Tesla Model Y

[NDA]

Refined (in a car) usually means a rather elegant or genteel interior... I had a Bentley for a while, that was refined. I have a Tesla and there's no walnut, leather or knurled air vents.

Refined, as in sugar, means the absence of unwanted elements. It could be that I suppose.

[ZesPak]

Durzel said:

Refinement? Seriously?

I've got a Model 3 but I would not describe it as refined, and I even have the "premium" interior. Perhaps you ought to sample some of the German marques at a similar price point.

Can't argue with the value proposition though, and there's a lot to like about it that you still don't get with legacy automakers.

I'm a Mercedes fanboy by nurture, but at the same price point there's no doubt the Tesla is more "refined". A 4 cyl engine is crude compared to the EV drivetrain. Not to mention the ride, with something as crass as a gearbox.
But as NDA pointed out, I think the OP meant refined in the ride, as in "absent of unwanted sounds and vibrations".

[Zcd1]

Durzel said:

Refinement? Seriously?

I've got a Model 3 but I would not describe it as refined, and I even have the "premium" interior. Perhaps you ought to sample some of the German marques at a similar price point.

Can't argue with the value proposition though, and there's a lot to like about it that you still don't get with legacy automakers.

The Y was noticeably smoother and quieter than my Model 3P.

You might disagree, but I'd suggest that my 20+ years of driving Audis (4, 6 and 8-cylinder, petrol and diesel) qualifies me to comment on the Tesla's relative refinement...

[Equilibrium25]

dvshannow said:

Think model Y is quite good value the amount of tech it offers - the price cut is quite surprising to me especially how much they cut it by .

Do they have the production to keep up with supply.
Is demand that bad. Or
do they just want to disrupt the market?

I’ve got one. It doesn’t have much tech, trust me.

The EV stuff is good, but overall it’s woefully lacking in decent tech.

Price cuts are to spur orders to catch up on production numbers that are already locked in.

[Pooh]

Equilibrium25 said:

dvshannow said:

Think model Y is quite good value the amount of tech it offers - the price cut is quite surprising to me especially how much they cut it by .

Do they have the production to keep up with supply.
Is demand that bad. Or
do they just want to disrupt the market?

I’ve got one. It doesn’t have much tech, trust me.

The EV stuff is good, but overall it’s woefully lacking in decent tech.

Price cuts are to spur orders to catch up on production numbers that are already locked in.

I’ve got one, there is a lot of decent tech, trust me.
The price cuts take the prices back to roughly where they were 1 year ago, demand is high and waiting lists are growing.

[Pooh]

The model Y has, in no particular order:

Autopilot, I use it all the time and it is very good
5 heated seats
Heated steering wheel with adjustable temperature since it was updated a couple of days ago
Built in dashcam
Sentry mode
Camp mode, I have been camping twice and it works very well
Dog mode
Seamless integration of the charging system
Games
YouTube, Netflix etc
Excellent navigation rout planning including all the charging stops
Extremely accurate range prediction which takes into account the number of passengers, tyre pressures, topography, driving style, weather etc
A superb app
Over the air updates
Graphs showing energy usage and predicted range
The Octovalve system that manages the heating and cooling of the motors, battery and interior
The two different types of electric motors used front and rear to make it more efficient
Heat pump heating system

I am sure there is more that I haven’t thought of but it has a lot of decent tech.
It certainly isn’t perfect but after 14k miles in 5 months I am delighted with it.

Edited by Pooh on Monday 20th February 21:13

[Mr E]

Equilibrium25 said:

I’ve got one. It doesn’t have much tech, trust me.

What do you want that it doesn’t do?

I mean, I’d like air suspension and 350kw charging for the very rare occasion I need it, but other than that it does most things pretty effectively?

[Equilibrium25]

Mr E said:

What do you want that it doesn’t do?

I mean, I’d like air suspension and 350kw charging for the very rare occasion I need it, but other than that it does most things pretty effectively?

Top of my head stuff, fairly typical £50k car tech that it doesn’t have:

Cooled Seats
HUD
Data-enabled USB ports (not in glovebox)
Adaptive headlights or matrix headlights
Passenger lumbar
CarPlay/Android Auto
Choice of nav options (see prev point)
Gesture tailgate
Puddle & exterior handle lighting
Interior ambient lighting

I’m sure I could make that list longer without too much more effort. Bottom line is Teslas carry a spec level that’s like a competitors base model with a couple of options.

Then there is the stuff that works better on competitors such as ACC/lake keeping aka autopilot.

And then the stuff that has worked well on competitors for decades and Tesla can’t crack - auto wipers and headlights. Particularly the former.

I’ve concentrated on items that are reasonably termed as technology and avoided trim choices etc.

The drivetrain is good, exceptional even, that doesn’t make the whole car a technical triumph though.

[PushedDover]

£50k car with cooled seats ?

I discounted reading further tbh - odd post

[ZesPak]

Equilibrium25 said:

Top of my head stuff, fairly typical £50k car tech that it doesn’t have:

Cooled Seats
HUD
Data-enabled USB ports (not in glovebox)
Adaptive headlights or matrix headlights
Passenger lumbar
CarPlay/Android Auto
Choice of nav options (see prev point)
Gesture tailgate
Puddle & exterior handle lighting
Interior ambient lighting

I’m sure I could make that list longer without too much more effort. Bottom line is Teslas carry a spec level that’s like a competitors base model with a couple of options.

Then there is the stuff that works better on competitors such as ACC/lake keeping aka autopilot.

You're already grasping at straws here.
Yes, these are options you might get on a 50k car, but show me one 50k car that has all of these (plus everything the tesla has of course).
I've been shopping around again and sure, you can get some of these on sub-50k cars, but no way you can get half of these.

Some are just plain false, I've yet to test drive another car that consistently takes exits well. As for lane assist, it's a bit of a hit and miss and the Tesla is definitely in the top 3 ime.

Data enabled USB ports? You then forgot to mention it's also missing a cassete player, cd player and mp3-cd player.

Choise of NAV options. I don't see what you mean here, other than the mentioned Android Auto, what car gives you a choice of NAV options (maybe pay 1500 extra for an 8" screen?).

This seems like an exercise forgetting a lot else. I tried to have a look at BMW and the iX1, which is a TINY car in comparison, starts at GBP 53k...
So what car offers even half of this, with 300-odd horsepower and equivalent TCO?

[dvshannow]

The tesla clearly has decent tech , as per all the features Pooh mentions didn’t think my statement was at all controversial, think the guy is just trolling now

[Equilibrium25]

ZesPak said:

Equilibrium25 said:

Top of my head stuff, fairly typical £50k car tech that it doesn’t have:

Cooled Seats
HUD
Data-enabled USB ports (not in glovebox)
Adaptive headlights or matrix headlights
Passenger lumbar
CarPlay/Android Auto
Choice of nav options (see prev point)
Gesture tailgate
Puddle & exterior handle lighting
Interior ambient lighting

I’m sure I could make that list longer without too much more effort. Bottom line is Teslas carry a spec level that’s like a competitors base model with a couple of options.

Then there is the stuff that works better on competitors such as ACC/lake keeping aka autopilot.

You're already grasping at straws here.
Yes, these are options you might get on a 50k car, but show me one 50k car that has all of these (plus everything the tesla has of course).
I've been shopping around again and sure, you can get some of these on sub-50k cars, but no way you can get half of these.

Some are just plain false, I've yet to test drive another car that consistently takes exits well. As for lane assist, it's a bit of a hit and miss and the Tesla is definitely in the top 3 ime.

Data enabled USB ports? You then forgot to mention it's also missing a cassete player, cd player and mp3-cd player.

Choise of NAV options. I don't see what you mean here, other than the mentioned Android Auto, what car gives you a choice of NAV options (maybe pay 1500 extra for an 8" screen?).

This seems like an exercise forgetting a lot else. I tried to have a look at BMW and the iX1, which is a TINY car in comparison, starts at GBP 53k...
So what car offers even half of this, with 300-odd horsepower and equivalent TCO?

Think the model Y I have was about £58k with paint and 20s. What are they now? Maybe £56/57k as a LR with paint and wheels. An EV6, Enyaq or Ioniq 5 comes with a whole lot more tech and spec at a similar price. I suspect a Mustang Mach-E does too.

Re. nav, yes CarPlay/Android auto are what I mean. Running Waze is very much missed by me as the car will now not reliably inform me of, and route me around, urban holdups.

Agree that a BMW will need more money spent on it, but that’s a premium brand car. Tesla is not, whatever some Musketeers will have you believe.

Re autopilot, I don’t have enhanced so it doesn’t take exits. Although it does swerve at them momentarily, which BMWs and Land Rovers I have driven do not. The standard autopilot is less capable and more intrusive than the systems I’ve used previously.

[z4RRSchris]

waiting for mine.... should arrive today!

[Equilibrium25]

dvshannow said:

The tesla clearly has decent tech , as per all the features Pooh mentions didn’t think my statement was at all controversial, think the guy is just trolling now

Not trolling. I answered a direct question put to me about what technology i felt was missing. I’d also already stated what tech I thought was good (drivetrain). Sorry if your opinion differs to mine, but that doesn’t make me a troll. Take your insults elsewhere.

[Equilibrium25]

z4RRSchris said:

waiting for mine.... should arrive today!

Good luck, hope you enjoy it! They’re good cars.

[Equilibrium25]

Pooh said:

The model Y has, in no particular order:

Autopilot, I use it all the time and it is very good
5 heated seats
Heated steering wheel with adjustable temperature since it was updated a couple of days ago
Built in dashcam
Sentry mode
Camp mode, I have been camping twice and it works very well
Dog mode
Seamless integration of the charging system
Games
YouTube, Netflix etc
Excellent navigation rout planning including all the charging stops
Extremely accurate range prediction which takes into account the number of passengers, tyre pressures, topography, driving style, weather etc
A superb app
Over the air updates
Graphs showing energy usage and predicted range
The Octovalve system that manages the heating and cooling of the motors, battery and interior
The two different types of electric motors used front and rear to make it more efficient
Heat pump heating system

I am sure there is more that I haven’t thought of but it has a lot of decent tech.
It certainly isn’t perfect but after 14k miles in 5 months I am delighted with it.

Edited by Pooh on Monday 20th February 21:13

Just for the record. I fully agree that the driveline/EV tech is excellent and already said so.

I’ve never been camping and don’t (yet) own a dog, but I’ve no doubt those features are brilliant for those that need them.

Autopilot- all I can do is compare with what I had before, which was better.

Heated things - I think that’s largely standard these days at this price level with EVs, apart from the middle back row maybe.

I like Netflix/YouTube etc but would swap that for what others have in terms of features. Which is where my original point came in about Tesla not having everything in terms of tech - which is often the claim made by fan boys (I’m not saying that you are one).

[Equilibrium25]

Pooh said:

I’ve got one, there is a lot of decent tech, trust me.
The price cuts take the prices back to roughly where they were 1 year ago, demand is high and waiting lists are growing.

On the price point. Will be interesting where this goes. When I ordered last March a LR was £54990 before options. This went up to £57990 and now down to £52990.

In early/mid-2022 Tesla had pretty much no inventory globally and by the middle of the year the order to delivery time had gone out to several months. I’ve read (but not validated) that they went into 2022 with an order backlog and certainly that was the situation by the middle of the year. Production increasing all the while.

Q4 production cleared the backlog and left a significant global inventory and effective pre-registering here.

Q1 23 price cuts have stimulated demand and cleared some stock.

What’s interesting is whether the current price is ballpark correct for stimulating demand throughout the year vs increasing production. The car/company is profitable enough to take another hefty price cut if needed.

[wyson]

PushedDover said:

and say EVs make no sense currently against electricity prices (largely to the thick and ill informed) -

Depends on the use case, but for my life circumstance (2 ppl work from home during the day, lots of short hop town driving during the week, longer day trips during the weekend ) new gen hybrids are very attractive.

So Whatcar have tested the new gen Honda Civic giving 80mpg around town, the Toyota Corolla 5th gen Hybrid, 70mpg. They said the cost per mile is roughly equivalent to running an electric car with current electricity prices at standard rates of about 35p per kwh.

Was speaking with a Honda salesman who runs the new Civic, he said motorways he gets 40 something mpg, around town 50 something mpg. So even if you aren’t hypermiling it, the mpg figures are still good.

Add charging network chaos, new gen Hybrids do make a case for themselves. I suppose if the Mrs and I worked from an office and we could take advantage of cheaper overnight charging rates, that would make a difference, but because we draw most of our power during the day, that wouldn’t make sense for us.

Admittedly I have yet to model this fully in Excel, do sensitivity analysis etc with exact figures (which I would do before pulling the trigger on anything) but it is intriguing.

Edited by wyson on Friday 24th February 13:20

[skwdenyer]

Equilibrium25 said:

Think the model Y I have was about £58k with paint and 20s. What are they now? Maybe £56/57k as a LR with paint and wheels. An EV6, Enyaq or Ioniq 5 comes with a whole lot more tech and spec at a similar price. I suspect a Mustang Mach-E does too.

Re. nav, yes CarPlay/Android auto are what I mean. Running Waze is very much missed by me as the car will now not reliably inform me of, and route me around, urban holdups.

Agree that a BMW will need more money spent on it, but that’s a premium brand car. Tesla is not, whatever some Musketeers will have you believe.

Re autopilot, I don’t have enhanced so it doesn’t take exits. Although it does swerve at them momentarily, which BMWs and Land Rovers I have driven do not. The standard autopilot is less capable and more intrusive than the systems I’ve used previously.

I think the trouble with this debate is the idea there's a "right" spec. For a bunch of potential buyers, some of the gewgaws are of critical importance. That's fine - everyone can make their own purchasing decision.

For me, the interior of a Tesla (and, no, I haven't bought one yet, but it is on the plan once some other life stuff has been dealt-with) is a bit like the old Douglas Adams line about how the dolphins knew they were more intelligent than humans precisely because they hadn't wasted their time building lots of stuff

Taking your list as an example, here are my thoughts:

Cooled Seats - ok, I guess

HUD - roads aren't so much busier than they were 20 years ago that I can't take my eyes away for a moment I can't stand having stuff at a different focal distance in my direct field of view.

Data-enabled USB ports (not in glovebox) - I agree, that seems a pain

Adaptive headlights or matrix headlights - matrix headlights are now coming on-stream, aren't they?

Passenger lumbar - agreed, seems cheap to remove this

CarPlay/Android Auto - this is a choice. I can live without it. I understand others can't. But you can still stream from the phone to the Tesla, including Waze nav directions if you want, can't you?

Gesture tailgate - horrid things in my book - if you're so heavily-loaded in your arms as to need that, you're just putting your back at risk by balancing on one foot. But I do understand some people like them.

Puddle & exterior handle lighting - err, Model Y has puddle lights. Do you mean "look at me projectors"? They're available in the aftermarket I can understand your point about exterior handle lighting.

Interior ambient lighting - for safety reasons, I can't stand this - I've turned it off on our Peugeot. I bemoan the lack of an equivalent to Saab's Night Panel feature on modern cars. The huge screens we're all stuck with now are similarly awful. It is what in part drives the desire for brighter and brighter headlamps, which in turn make the country roads I drive on less safe when there's traffic around. The correct way to light a car interior at night is to not light a car interior at night. But that's my view; yours is different - mine just has the benefit of decades of scientific research to support it

[Equilibrium25]

skwdenyer said:

I think the trouble with this debate is the idea there's a "right" spec. For a bunch of potential buyers, some of the gewgaws are of critical importance. That's fine - everyone can make their own purchasing decision.

For me, the interior of a Tesla (and, no, I haven't bought one yet, but it is on the plan once some other life stuff has been dealt-with) is a bit like the old Douglas Adams line about how the dolphins knew they were more intelligent than humans precisely because they hadn't wasted their time building lots of stuff

Taking your list as an example, here are my thoughts:

Cooled Seats - ok, I guess

HUD - roads aren't so much busier than they were 20 years ago that I can't take my eyes away for a moment I can't stand having stuff at a different focal distance in my direct field of view.

Data-enabled USB ports (not in glovebox) - I agree, that seems a pain

Adaptive headlights or matrix headlights - matrix headlights are now coming on-stream, aren't they?

Passenger lumbar - agreed, seems cheap to remove this

CarPlay/Android Auto - this is a choice. I can live without it. I understand others can't. But you can still stream from the phone to the Tesla, including Waze nav directions if you want, can't you?

Gesture tailgate - horrid things in my book - if you're so heavily-loaded in your arms as to need that, you're just putting your back at risk by balancing on one foot. But I do understand some people like them.

Puddle & exterior handle lighting - err, Model Y has puddle lights. Do you mean "look at me projectors"? They're available in the aftermarket I can understand your point about exterior handle lighting.

Interior ambient lighting - for safety reasons, I can't stand this - I've turned it off on our Peugeot. I bemoan the lack of an equivalent to Saab's Night Panel feature on modern cars. The huge screens we're all stuck with now are similarly awful. It is what in part drives the desire for brighter and brighter headlamps, which in turn make the country roads I drive on less safe when there's traffic around. The correct way to light a car interior at night is to not light a car interior at night. But that's my view; yours is different - mine just has the benefit of decades of scientific research to support it

Good post. I’m with you on ambient lights - but it’s one of those common features these days and my daughter likes cars with it

I hadn’t realised mine had puddle lights! But the lack of door handle lighting combined with the flat design makes these missed.

The cars have matrix headlights but no software to run it. So they don’t “do” anything, apart from write Tesla on a wall during the light show.

HUD, my reason for liking it is exactly that I don’t have to take my eyes off the road for as long and focus change is far less than flicking eyes to a screen or dashboard (should you be blessed with one).

Not sure about any straightforward way to run waze; but out of the box it’s not there. Someone may enlighten me.