Early in my evaluation, I had all but eliminated the Model Y on specs alone. It seemed too small, and Tesla doesn't publish the typical measurement of cubic footage of storage space with the rear seats up, only the max storage capacity with the seats folded, making the typical apples to apples comparison I'd been using with other vehicles impossible. I even tried asking via Twitter, Tesla's website chat function, and an email, and none got a satisfactory response. If the measurement exists, they don't make it available. In retrospect, I think this is because that would be a misleading figure since there is likely an SAE standard method to calculate that measurement, and you aren't allowed to include things like the front trunk (officially the "frunk") and the underfloor storage, which in the Model Y make a pretty significant difference in its overall capacity. But after watching a few videos online, and seeing how big the additional storage areas were, I decided I needed to give it a better look in person before summarily eliminating it, leading to the trip to the dealer to test drive it. Obviously it's a good thing I did.
The Model Y is definitely smaller than the Jeep Grand Cherokee that it replaces, but between the frunk and the deep well under the cargo area floor, which will swallow a medium sized suitcase with room to spare, I think the seats-up cubic footage for holding stuff is actually about the same. Definitely more space than comparably sized small crossovers like the RAV4.
I have about 1500 miles on the car now, including one ~900 mile road trip, so here are my initial impressions.
Likes:
The sound system is great, among the best I've heard in a car. The seats are comfortable, it has plenty of rear seat room (all 3 of us sat in the back with me (6'4", 35" inseam) sitting behind myself and it was fine, so I expect it'd do well with 5 passengers even on a trip), the acceleration even on the long-range model is indeed grin-inducing, ride quality and handling are both good. I also love the full-glass roof.
The nav system works well, does a great job helping you plan trips including charging stops and projecting range and state of charge. I haven't had a lot of instances where I've been driving in traffic, so I don't know how good it is at rerouting you around traffic like Google Maps does yet. I do miss the integration of notifications about speed traps/cameras, disabled vehicles and accidents that Gmaps provides, along with the ability to contribute those things while you drive.
The use of my phone as a key works way better than I thought it would, to the point that I've gotten really used to not carrying a key and have walked out of the house without keys for my other, key-requiring vehicles. Not having to actively lock or unlock the car is also surprisingly nice. I keep the key card in my wallet as a backup, but haven't needed to use it yet. The inductive charging pad for your phone is also reliable and consistent.
The regenerative braking is aggressive enough that when combined with leaving the default configuration in place that the vehicle will come to and stay at a full stop when you lift off of the accelerator, one pedal driving is possible a lot of the time. It takes some time to get used to and results in some jerkiness at first, but it's in your best interest to get good at it for maximum efficiency. My biggest pet peeve is that it's not consistent, i.e. when the battery is cold or fully charged, the amount of regen braking is reduced, so you can't just learn how/when to lift off of the accelerator to slow down for an intersection smoothly. Autopilot is a lot better at it than I am currently.
I sprung for the full self driving option, meaning I get all of the available autopilot stuff. I was already familiar with the basic adaptive cruise control, and it works pretty much the same way as the one in my Jeep did, with the exception of addressing one of my main annoyances - it doesn't auto cancel after 2 seconds of being stopped. Instead, it relies on you either pressing the accelerator or the stalk to tell it that it's ok to proceed after it has stopped for traffic control. I don't know how much of the automatically stopping for traffic lights and stop signs is part of the full self driving package and thus unavailable with adaptive cruise if you don't get that feature, but it works pretty well. You can definitely tell that you're training the AI as it asks you to positively confirm that it's safe to proceed when it detects a green light and it's not following another vehicle, but it's a pretty intuitive system.
I've been using actual autopilot a fair amount, both on the highway and on secondary roads. Pretty much anywhere with lane markings is fair game. It's pretty good at following the road, even on ramps and curves, though it's definitely conservative about the speeds it chooses - everywhere but divided highway, you're limited to a max of 5mph over the speed limit with autosteer engaged, and it is probably doing 7-10mph below what I'd do if I were driving it on a cloverleaf or tight curve so occasionally you annoy the drivers behind you with overly conservative driving. Automatic lane changes (you signal, it changes when it's safe to do so) work really well about 90% of the time. It makes driving easier because you are less actively involved in the constant corrections to keep the car in its lane and following the road as well as maintaining safe following distance, but it definitely is not something you can have drive while you do something else. The system is far from perfect/infallible, and the emphasis definitely should be on the "semi" part of semi-autonomous. As impressive as even this level of autonomy is, the robot is still pretty stupid, and it requires your attention. I have incidents nearly every trip of phantom braking (braking for something it shouldn't) and because it doesn't support turns at intersections and stuff yet, even when the nav system is active, I have to turn it off and go manual multiple times on an average trip. I'm averaging a steering intervention (where the car starts to go on the wrong path) about once every 2-3 trips, but so far most of them have been fairly obvious as to why the car got confused. Let's just say that I understand completely why there have been autopilot-involved accidents where autopilot does the wrong thing at the worst possible time and the driver isn't paying enough attention to intervene. It's still a net positive and I think it's worth the premium Tesla charges for it, but like I said above, you can tell you're helping to train an AI, and you should go into it cautiously.
Dislikes:
Phone integration is about 5 years behind its competition (Bluetooth only, no Android Auto or Carplay). In addition to playing BT audio and doing phone calls, it will read you text messages and allow you to respond, but the dictation response is too aggressive at assuming that you're done speaking if you pause even briefly, meaning you end up retrying responses more than I typically do with Google's assistant/voice to text. Similarly, it doesn't let you use those features for any other messaging platform like Whatsapp, FB messenger, or Slack, meaning you're still dinking with your phone interact with messages more often than I'd like. The entertainment system also is a little dodgy when it comes to playing stuff off of USB - no support for WMA files at all, occasionally fails to recognize the USB drive (I had to reboot the system the first time I plugged in the drive before it actually scanned it for music), and resume play seems a little inconsistent. Typically, as soon as you open the door to the car, it starts playing back the song you were listening to when you left the car, at a reduced volume until you close the door, which is a nice touch. But about half or more of the time, it does nothing, and I have to finger drag to resize the audio controls at the bottom of the screen to full size, press the USB button on screen, then go to the song list and actually choose a song to get it to start playing again, i.e. pressing the play button or skip forward doesn't do anything useful, almost like it forgot what it was doing last time. It has a Spotify app, but most people have said it's not that great of a UI compared with the phone app. I'd really like a native Amazon music app so that I had better control over what I'm playing on my phone. I suspect anyone that uses iTunes or Youtube Music would want similar.
Homelink integration for garage door openers is an added-cost dealer installed option. At this price range, that shouldn't be the case.
The headlights are great, but the automatic settings for turning them on, as well as enabling the high beams are too aggressive and I'd really like a setting to control those thresholds, which is typical in most cars with auto lights. I feel like the car spends a lot of time basically flashing the high beams because it turns them on and off too aggressively in response to traffic, and there's no setting to tell it to be less aggressive in enabling them so that it can be less aggressive in disabling them when it's done so before it should have.
Rear visibility through the back glass and rearview mirror is not great, though the rearview camera can be turned on at any time, which helps to compensate. I miss the photochromic auto dimming side mirrors that I had on the Jeep, but at least the rearview mirror still does that.
I don't love the single central screen vs a more normal instrument panel in front of the driver, nor the complete lack of any hard buttons for any controls (even the rear seat heaters and the glovebox release can only be activated from the screen), but I will say that Tesla has done something really intuitive in the way that they use the steering wheel controls to avoid needing separate controls for adjusting mirrors and steering tilt/telescope. And they took a page from BMW and the turn signal stalk always returns to center immediately, so you don't have the tactile indicator that the turn signal is active, which is a little annoying, but I understand why given the interaction with Autopilot.
Also I think all the stock wheel options for this particular vehicle are ugly compared with the ones available for the Model 3, but learned that the standard ones are actually nice multispoke alloys with a plastic wheel cover, and I think they look better without the covers, so getting what's underneath painted might be the short-term solution.
No comments:
Post a Comment