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?
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.
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!
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.
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.
I don't use the headrests, but I've found the seats to be amazingly comfortable on long road trips.
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.
dunno about the headrest