being said, unless there is some horrible misunderstanding that achieving the highest rating in tests like this indicates that automobiles require no further safety improvements.
wfme expressed my sentiment well. I don't really know, but if, as you are implying, these tests aren't an assurance of safety, than that point stands even more!
They aren't exactly an assurance of safety but such tests should simulate a number of the most common and most dangerous types of crashes and score those. This test comes from the insurance industry so we should expect they are motivated to prioritize according to the risk of damages payouts, but hopefully that should be a decent proxy for safety in any case. So better results should generally mean safer.
I'm not saying the tests are not good. But the value of the results is informing consumers about the safest cars which then encourages industry to compete on safety. If half new cars get the best ratings then that means the test no longer motivates the industry to improve the state of the art in safety and it's just about pressuring the trailing products to catch up.
So for example if your argument is that automobile safety is now at a point where it doesn't make much sense to improve any further then this would be fine. I wondered if that was your reasoning.
And how do firefighters open these arkward doors without a proper door handle?
All cars without a sturdy door handle seem like a death trap to me. I would never buy a car that sacrifices that aspect for a little improvement in aerodynamics, or for aesthetic reasons.
Is it me, or do they appear to be cheating a little on this test...?
The test is designed to test the case where a small overlap causes a traditional crumple zone (designed for full frontal collision) to completely crush and intrude into the passenger compartment. Tesla has solved that by causing the car to deform in such a way to bypass the obstacle.
But I bet if they did a test with slightly more overlap, but not full frontal overlap, it would do really badly.
Really, this is a case of engineering to pass some very specific tests, rather than engineering something that's good for use in the wider world. cough dieselgate cough.
They seem to have improved this scenario while not lowering any of the other test scores, hard to consider it 'cheating'.
The XC40 has a very similar result with the car skipping the barrier (and also earned the highest mark): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KZQ6TJ0pZIg
Volvo and Tesla are the only two automakers that have their own crash labs. They've release a video recently talking about their safety program: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9KR2N_Q8ep8
The video is just of that one test but multiple Model Ys are crash-tested in different scenarios before the rating is assigned. I think you're talking about the moderate overlap test.
> To qualify for either of the Institute’s two awards, vehicles must earn good ratings in six IIHS crashworthiness evaluations, including the driver-side small overlap front, passenger-side small overlap front, moderate overlap front, original side, roof strength and head restraint tests. They must also be available with a front crash prevention system that earns advanced or superior ratings in both the vehicle-to-vehicle and vehicle-to-pedestrian evaluations.
That said I am running into a complaint: somebody backed into me in a parking lot last week. The car is still mechanically fine, but with a damaged panel and bumper now. This is a bummer for me, since I’ve been meticulous about washing it, always parking at the end of the lot, etc. car detailing has actually become a hobby as a result of enjoying taking care of this car.
The problem is that Tesla simply doesn’t have the parts to fix this right now. I made a service appointment, and they sent me a message the next day cancelling it due to a parts shortage.
So I’m kindof at a loss now. My car has a dented/scratched panel, and I can’t even get it fixed. I’d be really frustrated if this was something preventing it from driving.
That said, there’s a reason the for the parts shortage, long order wait times, etc. The model Y is basically a perfect vehicle. I can’t recommend it enough.
(And this article is just a cherry on top. We bought this car originally because we knew it was really safe, and we just had a baby. So reading this is just affirming.)