Tesla Model Y

the front looks better anyway. Not that that would be difficult. It really is an ugly car in current guise.

Looks well in white. I love the looks of the front. Looks like there's a front bumper camera but the position appears quite low compared to most cars. I'll buy the stalks from S3XY buttons.

https://www.tesla.cn/modely/design#overview

Ironically, for all the focus on keeping the indicator stalk - if they could keep one stalk only I'd have preferred the gear stalk TBH.

Any rumours of European pricing ?

how often do you change gears when driving? the issue customers are complaining is about indicate when going through roundabouts, which is not a problem for Americans as they dont really have roundabouts

You do realise the Tesla market outside America is larger?

The stalkless indicators would obviously reduce their market share so a prudent decision overall.

A larger battery and 800V architecture would make the car more expensive, or Tesla would need to reduce their profit margins, which wouldn’t sit well with investors and speculators. Tesla can’t afford to raise prices significantly due to strong competition from the likes of BYD outside of North America.

BYD is leading in innovation because they are vertically integrated - manufacturing batteries and designing most components in-house, except maybe CPUs. Tesla announced their 4680 battery back in 2020 but has yet to deliver it for mass-production cars. Meanwhile, BYD continues to deliver new battery innovations. Tesla may need to redesign their chassis to accommodate a much larger LFP battery from CATL.

I’m uncertain about what I’ll buy next. I don’t like the direction Tesla is heading under Musk’s leadership.

As much as I love my Model Y LR and EVs in general, I sometimes get intrusive thoughts about switching to a RAV4 hybrid for my next new car 🙈 The residual values on current gen RAV4 models are excellent, while the depreciation curve for EVs is much steeper.

Thanks, I think I just assumed that the rumors that were hinted at (about 800v, better batteries etc) were based in reality. It basically is just the same as the M3 refresh (which is not that surprising) with different styling.

You're right that most mid cycle refreshes are not that different, I just figured they might go for somthing bigger with the Y.

It was already behind the likes of the Kia/Hyundai of a few years ago in terms of charge speed etc.

I think they potentially could have got around that while still using 400v if they fitted some of the newer CATL LFP batteries. The Shenxing LFP can charge at speeds of 500+kw and can still charge at 250+kw at 80%. So in theory if they plonked that in the Model Y you could charge at 250kw (it's max current speed) all the way to 80% and so a 10-80% time of about 12 mins with existing tech. That would be a huge upgrade on current charge speeds.

Maybe they'll still do that (I don't think they have large scale availability of these batteries yet) but it would have been an impressive upgrade to have at launch.

I replaced the Model Y with a 3 year old ID4. It's clearly a fair bit crapper than the Model Y but it was a little over 20k for a 3 year old fanciest spec one (it was €57k new, ouch!) so I'm happy enough with it at 1/2 the price I sold my Tesla for. Will stick to buying 2nd hand EVs that have depreciated a fair bit from now on, less painful:)

I have an unusual use case in that I tend to do about 5,000km around Europe in the summer including getting to/from the South of France (2000km) as quick as possible. So if you're doing 1000km in a day, the quicker charging definitely helps. But agreed for most people, or for driving around Ireland it's pretty irrelevant.

Funnily enough I probably only used Tesla chargers about 1/2 the time, a lot of the ones going through France tended to be in slightly off the beaten path in hotel car parks etc. I prefer ones just off the motorway in service stations, very quick to get on/off and France is great for loads of fast chargers.

If the rumors of a slightly large 6/7 seat version of Model Y coming I'd definitely be interested in that but it might be as real as the the other rumours that turned out to be untrue:)