Tesla Model Y One Year Review! The good, bad, and...lessons learned!

hard to believe we've had our Tesla Model y for over a year originally I was going to organize this video like I did my one month video telling you about the things we like dislike and things that surprised Us in making suggestions and I will cover those areas but this is I I really wanted in this video to emphasize what we've learned so even though I will cover each of those things we've learned a lot over the last year and I think the best way to break that up is into categories so what we're going to do is we're going to look at our maintenance charging interior full self-driving navigation driving tips camping and accessories and then we'll have some final thoughts we did end up trading this car in for 2023 so I'll discuss that as well and we're going to have a giveaway so let's get started well there you go you just witnessed my entire maintenance for one year putting windshield wiper fluid into the car well actually that's not true we did rotate the tires and did that about 15,000 miles and a bit surprisingly there was 50% left so I'll be lucky to get 30k out of these tires I won't do the math for you because it's a bit depressing but if you live in a place where your electricity rates are inexpensive like ours are 7.5 cents a kilowatt hour you're likely going to spend about the same on tire replacement per mile as you do for electricity for mile as far as maintenance goes pretty much the only thing I else I did was wash the car and here's the stuff I use I really love it it's incredibly easy when you first get your car you wash it and dry it and then you spray two squirts per panel and you wipe it until you don't see any smears anymore and you let it dry for 48 hours then every 2 or 3 months after you wash your car you leave the water on it you put two sprays on it you wipe off the water and that's all it takes and it looks fantastic I think the car looks as good as it did the day I got it it was driving me nuts during the winter that I couldn't wash it so we tried some touchless car washes and one of them did an all right job I might go back to that if it was closer but another one I paid more for and it did an awful job so I decided I was going to do it here at home so I bought an attachment for a utility room sink and ran the hose outside pre reheated the car very important then turn the water on to where it was just barely lukewarm cuz I don't want to crack the windshields and surprisingly I was able to get a pretty good wash out of it I do not recommend this for anybody because I do not want you to break your windshield the only other maintenance we had was uh with mobile service and that was actually an interesting story I had played around with the headrests on the car and about 10 miles later I had somebody sitting in the passenger seat and and the back of the seat popped off and I didn't put two and two together so I put the panel back in but it would never stay so I was taking a walk in my son's neighborhood at the time and I noticed there was a mobile service car there working on somebody's car so I went down had a good talk with the owner and brought up to the mobile service guy that I just can't get this panel to stick and he said oh I'll just drop by on my way out and so he did he took one look at it and said I wish they'd put it in the manual that these headrests aren't adjustable well apparently the headrest holds the seat panel in place so he just put the panel back in pushed the headrest down was there a minute couldn't have been more polite I tell you what a neat service to have the most important thing we learned about charging is that I spend far less time charging my Tesla than I would have spent filling up my ice cars and the reason for that is 99% of my charging is done at home It Takes Me 2 seconds to plug it in and 2 seconds to unplug it and I've got a car is charged as I want in the morning when I'm ready to leave granted supercharging is going to take longer but we only go on like three trips a year truth is on trips we have to stop for rest stops more often than we need to supercharge anyway and if you combine it with lunch the car is almost always ready to go before we're done with lunch it's never been an issue so the supercharging percentage of my total charging is very small so overall I'm definitely charging less than I would to refuel my other cars the other thing I'm doing is I'm charging up to 60% and the reason I'm doing that is I read an article that said your battery life will be best extended by bracketing 50% so if you drive 20% a day then 60% down to 40% brackets 50% perfectly and that's about what we do and it seems to have worked because my last recurrent report showed that my range in three years has creeped up a bit we have had two instances of range anxiety one was on a trip we took from Las Vegas down to Phoenix but I'll get into that more when we talk about trip planning the other was we had just finished charging up and I usually leave it so that I arrive at my destination with 15% well 5 miles down the road it was saying I was going to get to my destination with 9% so I was going what the heck is going on I don't know if the headwinds were stronger than it had anticipated through the forecasts or what but we just went down the road to another supercharger filled it up and it behaved itself from then on and we got at our destination within a couple percentage points of its estimate there's also a major misconception with EV charging that I'm probably going to address in another video the short version is that people tend to look at the range as being Highway range because in your ice cars the best range you get is on the highway so that causes confusion people think they're going to get trip distance at 80 M an hour and that's not the way it works because uh wind drag is your biggest Factor at the the higher speeds and wind drag is the square of the speed so for example your aerodynamic drag at 80 mph is more than double what it is at 55 mph even though it's less than a 50% increase in speed so if you're going 80 M hour you're going to get significantly less than the 330 M state of drain for the model y bearded Tesla guy had a nasty experience that encouraged me to replace my inexpensive 1450 outlet with a higher quality quality one this is backed up in the manual where they do recommend a particular brand I'll leave a link for it in the description but the problem is these things aren't meant to be plugged in and out and every time I go on a trip I unplug my charger to take it with me just in case there's someplace at my destination where I can plug in and charge up so I'm removing it oh maybe three or four times a year these Outlets were not made to do that they're made to be unplugged every 20 years when you unplug your dryer and replace it so I put in a higher quality outlet but I also have made a habit of flipping off the circuit breaker before I pulled the plug out because I've had the tendency to wrap my fingers around the back and that would be a very bad thing it's a hard plug to remove Tesla should have a handle on it like RV Outlets do and that would allow you to easily pull it out but they don't so before I remove my charger I go down to my circuit breaker I flip it I pull the charger out and then when I come back home I plug it back in and then I flip the circuit breaker back on speaking of taking charging cords in and out of the outlet don't forget to take your charging cords on your trips I have done that once it is not fun to be sitting at a supercharger when you could have just been sitting visiting with your son while your car charges in the garage I also bought a adapter for camping so that I could take advantage of the outlets in campgrounds I was kind of surprised to see that the charge rate there was half of what my charge rate is at home but then I realized that the campground Outlets are 110 volts not 220 volts although the ampage was the same the actual power going into the batter is about half speaking of charging I don't understand why our cars don't have bidirectional charging that way we could use our car as a backup if our home lost power now granted it would only be able to feed through the existing circuit at 50 amps but for those of us with generator hookups you could make an adapter so that we could hook the cable that would normally go to the generator to our car and that would allow us to back up the house during times of power outages you wouldn't want to use it routinely because it would diminish the life of your battery but for power outages it would be great or allow us to charge other cars how cool would that be if in the app you ran out of juice you could put out an all points bulletin agree to having your cameras recorded on both parties sides for safety sake make an offer on how much it was worth to you to get out of this situation and then somebody shows up and tops off your tank and you get going on your way I don't understand elon's reluctance for bir directional I hope we see that soon the interior has held up great I don't think we've had a single mark on the interior in the year that we've had it a lot of people have asked for ventilated seats and they are on the model 3 refresh but I felt no need for them at all and I have the black interior there are some things we've learned though the took us almost a year to realize that the back seats actually recline a little bit you just reach up here and pull the handle and back they go I appreciate the little pass down through the middle that allows me to carry long things like 8ft boards or even 10ft PVC in there with ease I already mentioned that the headrests are not adjustable and if you pull them up your seat backs will pop off so don't do that I still love the interior design I like the wide open feeling it feels like you're in a living room and instead of in a car I do find the seat a little uncomfortable that's remained throughout the year I just can't find a position that's comfortable for me it's those side wings the right side wi pushes into my right back and makes it a little bit uncomfortable nobody else apparently is having this issue but it persists something I found very useful is to assign the fan speed to the left scroll wheel to do that it's really easy just press the left scroll wheel for about 3 seconds press it left to select the menu options select from a wide variety of options one of those is fan control I selected that and now all I do is I just press the left scroll wheel for about 2 seconds and select the fan speed I want it's very convenient new backseat passengers into Tesla almost always comment on how great the panoramic roof looks but that it does reflect a lot so as my wife says yeah it's nice but mostly what I'm looking at is the legs of the front seat passengers and she has a point I'm wondering if maybe they put a matte film on that or something it might reduce the reflection and make it even more enjoyable and as I mentioned in my one month video the sound system is incredible I still will go out to the car just to listen to music because it's by far the best sound system I've ever owned it really is incredible my only suggestion for the interior would be that the back seat passengers have access to the rear seat climate controls but the uh model 3 refresh got a rear screen I'm assuming the model y refresh will get one too I've got another suggestion how about turning the rear trunk storage compartment into an insulated cooler with a drain on it so that we could put our groceries in there and they would stay cold on the way home or we could fill it with ice and use it to keep popping things in it use it as a cooler I would think turning it into an insulated cooler with a drain plug would be minimal cost and very useful and even if you wanted to Tesla make an optional upgrade that turns it into a built-in refrigerator how cool would that be well what can I say about full self-driving it's tried to kill me and I love it both are true it actually tried to kill us it turned us into highspeed traffic I think looking at it there's a video on that as well uh you tried to turn this into high-speed traffic and I think the situation was it used to have a thing I called Snappy cars and they have sense fixed that but I think it was just a bad Coincidence of events and got it thinking that cars were moving in ways they really weren't and it had us turn into high-speed traffic anyway I gave it up for a couple months when I haven't had FSD I've missed it so it's a LoveHate relationship there's been a ton of progress made it's so much smoother now but there's still long ways to go version 12 sounds like it's going to be what we've been looking for still have my doubts about whether Hardware 3 will be able to handle full self-driving though I'm just not sure it can see far enough to safely check for highspeed cross traffic I'll be doing a video on that later but when I don't have FSD I sure miss it for the most part trip planning in the Tesla is effortless I love the way you can control everything by voice uh show me nearby restaurants take me to the nearest supercharger things like that but there are details that are lacking and the irony here is that these improvements will only be needed for the next few years we don't trip plan for our ice cars because there's gas stations everywhere it won't be too long before there's superchargers everywhere too but in the meantime I think there need to be some improvements in the nav app what I'd like to see is you be able to go in and set your waypoints but for each Waypoint you can set a departure time how many local miles you'll drive while you're there and whether you'll be leaving the Sentry mode on or off if on is it going to be left on all the time or is it just going to be left on for a certain amount of hours at night if you could add that to each Waypoint then it could give you a better idea check the weather in advance and give you a better estimate we had a problem with this when we went to Lake havu is we supercharged enough so that we could go to havu drive around for 30 miles and then get to the next supercharger on our way to Phoenix with about 15% well we went to bed that night expecting to wake up in the morning saying we'd have 15% at the next supercharge instead it was telling us we had 4% and what had happened is the weather had changed severely overnight and we were now going to have like 40 mph headwinds but also I had left Sentry mode on and that had eaten up like 7% of our charge so to make the changes I suggested earlier would fix that and make it easier but like I said it's just going to be needed for the next few years before long we'll have more Chargers than we know what to do with for the most part driving this car has been a joy it's so smooth it's so comfortable it's so Qui quiet it's so responsive it's got more power than you know what to do with the big issue we had though was in the winter time when regen breaking instituted a slide and spun me around and put me in a ditch they wondered about that in the documents that uh regenerative breaking can initiate a slide and that's exactly what it did the key to me was to learn to drive differently when I was learning to drive they taught you that if you start sliding you get off the gas and ster out of it and that's the worst thing you can do if you're trying to avoid a regen slide so the thing to do is if the car starts sliding it's get on the brakes uh but there are other things you can put it into off-road assist which helps I discuss all this in a video there and I also look at how power's transferred between the front and rear wheels it's kind of an interesting video and there's also maybe a snow mode hidden in there as well I'd recommend watching that if you're at all interested just remember that if the car starts sliding get onto the brakes and let ABS steer you out of it we had it slided that exact same spot later and I got on the brakes and I was able to steer out of it easily my son had an Insight that had escaped me but once he pointed it out is true the air is fresher when you get outside of a Tesla I don't know what it is I don't know if it's the lack of burning oil and hot rubber but when you open the door and get out of the car the air smells fresher than it does in an ice car don't ask me why we also found out that it's just as efficient almost to roll drive with your windows down as it is to drive with the windows up so put the windows down again you're going to laugh at me but I swear the air is fresher in a Tesla with the windows down than any car I've ever driven before I'd highly encourage you that if the weather allows roll those windows down we call the accelerator the giggle pedal because without fail when you punch it somebody in the car will start giggling but there's a tip there make sure you tell people before you punch it cuz I surprised my daughter once and she had a ponytail and it threw her head against the backr so hard that it gave her a bruise so let people know before you use the giggle pedal in full force eventually I want to go cross country and camp in the back of my Tesla and so I bought a decent mattress really good one actually and customized it to fit back there I'll be making a video of that process in case anybody else is interested so I decided I needed to test it and unfortunately couldn't convince my wife to go with me so I went camping by myself at one of our local campgrounds and I really enjoyed the experience and I slept pretty well too and it's so cool looking up through that window at night I was encouraged so I'm looking forward in the future to taking this cross country and sleeping in the back well let's talk accessories the max spider mats have held up perfect the inflator I've had to use a couple time and I really enjoyed it and it worked well I've already told you how the protectant does does an excellent job on the car and man keeps it gorgeous and I found a map for the back that's really inexpensive that I haven't mentioned before I'll put the link for that down below and I still love these little trash bin things in fact I'm going to give a couple of those away every week for the next four weeks all you need to do to enter the drawing is just subscribe and comment and put the word Tesla in your comment and every week for the next four weeks I'll select a winner and I'll send you a couple of these trash bins I think you'll be surprised how useful they are I'm probably also going to want to get privacy curtains for when I go camping but I haven't done that yet and so I can't recommend any if you have any you recommend I'd sure appreciate it if you'd let me know in the comments section I love the tech in this car I love that I don't unlock and have to lock my doors I like that I don't have to start my car I like that I can precondition my car so whether it's 105 out or neg5 my car is nice and comfy and waiting for me in fact I created an Alexa skill that lets me say Alexa I feel the need for speed and it plays the theme from Top Gun and starts preconditioning my car so it's ready for me when I go out to the garage I love the fact that the uh satellite views are constantly visible on the screen if you choose my wife is always finding things there's so much Tech in this car to love we love this car so much that we upgraded to a 2023 model and the reason I did that is because I think this is going to be my forever car and I wasn't sure FSD was going to work on Hardware 3 so I wanted Hardware 4 and Elon told us that we could swap FSD from one car to another this quarter so I took him up on his offer we love this car so much it has almost zero maintenance it's so quiet it's so smooth it's got more power than you'll ever need it looks great it has a great online community the car gets better with every update when has that ever happened when you buy a car I mean normally you buy a car that's the best it's ever going to be this car just keeps getting better it's fuel costs are so low it's almost embarrassing especially in an area like ours where energy is so inexpensive in my opinion it's the best engineered car in the world and one of the safests we're thrilled with this car I obviously have suggestions that I'd like to see Incorporated but my gosh this car is heads and shoulders above anything we ever owned before like I've said before this is not an evolution of cartech this is a revolution and we love it anyway thanks for watching uh if you want to get in the giveaway just subscribe and leave us a comment include the word Tesla like I said we'll be giving out a couple of those trash bins every week for the next four weeks again thank you for your time until next time take care

Channel: Tesla Roundup

Views: 75,186

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Id: asTVGi6y8H4

Length: 20min 54sec (1254 seconds)

Published: Fri Oct 06 2023