Reasons not to drive a Tesla Model X in the mountains | Hacker News Reader

Reasons not to drive a Tesla Model X in the mountains

breckworks.com

I ordered a 6-row Model X approx 24 months ago - still waiting - and ordered a Model Y 7-seater in ~Feb this year and got it a month or two ago. It's awesome.

I can't really comprehend how the Model X can be ~$50k superior to a Model Y 7 Seater.

I’ve only driven a Y as a loaner, and although it’s 80% as good or better than X, I gotta say there are some features I still dig on the X.

X has more physical controls, which come in handy. It’s got a better steering control imo. We also got air suspension, which comes in pretty handy, especially while climbing over rocks in Colorado mountains.

That said, is it worth 50k more? No :) But we got an early model and got a bunch of tax credits and discounts, at which point it made more sense (and Y was not even announced yet).

Um, okay. Nice rant, I guess. The author isn't saying anything new or different than what's already been rehashed a thousand times in places like the Tesla subreddit.

As a former Model X owner and a current I-PACE owner, I can attest that you don't need to compromise on the car itself in order to get that sweet sweet "instant acceleration" you get from an EV.

You mean the instant acceleration you get from an expensive EV with a powerful motor. No Leafs out there keeping up with Teslas.

Every EV has instant acceleration, even Leafs, in comparison to combustion cars.

Sure, a Leaf loses power really quickly compared to a Tesla, but you can get the jump on almost any combustion car from a stop light (even if you won't win any 1/4 mile races) purely because you get 100% torque as soon as you stomp the go pedal.

I owned a LEAF for a couple years. That car was still fun as all get-out, even if I wasn't winning any 1/4-milers against a Taycan. I regret not keeping it.

The last point is the big one

> 5. You like gas stations. Teslas mostly charge up at home and Supercharge on the road. You don't actually need gas stations.

> 7. You value your time and enjoy traveling. Road trips take longer as supercharging takes a lot longer than fueling up. You are also tied to select routes that offer charging, and run a non-zero chance of getting stranded.

These two seem contradictory. It's very telling how Tesla marketing only talks about superchargers in terms like "add 200 miles in just 15 minutes" because it's bad for the battery if use them too often or charge over 80%. I can "add 450 miles" to my Prius in "just 2 minutes" and don't have to worry about hurting it in the process :p

Next time you're doing a road trip, time out how long you're stopping for breaks. There's _no_ chance I'd ever spend only 2 minutes gassing up, that's below even just the minumum time to add gas, not to mention stretching legs, getting something to drink, bodily fuctions.

Tesla is a nice road trip car... until it isn't.

Supercharging times are OK, especially if you have kids. Sometimes it's not even enough for a proper potty+food break and you have to hurry back to the car to move it to a normal parking spot so you don't incur overtime fees.

However, I now avoid traveling in a Tesla during any major holidays. Yes, 2019 SLO fiasco was probably an exception, but I definitely didn't enjoy 3 hours in the line, waiting for the supercharger to become available... My family enjoyed it even less.

That certainly seems fair. I doubt I'd want to take one on a trip either. It's just not the raw charging time that's the issue.

This isn’t discussed very often, but if you have an old model, like we do, the Charging a Tesla takes forever. Out 225 mile range battery takes 1.5-2 hours to get to full charge.

Some would say that’s not necessary, but there are certain stretches of the road where we came down to Zero miles, after having full 100% charge.

It doesn’t feel great to almost run out of power at midnight with two young kids, in the middle of nowhere.

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