2021 Tesla Model Y review: Nearly great, critically flawed

I actively avoid being near Tesla cars when I'm driving

I've owned a Model X for a year. It dates from before they removed radar, so autopilot still works very well.

The rest of the car, however, does not. It is the least reliable car I have ever known. I am currently tracking ten faults, and waiting for my fifth service, which could only be booked with nearly a month to wait.

The most serious faults involve the car sometimes failing to start without a hard reboot first (!), and then a constant stream of non-sensical errors while driving, which cause it to beep loudly with no way to stop it.

Dear reader, do not make my mistake, do not buy a Tesla. But not for the usual anti-Tesla propaganda reasons. Autopilot works great. Even the weird "falcon wing" doors are actually very good. It's just that the quality is awful and service is both overbooked and doesn't actually fix things.

I've never regretted a car purchase more.

PS. Does anyone in the bay area want to buy a Model X? ;)

Steering wheel is not a rectangle, so that alone is a plus.

> I can't conclusively say that it's because of the missing radar, but I can say that our Model Y is bad at detecting obstructions ahead. Really, really bad. The big issue is false positives, a problem that has become known as "phantom braking" among Tesla owners. Basically, the car often gets confused and thinks there's an obstacle ahead and engages the automatic emergency braking system. You get an instant, unwanted and often strong application of the brakes.

I could be wrong, but I didn’t see any mention of taking their car in for repair or service. I’m a pretty big Tesla quality control skeptic — seeing the after-delivery issues people have with panel gaps and other issues stops me from buying an otherwise exciting car. But the safety system being defective is something that would prompt me to take the car in for service immediately. Did they not do that?

I honestly find this review quite frustrating. It seems like such a glaring flaw there would be an entire article dedicated to interviews with owners, a conversation transcript with Tesla service, and maybe even a note about how responsive Tesla is about fixing the problem. Instead, it seems like they found the issue, decided that it was acceptable enough to not get fixed, and published.

I can see this being fair, but it doesn’t strike me as the most honest unless every shipping car has the same problem.

i know someone who has a fully-charged model 3

they had spent extra 20k euros to improve it

for instance: they added custom roof sealing, because it was getting too loud inside when driving on the highways

and then they (tastefully) refitted it with custom-made carbon elements on the inside and the outside

tuned/improved Teslas are not that uncommon if you know some owners