2021-22 Tesla Model Y earns highest IIHS accolade
iihs.org
iihs.org
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.)
dunno about the headrest
As for the headrest, I've never thought about it once myself.
Do you not feel its tiny when driving on the freeway?
It's to me a minor negative in a long list of positives, and not a reason to avoid Tesla.
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.
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.
The Lucid Air does it with both a bigger battery and better efficiency.
The Mustang Mach-E has greater range for less money than the Model Y:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lSmSiOo-v8s
That's 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.
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?
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:
https://media.ford.com/content/fordmedia/fna/us/en/news/2021...
The Honda e and Hyundai's E-GMP platform cars (Ioniq 5, Kia EV6, Genesis GV60) also support V2L:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SsmQaVSYx-c
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b_JQCsIjtkM
Volkswagen's MEB platform cars will apparently get V2L support next year, maybe only on next year's models.
When will Teslas get V2L support?
I think you're spending too much time with Tesla's advertising materials and not enough time with practical realities.
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.
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.
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.
Looking into getting a 3 or a Y next year myself.
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!
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.
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.
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.
I don't use the headrests, but I've found the seats to be amazingly comfortable on long road trips.
Is a reliable parts supply chain not a reasonable expectation of a car?
I can get whatever part I want whenever I want from a diverse set of manufacturers for my Land Rover.
Eh?
I can't even buy a laundry sink right now as the supplier won't have stock till Feb next year.
https://epc.tesla.com/en/catalogs
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.
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.
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'd guess that Elon, as "crazy" as he is, might have an idea or two about solving this problem (e.g. 3D-printing the part, etc).
Tweet to him. There's a tiny, tiny chance that he will respond and decide this is worth pursuing.
Edit: scratch that, I tweeted to him about it [0].
I should never miss a good opportunity to do a micro-tiny amount of good to someone else.
https://www.iihs.org/ratings/class-summary/midsize-luxury-su...
Estimated delivery window: 1/6/22-2/3/22
I would also seriously hope that they aren't going to charge you the new, elevated price.
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
"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"
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.
I'm thankful.
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.
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.
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.
Good luck waiting for your car.
Do you mean 2022?
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 :)
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.
Lol what? Could they increase the price by 100k and there would be nothing you could do about it you're locked in to pay?
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.
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.
This is a big improvement from 2012, before small overlaps became a KPI for safety.
> 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.
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.
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?
Consider the proposal less of a fine for each death, and more of a taxation based on death rate.
IIHS data shows that Volvo and Subaru vehicles are the safest in their price categories.
[0] https://www.iihs.org/ratings/insurance-losses-by-make-and-mo...
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.)
Model S and X I think still use radar.
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.
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.
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.
> 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.
or how the Model 3 fared in 2019: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=be5MLDXUvHE
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
Tesla designs for safety, not for regulations, in stark contrast to the industry norms.
Check the injury rate statistics if you don't believe their transparent explanations.