User experience aka UX. You may find it a little weird to start a post about a car test drive with this expression, which usually refers to web frontends, mobile apps, and stuff like that. But the Tesla Model Y is not a mere car. It is the outcome of cutting-edge engineering and science. It is the result of millions of manhours spent to investigate Nature and to thrive for excellence. Nevertheless, I do not want to write an article dealing with the performance or the technical specifications of this product despite I am an electronic engineer. Rather, I would like to concentrate on the UX I had, which is the most important memory I’ll take with me after this 3-day test — I rented this thing on Thursday, 25th April at 11:00AM and returned it on Sunday, 28th April at 10:30AM. That’s why this post is focused on my impressions, my subjective evaluations, and my personal emotions. If you are interested in a technically impeccable review of this product instead, you’d better look elsewhere: there are tons of excellent contents of this type on the Internet.
For the sake of completeness, here are the data of the DUT (commercially sold as Long Range AWD version):
Interestingly, the car rental company has not updated the software release to the latest available. The autopilot seems to be the full-package version, however. More on that later.
First impression
As an engineer, when I put my butt on the Model Y driver’s seat, I felt the inebriation of the knowledge. I am perfectly aware indeed of the challenging, exhausting, underlying efforts carried out by my colleagues at Tesla to achieve the goal.
Even though it is a grammatical error, let me refer to this thing with the third-person female pronoun. As stated before, she is not just a car. She is a companion of your mobility, firing your sense of freedom, comfortably and carelessly.
While I was sitting in the driver’s seat, I “heard” the sound of every bit of information flowing smoothly and stormily through the myriad of electrical connections wired within this thing while she takes care of you. I “perceived” the echoes of Maxwell’s equations that dictate how these bits are confined and transmitted over such wires. I “felt” the features extracted by the Machine Learning-based inference algorithms processing in real-time tons of images and data coming from other sensors — thanks to the masterfully crafted billions of weights of the ML models trained by Dojo relentlessly. I also “felt” the electronic hearts of redundant FSD system-on-chips beating in unison. At the end of the day, the overall experience is just like feeling the warm, motherish embrace we adults still love and miss. Because she deals with almost everything. Because she takes care of you. Because she is alive.
Automation
From a different perspective, you can think of her as a blatant example of how automation is becoming pervasive1, being her an intermediate step on the long and winding road leading us to a sort of workless society. Autopilot plays a major role in this, of course.
Some more technical stuff
Range
Car manufacturers state the range of their products according to WLTP standards. For the Model Y Long Range AWD, Tesla indicates up to 600 km. During this test drive, I did not pay attention to consumption2. As such, the actual autonomy I estimated was about 350km.
During my testing, I also traveled the climb of Piancavallo consuming about 13% of the batteries (see the curve pointing downward in the following picture). This is approximately 10 kWh of energy, taking into account that the battery pack capacity is about 76 kWh. Interestingly, traveling the same road downhill, she was able to recharge the batteries by 5% (Stopping mode was set to Hold). See the rightmost green part of the chart.
A/C
She comes with a sophisticated air conditioning system. However, it may be a little annoying to use because automatic mode may be uncomfortable. As it selects where to output the air flows automatically, for example it may freeze your feet if it decides to use the feet-level vents to chill the cabinet when the environment temperature is warm but not hot.
Cabin comfort
Apart from the A/C-related issue mentioned above, the overall comfort of the cabinet is excellent. Seat regulations work well, the sound system is superb, the acoustic isolation is marvelous, the motor is silent by definition, etc.
15″ touchscreen
Before starting the test drive, I was afraid I could have experienced some difficulties in getting used to the absence of a typical dashboard, i.e. not having the odometer, the tachometer, and all this stuff right in front of you behind the wheel. I was wrong. It took a few minutes to adjust because fundamental information is displayed on the left side of the touchscreen so it is pretty close to the driver.
Dashcam
I played a little bit with the cameras. In particular, I bought a 128 GB USB 3.1 memory stick to test sentry mode and other features that may record video onto this storage device. To enable these features is pretty straightforward: just plug the memory stick in the USB port hidden in the glovebox and format it (the filesystem is exFAT).
Files and directories related to the events that triggered the recording are self-explanatory. The following box shows how the contents of the stick are organized.
I faced a totally unexpected issue with public non-Tesla charging stations. In my area, the most common are installed and maintained by Eni penitude. I tested several ones. They always recognized the RFID card provided by Drivalia, but many did not work. Some were unable to establish a connection with the vehicle. The most annoying problem, however, is when the station starts to charge the battery pack and suddenly stops providing power. One time it happened while I was having lunch. When I got back to her, I realized the battery was recharged by a few percentage points only because the process was interrupted while I was eating3.
The only Enel X station I tried was the worst: it did not even recognize the card although Drivalia has a convention with Enel X itself!
Of course, the most satisfying experience was with a Tesla charging station (supercharger). Apart from the fact that it is more powerful, everything worked fine. After completing the charge, she informed me about two things:
She warned me about setting the charging limit to 100% as frequent complete cycles may reduce the life of batteries.
She told me that, if I had set the destination in the built-in navigator before starting the trip, she would have prepared the battery pack for recharging while traveling. This would have shortened the charging time.
The MTB test
Last, but not least, I’ll briefly talk about the most important test, i.e. the MTB test. MTB stands for mountain bike and this test consists of verifying if it is possible to load my MTB into the trunk without removing the bike’s front wheel. Unfortunately, she did not pass this test as shown in the featured image of this post! Elon, c’mon man, I’m pretty sure you overpay your industrial designers and this is what you get?!?! Tell them to think a little less as architects and much more as engineers — this is a general rule that always works. I don’t care if she is more attractive with a slim design in the top part of her body. Her footprint on the ground is quite large anyway — she is 1,921 mm wide and 4,751 mm long — so please do not shrink her upper body. I don’t give a damn if she seems fat. Dear Elon, believe me, never ever, ever prioritize aesthetics at the expense of functionality! Do you realize that for my poor Citroen Nemo, which is just 3,959 mm long, the MTB test is a piece of cake? Failing this test is just non acceptable for a veichle pricing around 65,000 euros.
How I got her and energy transition
As stated previously, I rented her for 3 days4. I used the short-term rental service of Drivalia Italy. They also provide long-term rentals and other interesting services. After becoming a client of Drivalia, I am even more convinced that, to contribute effectively to the energy transition, we must leave behind the “everybody-needs-to-own-a-car” concept. This is a legacy of the post-WWII decades, which witnessed an economic boom in the Western world. Does it make sense today, especially in large urban areas? I think it does not at all. In Europe, on average, a car is stopped for 90% of the time and its daily mileage is about 47 km. In the context of a general rethinking of mobility, I believe that these kinds of services could play a significant role in implementing smart solutions that reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Buying and owning a car the classical way will make probably sense for a small fraction of the population only.
Speaking of energy transition, it is worth remembering that Elon Musk stated several years ago that Tesla’s main goal is not to distribute dividends to its shareholders but to encourage other players to manufacture electric cars to push the replacement of traditional, ICE-powered vehicles. That’s why they open sourced several patents, for instance. It seems that this mission was substantially accomplished taking into account that new players are facing the market and that even legislators are moving quickly in this direction. The world of light vehicles will be experiencing revolutions throughout the next decades. That’s why I don’t think that buying a car to keep it 10+ years, no matter whether it is ICE or not, is a good idea nowadays. It could become obsolete in a few years.
What I could not test
I could not install the Tesla app on my smartphone to control her remotely. This is because, in the case of short-term rentals, Drivalia does not provide the vehicle’s codes to the customer — it is worth remembering that Drivalia is still the legal owner; they are allowed to provide the vehicle’s code in case of mid-term rentals such as CarCloud. For these reasons, I preferred not to issue a software update either. What if something goes wrong in the middle of an OTA update and you brick a Tesla Model Y that you do not even own? My 25-year experience as an embedded systems engineer suggested me to avoid this test …
I neither had the opportunity to charge the batteries at home: unfortunately, Tesla’s cars do not come with a “Mobile connector“.
Future plans
Based on what I wrote above, I think that the solution that best fits my needs is a combination of short-term rentals and CarCloud. For instance, if I planned to take a weekend getaway for a few days, a short-term rental would be a good choice. Instead, if I wanted to use her for a longer period, I would go for CarCloud. This is a monthly renewable, Netflix-like service. Probably, I’ll subscribe to it for one month in August. I would take the opportunity of the summer break to visit Denmark and Northern Europe with her.
Another option I am considering is CarCloud for the winter months — from October to March approximately — when I use the car daily. For the rest of the year, I generally use my Suzuki Burgman scooter. I would keep my Citroen Nemo, just in case. But I would active its insurance for 6 months only.
Conclusion
Is she perfect? No, of course. But, along with other vehicles by Tesla, she is still best-in-class. She establishes the reference by which electric cars manufactured by other companies are judged and benchmarked. Would I buy it? No, for the reasons I mentioned above as I am part of the large portion of the population that makes limited use of a car. I think, however, that everybody should test her, no matter if you are in favor of the electrification of vehicles or not. Touching with your own hands what the future brings in terms of different approaches to machines and how we interact with them — making our lives not only easier but radically different in the long term — can be pretty thought-provoking as it demolishes your traditional, fossilized ways of seeing the world around you.
Sitting in the driver’s seat of these vehicles is not just to drive. In this regard, the Tesla website states:
Do More Than Drive
Your favorite song, movie or game is just a few taps away. An ultra-responsive 15-inch touchscreen sits at the center of your driving experience.
I don’t think this is an effective way to convey the message. So I coined a new term — tesling — for describing this experience properly. My friends and older readers of this blog know that I hate to drive because I consider it an awful and unacceptable waste of time. This is due to the fact that a considerable portion of your brain computational power is dedicated to perform boring, repetitive, silly manual operations5. Wouldn’t it better to use it for more valuable tasks? For the first time in my life, I experienced the pleasure of riding. Tesling is indeed an effective way to move and to spare some brain power to do other useful thing meanwhile. For instance, part of this post itself was conceived while I was tesling.
After returning her, of course I needed to sit again on the Citroen Nemo driver’s seat. “Welcome back to the barouche age”, I thought to myself.
PS Some of my friends, when they knew about this test drive, were impatient to know everything about her. They pressured me to write this post quickly, right after the end of the rent. So I wrote it in a little bit of a hurry and could have made mistakes or forgotten some relevant points. Please, be understanding and don’t hesitate to point them out if you find any. Thank you for your cooperation.
I talked about this topic here and here, for instance. ↩︎
For example, I mostly used the standardacceleration mode instead of the chill mode. ↩︎
If I had been provided with the controlling app as well, I suppose I would have been notified immediately. ↩︎
I received four documents from Drivalia: – When I picked up the vehicle on April 25th, I received the rental contract. – The day after, I received an invoice for the rental. – When I returned her, I received a check-in report indicating that I did not cause any new damage to the vehicle so no penalties were applied. You are supposed to charge the vehicle to 95% before returning it, however. This was practically impossible for me. When I released it, the battery charge was about 20%. After completing the check-in, Drivalia charged it 100%. Thus, I was charged about 22 euros for this. Approximately, it means 0.36 euro/kWh. This price is even lower than the one charged by Tesla, which is around 0.50 euro/kWh. ↩︎
Surprisingly, we are observing that AI is replacing intellectual jobs first because tasks that entail moving and coordinating your limbs require exceptionally high brain power. ↩︎
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