- This is a Tesla Model Y Performance, and I just sold it.
There's some things I like about it,
but a whole lot more that I absolutely do not.
I gotta come clean with you.
I've had this car for almost two years now,
and put a little over 25,000 miles on it.
So this is my wife's daily.
I don't want it to be an anti-Tesla video.
My wife and I have been generally happy
with some of the stuff with this,
but there's also a whole lot of things
which are just not okay.
So this is specifically a performance model,
and if I'm gonna say some positive stuff first,
the performance is number one, two, and three on my list.
Now, obviously, all electric vehicles
are somewhere between quick and oh-my-God-fast,
and this is a lot closer
to the holy-(honk)-this-thing-is-fast.
All right, gang,
you ready to feel like what Performance feels like?
(passengers grunting) (car engine whirring softly)
Oh, yep, there it is.
(car engine whistling)
Aaah!
- [Front Passenger] Damn.
Yep. - But that's one
of the big advantages of this,
just being able to just instantly--
(backseat passenger shrieking)
- [Front passenger] Okay.
- It's just right there. It's so easy!
No, I'm not gonna do anything.
(backseat passenger grunting)
(all laughing)
- [Front Passenger] I told you! (laughing)
- I love gas-powered performance vehicles.
(car engine revving) (tires squealing)
I absolutely love them.
And I know that their time is running out.
(car engine growling)
But if this is the future,
which I absolutely think it is,
it's not all bad.
And the thing is it's actually gotten better over
the time I've owned it.
So a few months ago they added a track mode,
which seems a little bit ridiculous for a small SUV,
but not only can you take it on the track,
you actually can put it in drift mode.
I literally slid this thing around
with a baby seat in the back.
Mind you, the baby seat was empty
(baby wailing) at that particular time.
But the performance you get in something which looks so,
I don't say bad, but come on,
no one looks at this and thinks it's cool, right?
While I have a lot of issues
with some of the build quality of the vehicle,
the fact that this is electric means
there's so many fewer parts,
and that, 25,000 miles in,
I have not had to take this to a dealer once.
The only times I've had to use Tesla Service
was to install the garage door opener,
which, stupidly, is not included from the factory,
and I had to replace one tire because I got a nail in it.
That's it.
On top of the fact that you have a decent sized trunk,
there's also a lot of extra space back here.
So not only are there these very deep pockets on the sides,
but you can go even lower.
Look at that!
(camera person laughing)
(trunk door whirring) (trunk door clicking shut)
As you can see, there's a lot of space
in the back of the Model Y,
and that's not counting the frunk.
Quite possibly the best feature of a Tesla, though,
is one of the absolute most obvious.
The fact that Superchargers are,
I'm not gonna say everywhere,
but far more common than the other,
more generic EV chargers,
such as Electrify America and EVgo,
that's a big win.
But more importantly than that,
Tesla Superchargers are dead reliable.
If you've ever heard anyone talk about Teslas,
it's always, "Superchargers, Superchargers."
Now, yes, Superchargers are currently being opened up
to other vehicles,
but the problem is that's a slow process.
I wouldn't be surprised
if it takes years before most Superchargers
have any kind of access for other EVs.
I like my fake carbon fiber spoiler that's falling off now.
Well, again, not my car anymore, so not my problem.
Let me explain to you
how a door handle works on a Tesla Model Y.
It's nowhere near as simple as it should be.
Due to aerodynamics,
they've got a very flush door handle,
which means you always have to push it on the side
to open it,
a little bit weird, but fine once you get used to it.
The issue is unlocking the vehicle.
You have two ways in.
First of all,
you can use the little credit card-like key
to tap on the B pillar and will unlock the car.
Or, what the most convenient way of doing it is,
is to use your smartphone and Bluetooth.
And sometimes this works,
but most of the time it doesn't.
And especially when you have your hands full,
and the car decides that it doesn't wanna open up for you,
it's really not very fun.
And this happens all the time.
That's what I'm talking about.
But watch this, I'll pull my phone out.
D'you see that?
And that is just the beginning of the quality issues
that you could expect when you buy yourself a Tesla.
A couple of months after purchasing the vehicle,
both of the little covers for your seat controls came loose.
So I have electrical tied both of them in place.
There has been, the entire time I've owned this car,
this panel right here.
Yeah, so you notice how this doesn't stay flat?
So not only has that always dragged,
but you might see a little bit of tumbleweed.
Driving back from the Bay area six months ago,
I hit a tumbleweed,
and it got trapped under there,
and now it doesn't rattle anymore,
but there's just permanent tumbleweed stuck
in my under body panel.
The build quality issues extend far beyond
just the exterior too.
Now, that's probably not a big surprise.
Almost everyone who owns a Tesla complains about this,
and I think it's completely warranted.
Now, there's the obvious stuff, like panel gaps,
which, for a $60,000 vehicle, are not okay.
But then there's lots of other things.
The speaker that is on the right door, the passenger door,
it's just not screwed in right.
So it's got a gap on the bottom.
It rattles sometimes.
Then there are things like the roof,
which, while it is nicely tinted,
and I actually think it looks nice,
there's some sealant that's up here
that they just didn't take off,
and I can't get in there to scrape it out.
I know this is very easy to come off
as someone who's just complaining about,
"Oh, it's not very nice and so minimalistic."
And yes, I like this display.
This is the only thing I like in the interior,
besides the fact that it's got a decent amount of space.
The fact that I have no gauge cluster here is annoying.
The fact that I have to go here,
and touch and move everything around
anytime I wanna do anything with the AC, very annoying.
The lack of physical controls have been taken
to an absolutely ridiculous minimal level.
And that's not even counting the ride quality.
Remember all that great stuff that I was saying
about the performance and everything?
(passengers grunting)
Well, oftentimes when it comes to a performance vehicle,
you're sacrificing, right?
You know, you wanna get more performance out of it,
well, you can give up a little bit of ride quality.
Well, I think the Tesla engineers heard that,
and they go, "Performance!"
And they dialed it all up,
'cause this thing rides like bad words
that I'm not gonna say on camera.
Yes, it's got 21-inch wheels, kinda stupid.
And yeah, it's got big, sticky summer tires.
Something to consider with an electric car
is that electric cars are heavy.
Below you, below the floor,
are like a thousand pounds of batteries or something, right?
So it carries its weight low.
But that's still a lot of weight
that the suspension has to deal with.
And that, paired with the low profile tires,
means that if you're going on even a moderately bumpy road
in this Performance, it's just uncomfortable.
And if you're in the backseat?
There have been moments where you hit
a little bump on the freeway, and you'll like,
your butt will come off the backseat.
Even in something like in a Hyundai Ionic,
or cars that cost half the price,
have much nicer feeling touchpoints,
much more comfortable to ride in.
This feels like a real area
where Tesla just don't spend money.
When you look at Tesla as a company,
they spend next to nothing on research and development,
compared to a legacy automaker.
Now, that makes sense when you sell four models,
and essentially almost all their sales
are of the Model 3 and the Model Y.
If you've got a good thing, just make more of them, right,
especially when you make a tidy profit
on every single model sold,
significantly more than most other automakers,
especially in the electric space,
because pretty much everyone outside of Tesla lose money
on every electric car they sell,
or barely break even.
But now that the supply has caught up to the demand,
Tesla, while they still want to heavily invest
in infrastructure and build more factories
and battery plants, and all that kinda stuff,
they're faced with a difficult choice.
They have an absolute sky-high stock price.
And to keep that actually propped up,
they need to continue to build and to grow and to churn,
and to really just try to own the electric space.
But because the demand has sort of leveled out,
and they have to keep building more and more factories
and infrastructure and whatnot,
they really only have one choice.
Cut prices.
And they have absolutely done that.
So the car that I bought back in 2021 cost $61,000.
A year later, they had raised the price
all the way up to $70,000.
But now that supply has caught up to demand,
they've had to cut it drastically.
It went from 70 grand in a few short months to $53,000.
That is a price cut that you just don't see
in the auto industry,
short of some sports car that no one wants,
that eventually will be worth a lot of money,
that I would never buy or anything!
And what that really means
is that Tesla are aggressively trying to push everyone out.
Think about it.
Tesla, while they are a very valuable company,
still make a very small amount of vehicles,
compared to Ford or Toyota.
And with everyone in the auto industry trying
to bring out electric vehicles to compete with Tesla,
no one's able to do that at a profit.
So if Tesla can slash their prices
and really get everyone out-competed, it makes sense.
But you know what also would make sense?
If they made a new car,
or, I don't know,
stopped removing features from the few cars
that they sell right now.
So for example, with this vehicle,
I ordered it, I believe it was April, 2021.
It arrived in June.
And in that two-month time period,
not only did they remove the lumbar adjustment
on the passenger seat,
which is dumb, but okay,
and they also removed the radar.
So this is a Tesla vision car,
which entirely uses the cameras instead of the radar.
Now, are either of those a big problem?
Not really.
But the car didn't get any cheaper for it.
Tesla made some more money, but I didn't save anything.
So fast forward a couple of years,
they've removed all kinds of stuff.
They've removed one of the speakers
from the stereo on a new vehicle,
they've removed the parking sensors.
There's so many things
that it feels that they're constantly trying
to cost cut and save here and there,
that I'm like, "Ah, aren't cars supposed to be better?"
There are a lot of great things about it.
There are a lot of things that I do like,
and there's some things I'm gonna miss.
The fact that there are so many build quality issues,
so many refinement issues,
it just, it's not it for me anymore.
No, my friends,
my new vehicle is a little bit more controversial.
(chuckling)
- [Camera person] Uh oh.
(car engine whirring) That is a tight turn.
(car tires squealing) That is a tight turn.
(laughing) - [Friend] Whoa!
Austin, chill out.
(car engine purring)