Tesla Model Y

I was waiting to find out of I'm sale agreed on a house or not before potentially pulling the trigger on the black AWD Y for €50k. Back up to €52k now which would make me more likely to wait for something in the new year.

A small report of my first UK trip in the Model Y RWD.

The good...

Efficiency on the, mostly motorway, 540km run was fantastic. ABRP told me that I would need 2 stops to complete the run. I only needed 1 Supercharger stop and arrived at my destination with 15% remaining. The Tesla network is an incredible asset and adds flexibility to the trip, but the competition is catching up. There were many places where multiple unit rapid charger stations sat alongside the Tesla group. The cost of the supercharging was also nice and low.

Predicting what percentage battery you'll have left at charging or destination is a kind of voodoo, but it's normally quite accurate. Changing weather conditions on a long run can see the estimate falling fairly dramatically but if you keep an eye on it, you won't be caught out.

The support of the driver seat was perfect, I arrived at my destination pain free. Better than any of my previous cars on the same run.

Interior space is huge with enough storage for the kitchen sink that my wife cannot live without on long journeys.

The Bad...

The auto wipers are comically bad and the auto headlights are right up there alongside them. The return trip through Wales was very wet and the wipers just refused to adapt to the changing rainfall amounts. At one point wiping furiously on a dry screen and other times refusing to start up for reasonably heavy rain. Controlling the wipers manually via the screen takes my eyes off the road for longer than I'm comfortable with on a dark twisting Welsh road and voice commands wake the sleeping dragon beside me. Not good! I've had auto wipers on my cars for many years now and they've all operated properly. How can Tesla get this feature so wrong?

The headlights dip at every reflective sign, then pop back up when the sign has darkened because of the dip, only to dip again with the reflection of the same sign. Up-down-up-down-up-down. The driver behind me must have thought I was a right looper. Again, I've had this feature for years on cars, none have ever dipped the lights due to reflective signs. Tesla Vision fails again. Coming from the fantastic VW matrix headlights, this is a shock to the system.

Edit to add... the GPS took ages to connect when arriving at Pembroke Dock. There was a crash on the road out and finding an alternative route meant resorting to the phone GPS. This was about 10 minutes after disembarking. Same at Rosslare on the return leg.

Charging...

As I said above, the Tesla network is an incredible asset, but it can get busy. During my stay I pulled into South Mimms on the M25 and took the last bay available. Within minutes there were 3 cars in a queue to charge with a few more turning away. I was getting 48kW into a 12% warm battery and the fee was £0.51 per kWh. On my return journey across the UK I stopped at the new Superchargers at Leigh Delamere services. 16 units and three of us using them. It was late in the evening and the roads were getting quiet. I think it was £0.34 per kWh, and it was delivering 140kW. That made the single charge stop a breeze.

The drive was done mostly at speed limits where possible and heating at 20.5 degrees. Two people on board and around 17 tons of luggage... maybe. The back seats were flattened and the belongings of a small country loaded to just above the bottom of the windows.

Overall the car was a great tool for the job and the journey out in dry weather and mostly daylight was fine. the return journey in the dark with wet conditions was made much more difficult than it needed to be.

I'm glad I went for the RWD and the LFP battery. The scare stories about needing 2 charge stops for this run (I do it regularly enough) nearly drove me to the LR, but I'm happy out with the RWD, having had it since April.

Now if Tesla could only do something about the wipers and headlights in the next update......

I'd be keeping the car 8+ years and don't particularly personally care about having a new plate, I'm currently driving a 192 Model 3 that was registered at the end of November. I couldn't wait til January on that one as the seai business grant was being removed, so would have been €3800 more expensive to register the car in January. With the €2k extra discount I'd happily go for it now, without it though I might as well just wait.

There are a lot of rattles in the MY. On mine - Rubber bushings in the rear hatch, right rear headrest, squeaky drivers seat, rattling front passenger seat belt buckle (sorted this one with soft tape from AliExpress). I drove my wife’s 6yo golf recently and there were no rattles in it. My ID.3 in 2.5y of ownership had no rattles, Nor in a rental polestar or my FIL 4yo leaf.

Im sure its less about the 241 reg and more about securing a 5K discount ...more if availing of finance @ 3.9 APR. Persuasive to me!

This is true. I also have the squeaky seat belt holder (pre tensioner side). It's a fairly easy fix although it shouldn't be needed.

The passenger side buckle knocks against the b pillar when not in use, which really shouldn't happen either!

On the plus side, I had some loud creaking coming from the main door seals from 3 of the 4 doors. Ranger came out and lubricated them which eased the issue for a few weeks.

When the noise returned, I asked for them to be replaced and all 4 were replaced no questions and at no cost!

Fantastic service, you wouldn't get anything like it from a traditional dealer.

Yep, and the receiver has it already in the Y, just not the buckle itself

Auto-wipers were ok for me just about since picking up the MY in March.

On curent software that installed, 2023.38.6 they are completely useless.

I disabled auto-headlights becuae they randomly refuse to come on down long narrow country lanes for some reason for me,

Also have them disabled for autopilot through s3xy buttons.

incredible price. interestingly there's 4 MY's being sold at a lower price than the lowest priced M3 on their website.

I will not charge many superchargers, only to travel in summer.