“Tesla Model Y is NEXT LEVEL” - First Impressions After Trading in My Model 3

so if you saw my short video on the depreciation on the model 3 over 14 months that i had it you were probably figured out that i did go ahead and trade it in for the model y so my model 3 was a fremont built car so it did have a lot of issues with it which obviously were sort of making the headlines with tesla so the model y comes from china so we're going to be looking at the differences in build quality between these two cars as well as the kind of characteristic differences between the model 3 and the model y itself [Music] so the first thing you interact with when you pick the car up is obviously the door handle and that feels very different to the older model 3 it feels much smoother and then when you open the door you can kind of see the difference in build quality immediately the rubber door seal really struck me just how much of an improvement there is in terms of the way that sort of is designed and the feel of it too and that obviously all then goes towards how the door sounds when you close it so that whole kind of feeling of the door and the door handle uh much improved that so the seats themselves feel more comfortable and suppler as well so that first impression is definitely one that things have come a long way since the older model 3. so you can see lots of little examples of how they've applied attention to detail to improving the experience of the car through things like the way things feel and the way things sound and one of those examples is by putting carpet inside the door bins so obviously stuff in there doesn't rattle around so it's those little things that sort of improve that overall experience also those door bins have now got little lights inside so it's much easier to see stuff when you put in there so that's a nice touch there's also a little bit of extra carpet on the back now as well where you get in and out that's now carpet used to be a piece of plastic so there's another interesting difference and the steering wheel is slightly squishier than the model three so obviously sort of the thing you're you're mainly interacting with the vehicle with the experience of using that has been improved so another thing that struck me for the first time when i approached the car was just how neat and tidy and well designed the mud flaps look on this one compared to the model 3. so in the model 3 the mud flaps just look like a bit of an afterthought and where they join up to the car it doesn't really meet very well whereas in the model y it really just looks like part of the car is very very precisely attached at that point so that attention to the experience of interacting with things like opening doors applies to the frank and the boot as well so obviously once you push the button to open the front it lifts up but then you can just lift it up with one finger it's just very very easy to open and close compared to the old model three and in the boot the model 3 when you push the button to close the boot it made this really loud beat but it's kind of really annoying you wouldn't want to do it at night time in the model y it's just the quietest little beep so that's a great improvement another improvement with that boot is that it's got a light built into it so as it opens up it shines the light down onto your load space it's really bright as well i know a lot of people sort of like to make these lights brighter because they're not often bright enough but this is just really bright you won't have any trouble finding anything in this there's a much better position on the inside of the hatch than on the side of the cargo area that you see with a lot of cars as well obviously you know you're sort of blind by it at the same time is it not really lighting up very well whereas behind you up on the thing looking down much better placement for it so the ride quality actually feels more accomplished than my older model 3 as well it feels very sort of it's firm but it's supple at the same time and there's less mechanical sound coming through to the cabin than there was with the model 3. although the sound that you do get is kind of more bassier and more boomy so there's that difference but it's sort of in one way it's slightly more insulated from the mechanics of the suspension but in another way you do get the kind of amplified boominess as a result of the shape of the car i assume the suspension is quite interesting and people are commenting on the harshness i think there is a kind of road surface that unsettles it more than others and that's when you've got sort of shallow potholes with a kind of broken edge of tarmac that will unsettle it at the right kind of speed i mean you know it's not a disaster it's just sort of slightly uh unrefined with that kind of thing but you know in the on the other hand it actually removes vibration very well there's no vibration on a normal road surface or even a rough road surface it deals with those very small kind of vibrating bumps really nicely and then when you're in an off-road situation over kind of rough ground going very slowly there's plenty of sort of travel in the suspension and actually feels quite supple in that this sort of environment as well so things like speed bumps it just absolutely sails over them as long as you're going at a sensible speed you know it's very very supple there's no hard edge to it when you hit it it just absorbs it and and smoothly moves over it so i should mention when i'm talking about things like ride quality i'm coming at this from having sort of affordable japanese family cars subarus toyotas and hondas over most of my life so that's the direction i'm coming at it from if you're coming from sort of luxury german brands i guess your perception and expectations might be different having said that i have taken friends out in this who've got audi and mercedes and they both agreed that the ride quality is good and comfortable in this as well now i've got 19-inch wheels on the model y here so i don't know if a lot of the internet chatter about the harsh right is coming from people who have used the 20-inch wheel version i'm not sure how much of a difference that's making or what but certainly with the 19s is not an issue that i'm concerned by at all so where it really excels i think is those open country roads where you've got sort of natural undulations but essentially a fairly smooth road surface it holds that kind of road really really well you know and combined with the extra ride height kind of feel like you're in a spaceship just sort of hovering over the road very sort of uh you're feeling the road a little bit but you're also quite insulated from it as well just a very nice balance i think of that for this kind of a car so in terms of build quality and panel gaps and all that stuff that likes to make headlines with teslas the chinese model y here is much much better than the fremont model 3. there's no question about that there's no obvious issue that's as a result of poor alignment in the factory or anything like that there are a few points that i think are actually resulting from the design level so there is a sort of odd gaps that i think are just you know the way it's been designed for example looking down towards the front of the car the wing kind of sticks out from the door uh in one point i don't think the door is misaligned in the build process i think that's just the shapes of those panels are not quite designed in a way where that gap would be minimized from the side looking straight onto it the gap looks perfectly even all the way down so little things like that another example of that actually on the inside is when you're sat in the driver's seat looking at the passenger door you can kind of see a little tiny gap at the at the end of where the wooden trim meets the door i don't think that's as a result of poor alignment in the factory it's just because there is a gap in those two pieces uh and you're not kind of expected to see it from that angle perhaps or something like that so on my model 3 i had this awful misalignment of the bonnet into the bumper and i took it back for this and they couldn't fix it uh they adjusted it a little bit but it was basically it wasn't an even line between the bumper and the bonnet uh in the model right that's just even all the way around so it's really nice to see that line on the front end of the car kind of represented the way it was intended to be now so in terms of size this is another one of those interesting points when you look at it in photos it's quite hard to get a sense of the scale because obviously you're kind of seeing the design language that you're familiar with with the model 3 that the model y is definitely bigger than the model 3. and in fact when you look at the measurements on paper this thing's comparable to some really quite big cars like a volvo xc90 has a similar width to the model y and if you stand behind it it can look really quite big it's sort of quite imposing especially if it's parked next to a smaller car but actually when you stand back a little bit the overall kind of shape and the design language it doesn't look like a big car by design it's only when you're up close and you get a sense of its real proportions do you kind of feel how big it is it's not really like one of these big cars that's designed to look big for the sake of appearing intimidating or anything like that it's quite understated in its presence and i like that about it so what's interesting i think is just how good this looks in real life compared to photos and video and i'll do my best to represent this with some moving camera shots and things like that and but the design language we're familiar with from the model 3 here just works really really well at this scale and this kind of proportion i think with the model 3 there was that kind of tendency for it to look very very small and flat at the front especially if you're looking at it from the side from a distance in the model y just seems to be a bit more balanced all round so the back of the car is really tall you know it's sort of almost a flat tall expanse and you've got sort of treatment like this black plastic bit at the bottom which is much bigger than on the model 3 and that works to make it sort of minimize the height visually i think and it works really well it looks very very cool from the back so crucially like the model 3 there's the total absence of design features and sort of fake design bits that are stuck on to mask the fact that the cabin is sitting on top of the battery and you've got that extra height in the door a lot of ev designs look really awkward because of this you know they look just too tall in the door and sometimes you'll even sort of get a design that looks like it's finished and then it will carry on again below it so the jaguar eye pace is a good example of that where you know you kind of got the design that looks like it finishes and then you've got another bit below that sort of just carrying on it actually works all right i don't think the jaguar place is an ugly car as such but in the tesla you've got that problem is solved seemingly in a much more elegant way all you've got is the single sort of crease in the door that creates that shadow and that's enough to make that proportion look really good and i think that's a great achievement there so the ride height is definitely really high you know where you're positioned visually over the road you kind of feel like you're at the same height as people driving range rovers and jumping out the model 3 into this is very very noticeable you kind of do get used to it over time of course it becomes your new kind of normal level over the road and but the difference is striking and it's very pleasing to to sort of feel like you're climbing into this big you know high up vehicle suv it's doing the suv thing really well now interestingly quite a few reviewers have commented that the visibility over the bonnet in the model y is worse than the model 3. and for me i don't really see that in the model 3 i adjusted my seat position so that i could just see the little bulge on the wing i couldn't see much of the bonnet you know it was just a little slither of the the bodywork that i could see out of the front and my seat position in the model y is adjusted in a pretty similar way i can see the same kind of amount of the front of the car so i don't know where that idea has come from i'm still going to use the parking sensors to judge distance if i'm going up to something close i think a lot of people might be slightly concerned going from the model 3 to the model y because the model y is slightly slower than the model 3. uh i'm not worried by that i was actually preparing myself to go to the acceleration boost because that would obviously bring it down to be slightly faster than the normal long-range model 3 but i felt no reason to do that it's still ridiculously fast still makes everybody giggle in the car and in fact it's almost that giggle factor is almost more pronounced than the model y i think because you're up high it feels like you're in more of an off-roady kind of suv format vehicle you know then when you get that surge of power to the back of the seat it's almost all the more exciting it's not just kids that giggle you know it's grown adults as well you know it's not to be underestimated it's incredibly fun and i think that's partly because a lot of people that sort of appreciate fast cars you know they're used to the engine noise and it may be less dramatic for those kinds of people for normal people that kind of would be a bit intimidated by the engine noise on a fast petrol car that feeling of a roller coaster thrust in the electric car without the engine noise is very very enjoyable i think for almost anyone it's just a lovely feeling in terms of passenger and cargo space this is obviously where going to this kind of class of car you expect to see some serious improvements and it definitely doesn't fail to deliver the back seat experience is brilliant there's so much space in the back you can sit in there you can put your feet out you can be feet under the seats in front because they're up on risers you can put your rucksack under those front seats you've got the glass roof which is uninterrupted in the model y compared to the model 3 with its sort of central bar across the middle the experience is wonderful in the back of this car it feels like a totally different classic car really you've got a big wide central seat and then two normal ones more space all round for people in the back of course still no transmission tunnel in the back which is just fantastic a real shame to see other ev makers leaving transmission tunnels in their cars when they switch them to ev because they share platforms and things like that obviously that's not the case with tesla you know i like to see a car using its inherent sort of characteristics available to it because it's an ev tesla are really good at that so having the central part of the rear seat that can fold down is a fantastically practical feature really useful for kids to be able to reach stuff out of the boot behind them even without sort of getting out of their seat they can reach it down and fold that central bit down also nice i think if you carry a dog in the boot in a crate you can fold that middle seat down and dog can see out the front window and can see everyone in the car so kind of a nice little setup for the dog there the frank in the model y is bigger again than the model three that just goes to show how much effort tesla are putting in in shrinking all the components under there to make space for this and so many evs from other car makers are just not bothering to put franks in their cars you know maybe it is difficult to shrink all the components under there to deep space for the front tesla have managed it and it's a great opportunity and really makes you sort of feel like you're getting something extra in exchange for having an ev without the engine in that space and the boot itself is of course absolutely huge with the hatchback style opening and i think this arrangement under here without the parcel shelf up high i know newer cars are now coming with the parcel shelf up high as well i think a lot of people sort of requested that but actually i think the arrangement here without the parcel shelf is fantastic you've kind of got the equivalent of a parcel shelf in the false floor here which is level with the opening of the boot so with that false floor you can lift that up and you've got a huge load area under there and the nice thing about it is you've still got plenty of space behind where that lifts up so you can actually keep big stuff even our little dog crate can go behind there we can still lift that flap up and access the big cargo area and then shut the lid if we wanted to put something in there for privacy it seems like a much nicer approach to have that privacy area below the potential for big space and that way you haven't got this parcel shelf that's always in the way whenever you want to try and put something in the boot i think all the other hatchback cars i've ever had i've just taken the parcel shelf or the retractable cover just out and it's just always in the way so it's nice to have this arrangement and then of course you've got another concealed false floor behind that one which has just got a good space for things like all the cables it always kind of bothered me that going to an ev meant i had to carry all these cables around and that was just taking up space in the boot or the front uh which are two sort of main advantages whereas this way you've kind of got a third space just for the cables that's out of the way in the main boot space or the front so that's really cool the nice thing about the big cover here is that it actually stays up very easily it's completely removable if you want to but it will sit in a little slot so it stays upright and the neat thing is the boot can still close with it in that position so if you wanted to put something a bit of an awkward shape in there but you've still got something behind it taking up space there as well you could leave it open no trouble at all and the other thing is of course you can lay it flat on top of the space behind if you wanted to leave it open and completely out of the way and that attention to detail applies to the other load area as well in that it can sit down behind the rear seats to leave that area exposed if you wanted to maximize the use of that kind of volume and then on top of that you've got these super useful big holes down each side which are actually brilliant for putting things like bottles in without them tipping over anything slightly taller you can just chuck in there really useful space the boot area just works really well there's so much attention to detail and it's simple detail that's the thing it's not over engineered the sort of result of those features is really really useful it's the way design should be i think they've just nailed it the other thing that's great about the boot design here because this load area is totally flat and level with the opening you can actually just sit on it and the hatch is higher than your head and keeps you dry obviously if it's raining lovely way of just having a picnic this would be a great car for camping so going back to the fact that they managed to fit the frank in to the front of the car it's actually even more impressive that they've done this because there's a hepa filter taking up space in that under the bonnet area as well and that's actually a very interesting point that i think is overlooked when discussing evs because in an ev without that abundant waste heat from an engine it's actually quite difficult for them to heat dehumidified air from the air conditioning so in a petrol car you can put the air conditioning on that dehumidifies the air it can then be heated by all the waste heat from the energy so in the winter you put the recycler on to stop fumes coming in and you keep the glass clear with that warm dehumidified air in the model 3 without the hepa filter if i wanted to put the recycler on to stop diesel fumes coming in i'd run the risk of the glass actually steaming up and it didn't do it all the time was only in certain kind of temperatures and certain kind of humidity i guess in the air sometimes that would really steam up and i had to just turn the recycler off to let the fresh air come in and clear it but of course the fumes come in as well in the model y with the hepa filter that issue just goes away so i think for an ev the hepa filter is especially important i really do hope they can actually figure out how to fit one into the model 3 because that would complete the package for that kind of a class of car i think so with a four wheel drive suv kind of style vehicle you do expect a little bit of off-road credentials now obviously this isn't a big off-road truck it's quite clear that no one's going to be buying this with the intention of really abusing it off-road but when you buy a car like this you kind of do buy it for the peace of mind that it will deal with things like campsite tracks or maybe a festival field those kinds of environments and i think actually it's fantastic at that and obviously that peace of mind when it snows as well you want the ground clearance and the decent all-wheel drive system so the model y ground clearance is pretty good it's actually on paper 6.6 i think and i measured it in different points under the car in between the axles front to back it's actually over seven inches and then strangely it did seem slightly lower than 6.6 in between the front wheels at the front but of course your wheels are there so if you're aware of that you can position the car so that the wheels are lifting the body of the car at that point so you know you basically you're going over a hump and the body of the car doesn't matter so much as then when the front wheels drop down the other side of the hump you've got that breakover situation your clearance is a bit more important in the front of the car and that in that situation obviously that doesn't always work you've got sometimes you've got a situation where your wheels are dropping into existing tracks and the center of the road is high and you're trying to drive over that that you don't really want the low clearance at the front there in that situation so it is what it is it's amazing on the road for the most part everyone's going to be driving these on the road but it's a pretty good package for those light off-road situations as well and in fact i took this around my parents field which is a pretty steep grassy slope and all the shots here are taken with a gimbal so the camera is dead level so the angles you see here are all very genuine and of course this was way past the limits of the tire grasp at this kind of a slope with a heavy car there's no way the tyre is going to grip all the way up and you can see the tires losing traction but as soon as it does that it manages to put power to another one that's got more grip and it just goes up this hill at slow speed i'm not using momentum to cheat my way out of this i'm doing it deliberately very slowly to see this traction control working and it does an unbelievably good job so this was with off-road assist just turned off this was just normal jump in the car drive up the hill and it's actually a wonderful experience driving an ev in an off-road situation with the windows down you can hear the bird song you know in a situation like that normally you have to rev the car pretty hard to get the torque needed to go up the hill and then mechanically you're aware that you've either got to have a low range gearbox or a torque converter an automatic with like the subaru to get that torque from the high revs to the low speed that's needed for that situation in the ev there's just no drama there the mechanics of it the engineering full talk at zero rpm makes for a very very good off-road experience i think once we see evie's really maturing in the off-road scene like with the cyber truck and the rivians i think we're going to really start appreciating one amazing off-roader an ev can be so it is that bit more rugged in its approach you've got bits of plastic trim around the wheel arches and down the sills and i don't think they're just cosmetic they do make it a little bit more resilient to damage from stuff especially with the paint peeling issues we have on the model 3 on the sills it's nice to see that just as a piece of durable plastic and actually all of this stuff is really tough you know you can bash these bumpers and the sills and the bits around the wheel arches it's all very solid you know even in my subaru these kinds of bits of the car are very lightweight plastic they're quite flimsy whereas in this is there seems to be some real structure there it's definitely pretty tough also nice to kind of see the bumpers actually with a pretty good approach and departure you know they come up quite quickly just after the wheels at the front and the back so you're not going to worry about bashing bits of bumpers as you're maneuvering this in a field or something like that obviously you know it's important to know that i'm talking about this for the kind of car that it is it's those times you might find yourself on a rough track or in a field that's that's all i'm expecting of this and i think it does that actually just fine so when i first heard about the model y it seemed a little bit like they were just turning the model 3 into an suv to corner that kind of the market but actually it's definitely much more than that this is a really fully thought out vision of that family suv format it's fast enough and handles well enough to be fantastically enjoyable to drive on the road yet it's got all the off-road ruggedness you'd need for this kind of a car combined with unbelievable practicality and interior space and usefulness as well so it's just the ultimate family car i can't think of another way of putting it so if you enjoyed this video check out my other videos and subscribe for more this channel is all about exploring design usability and workflow so i'll go into all kinds of different areas i think there's something for everyone please do like comment share and subscribe to help others find this video and support the channel super appreciated and i'll see you in the next video you

Channel: Ben Vallack

Views: 157,624

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Id: YIOm_76OdHk

Length: 20min 12sec (1212 seconds)

Published: Wed Apr 13 2022