Episode 13
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The Why Tesla Model Y Podcast, episode 13. If you're a prospective buyer, a Model Y owner, or just can't get enough on Tesla and the Model Y in general, then you're in the right spot. Here at the Why Tesla Model Y Podcast, we primarily follow the weekly happenings and news over on the r slash Tesla Model Y subreddit,

Back when I was in the market for a Tesla, I was searching endlessly for a podcast solely focused on the Model Y, which did not exist. So I ended up on Reddit and other forums to learn more about the vehicle.

But I've always preferred audio content versus just scrolling, especially on my daily 30 plus minute commute. So if you resonate with any of what I just mentioned, you are in the right place. Welcome to the Why Test Some Model Y podcast. Like I said, episode 13. Thank you guys for sticking with me through 12 of these. Hopefully, obviously now 13 and many more to come. Let's jump right into it. The posts that caught my attention over the past week.

First one, I think is a sneaky, great post. It's just what is the most useful feature that nobody told you about? This is from user AccomplishedPast508. It says, what was your favorite feature you discovered that no one had told you about? Just picked up a Model Y yesterday. Congrats. When driving home, I heard a ding. Whenever the stoplight turned green and I was at the front.

I thought maybe I misheard, but then it happened again. Maybe an insignificant feature to some, but a highly useful reminder. Now, I don't need my mother to grunt from the passenger seat to tell me the light is green, even though I'm looking straight ahead. My Tesla will beat her to it. So before I read the comments, 100% agree. It's a perfect, unique, um...

feature ad that obviously Tesla added to, I believe it's all Tesla models, where just whenever the light turns green, boom, you get a subtle ding saying, hey, light's green, go.

So it's those tiny things that Tesla thinks about that I think takes them a step ahead. Most automakers, I think of, I share with my wife during my road trip this past weekend, Joe Mode, for example. Obviously the backstory behind that, for those of you that don't know, is what Joe Mode does, you toggle it on, it basically turns

lowers the volume for any of those dings. So if a light turns green, if you're turning autopilot on and off, turn signals, all of those dings and bells and whistles and sounds that the car makes internally to notify you of different things, they're just lower volume when you have Joe mode turned on. So I actually got to use it for the first time. I said while I was making...

a road trip this past weekend. I've got a two, almost three-year-old in the back seat. It was nighttime. She was sleeping in the back. I was toggling on and off. My broke boy basic autopilot is don't have enhanced. I don't have full self-driving. So I, of course, have to toggle off autopilot when I have to lane change, toggle it back on when I got to switch lanes back. Um,

So that was happening quite a bit. Once my daughter was sleeping, toggled on Joe mode, it worked like a charm. It was still noticeable, so it was subtle dings, subtle bells here and there for turn signals, toggling on and off autopilot, but it was much quieter. So highly recommend Joe mode. That was, I said I would get into it, but I didn't. The backstory of that one was a guy named Joe on Twitter reached out to Elon basically saying,

Hey, I've got children sleeping in the back seat. There's lots of bells and dings and whistles that happen within the cars. Is there a way we can turn those off or turn down the volume on them? Elon basically said, sure, and created Joe Mode in honor of the man that made that request, and his name was Joe. So little things like that. I think subtle, subtle little things that just make the actual user experience incrementally better and the driving experience better with the Tesla.

So let's get into the comments. This is a sneaky good one as well, I actually did not know before I toggled over to this post. This is from Shod Harry. Most upvoted comment, 157 upvotes. It says, "Hold the temperature number to turn off the HVAC." Last time I posted this, it was really unknown to a lot of people, so I made a video on Twitter to show it off.

A lot of people love that, and most people that replied to that had no idea. A guy replied to that actually pretty cool. He said, gosh dang it, you saved me a lot of time. My daughter has some asthma issues. I need to turn off the AC several times in a long trip if she gets in a coughing crisis. So sneaky little way to turn it off right there. Just hold the temperature number to fully shut off the air, basically the HVAC system in the car.

uh i love this one and i've shared this one before this says uh next comment says i found out i could use google maps or really it's it's any maps or anything you can share from you can share the destination with your tesla so you don't have to type in the destination while you're in the car 100 love that one uh nice shortcut uh to save a little bit of time i don't know what it is but i don't like typing out where i need to go in the car it's easier to look it up on my phone

This is a good one as well. This one says when the windshield wiper menu is up use the steering wheel left scroll wheel Click left or right to change the speed To be honest with you. That's the only way I have ever changed the speed I've actually never tapped the screen to change the speed itself I guess I could do that, but I've only ever used that that scroll wheel which I use for For nearly everything that it's capable of Let's see if there's any other ones

One says, how fast it heats up even without preconditioning. Switched to a gas car and was immediately reminded that most take a while to produce warm air. I live down here in Texas, so I don't often need warm air, but I'm interested to try that in, well, we've got a while, seven or eight months in the winter. Um...

Using shortcuts to use the Tesla buttons on Apple Watch. I lock, unlock, precondition, open trunk, open frunk, and turn on off sentry mode all for my watch. It's difficult to find and figure out, but it's great. So this is something I've been asking for for a while. I mentioned in a previous podcast, supposedly a native Tesla app was going to be created. I think Elon said it was in the works, just recently.

excuse me, for the Apple Watch I should specify. Because I haven't found a great app that I can use on my watch for those specific shortcuts to lock, unlock, things like that. Of course there's paid options. Actually this top reply says you can use the Tessie app for this and much more on your phone and on your watch.

So there were this actual comment that says I use shortcuts on my Apple watch difficult to find and figure out but it's great They go on to reply to their comments saying on the shortcuts app on your phone tap the Tesla function You want to set up a shortcut for click the I button at the bottom and turn on for the watch Then on the watch app add the new shortcut

I tried that myself. I couldn't figure it out. For some reason, I watched a video on it. I saw a similar post. I tried to add the shortcuts to my watch. Granted, I've got perhaps the oldest generation Apple Watch. Still couldn't figure it out. But anyway, hopefully a native Tesla app is...

at least a watch version apple watch version is it made available at some point my main reason for that i wouldn't use it too much um i think in the instance you know perhaps phone is dead maybe you don't have your card key um or for whatever reason um who knows you don't don't want to take out your phone to

click open the trunk or something like that you can use a watch I don't know what the use case would be but I like having a backup on my watch as well but can't do that right now another comment to swipe down on the navigation search box to go home and syncing the calendar so it shows any destinations I have associated with upcoming events real convenient I will say adding to that navigation

One of my favorite things when I sit in the car right at the beginning of the day, it automatically navigates me to work. Same thing when I sit in the car 5, 6 p.m. to head home, it automatically has me routed to go home. So it's picked up on my, you know, obviously home and work locations, my routine, my time of day, and auto routes me there, which is pretty neat. Ooh, I didn't know this one. This one says maps telling me where speed trap cameras are located.

Interesting. A few folks say how do you enable it, I think you need the premium connectivity. And then one actually says it's not available in all countries. Maybe you live in a country like Germany. So semi prohibited, Tesla does not dare to try it. Interesting. I never noticed that I've got the premium connectivity. Granted, I've got a 2021 model. I don't know if that makes a difference. But I've never noticed on the maps. Thankfully, I do like with premium connectivity, you can see the traffic.

visualizations is it red yellow or no traffic at all

So that's helpful. Never seen an instance where it calls out speed traps. I do wish it honestly was more like Waze to where you could report potholes, report tires in the road. You could report police. You got to think that something like that is coming in future updates. And I'm frankly surprised it's not out yet. I mean, there's too many Tesla drivers on the road specifically in, you know, large, largely populated cities.

this whole network of Tesla vehicles driving without Waze. Granted, they still may have Waze up alongside it. It's one of the most useful features of Waze. Calling out where police cars are at. There's a massive mattress in the middle of the road. Watch out. Potholes, car on the side of the road. Those little things that users can actually comment on, they can add, they can report hazards in the road. Super, super helpful and I really wish was added.

Oh, this comment says the windshield wipers are heated. Okay, and the reply to that says only for more recent model wise, my 2021 does not have this would be a nice feature. Huh? That's pretty neat. And then a reply to that one says under where the windshield wipers rest. So down to the bottom of the windshield, it's heated for 2023 plus models. So 2023 2024. That's pretty neat.

That's cool too. So there's another comment on this post that says the car will also ding if you're not the first in line at the stoplight. It says if the car ahead of you goes and you're still sitting there, it'll also ding. Really, really cool. That's it. We can stop there. That's probably enough for that one.

As I mentioned, it was posted two days ago. So May 4th by AccomplishedPast508. Again, the title of it was, "What was your favorite feature you discovered that no one had told you about?" I think I've read off one of those posts similarly in the past, but always worth taking another look at.

Kind of another light-hearted post, but along the same lines. This was posted three days ago, so May 3rd, sorry, math is hard, from Beret to Kenyos. It says, "What's your custom lock chime? Ours is of Koopo from Final Fantasy IX. Thinking of switching it to Pikachu's voice next. What's yours?"

So there's some good ones on here. They're a lot more custom than I would have expected. I'm pretty dang basic.

Obviously realize you could go and actually navigate to, I think it's the toy box and select your custom lock sound. I do the little chirp chirp sound. It's basic, doesn't draw too many eyes as a fart or any of those other noises would. But it's unique enough to where I know that, okay, that's my vehicle sound and I know my vehicle's locked. But there's some good ones on here. So let me read through it.

So for instance this top one says I do the quack and it scares the shit out of me every time. So that's part of it. The quack, the fart, the random ones that Tesla preset has added. I don't want to be that guy that's turning heads in a Costco parking lot because my car lock sound is incredibly abnormal. But I know that's just me. There's some of you out there that do it for the culture.

Oh, here's a good one. Halo Shield Recharge. Love that. One says Homer saying, wait, wait, don't go. Another comment, Mario Bros. Coin Sound. Keep Summer Safe. Quack. My name's a Jeff. Autobot Transformation Noise followed by Optimus Prime Voice. All systems activated. Oh, Windows Log Off. That's a good one. Um...

See, now this is a reason I'd consider it. This comment says, "My kid loves ducks. The quack gets him in laughing mode every time we walk away from the car. He'll start quacking as we walk away in anticipation of it." iPhone lock sound, that's a good one. And this goes along with my line of thinking. It says, "iPhone lock sound, it's subtle enough to not be bothersome and still a nice indicator of the car being locked." So that's a good one. That's smooth. Oh my gosh, I just dropped everything.

Anyway, iPhone locks down. That's a good one. It's smooth. It's subtle and unique enough to identify. Obviously, it's yours. One says 1.21 gigawatts. One of the turrets from Portal saying shutting down. Uh-uh, uh-uh.

This one says, I downloaded the audio of a clip from Soul Plane. It's the line where the co-pilot locks the 52 locks on the cabin door and turns around and says, that MF-er is locked to Snoop Dogg. I can't imagine, again, thinking of you're in a church parking lot. You're in a shopping center parking lot. You're at a wedding. You're in any situation where

Elderly folks around, families around, distant relatives around, and your car locks itself with that sentiment. That's just a hilarious scene to me. One says goat, R2D2, Ravina chirp, Windows XP shutdown. Oh, that's a cute one. This one says recording of my toddler saying bye-bye. That's a smooth one. Roadrunner, meet me. Uh...

random farts i'm a child but also my kids love it too so obviously there's some good ones obviously you can can even download your own sounds your own noises your own audio to the usb drive boom plug it into the car i think you're only allowed one at a time i don't think that it can hold more than one i saw that somewhere long ago i may be wrong on that but um pretty unique you can customize your lock sound to

pretty much anything you want. So hopefully that gives you guys some ideas for those that are creative out there. Alright, bit more of a serious tone to this post. This was the most popular post over the past week. It's posted three days ago, so May 3rd, from King Aoki. It says, "My Model Y saved my life." It's got two horrifying images. The first one is, as you can imagine, the front end of a Model Y completely mangled.

That's all I need to say about that one. The second photo is the Model Y face down, rear tires up in the air, ran right into a tree and it's down in what looks to be a bit of a ditch, a ravine on the side of a road. All airbags deployed, front doors wide open. The post says, my Model Y saved my life the other morning.

Driving home after making an early a.m. airport drop-off, I unexpectedly blacked out, and I woke up to the most nightmarish sound of metal crunching and twigs bursting through my windshield and roof as my Tesla collided with the tree.

My vehicle immediately called 911 and a cop, who was a total bro, was able to help get my car out of the ditch and me into the care of my parents. I walked away with a minor concussion, some bruises, and one less Tesla, but I feel as if I had been in any other vehicle, I would have been far less lucky.

Man, so first off, prayers up to King Aoki. Thankfully, very minor injuries. The concussions, nothing to mess around with. I've had a couple of those myself. Those are awful. So hopefully that heals up for you. Take it easy in that regard. But good to hear the rest of the injuries are fairly minor. Some of the comments, and to clarify...

Let me find where OP said it. So the OP ended up replying, because he saw quite a few comments on it, said, "Hi, because I've seen some comments about it, my 'blackout' was due to a medical condition, not any sort of illicit substance or funny stuff." So, scary enough right there. I'm not sure what the medical condition is, but knowing that perhaps you can blackout at any time, that sounds terrifying.

So, again, King Aoki, hope you're doing alright. One comment says, RIP insurance premiums, glad you're okay. Let me read through this post real quick before I read it off.

this is fair for those with children this says i'm so glad you're alive and hope your concussion is mild it's odd timing because my five-year-old told me to crash my new model y today because he wanted to see the airbags i tried to explain to him that they are meant to keep you from dying and these pictures were worth a thousand words of my explanations i told them they saved your life and he now understands wow hang on just a moment um

Anyway, I don't think I need to read comments on this one anyway. It was more so when I saw this, you immediately think the worst when you see a photo like this. The front end's mangled, the car's in a ditch, all airbags deployed. But then I obviously see the title of the post, my Model Y saved my life. There are really, really strong safety ratings around the Model Y. So yes, it's a flashy car.

I don't know if you want to call it a luxury brand, but there's a reputation around Tesla that, at least from an outsider perspective, when I was driving a gas-powered vehicle, it's luxury, it's tech-obsessed people, it's people with money that drive them. But looking at them is...

Truly just well-built cars with some of the best safety standards around. You see posts like this where folks drive directly into a tree. I'm not sure what the speed was involved. One of my earlier episodes, I detailed a head-on collision. Same situation. There was a head-on collision with a truck. The Model Y was mangled. The truck got it far worse. Far worse injuries for the truck driver. Whereas the Model Y driver was...

I believe they had a broken leg, but were able to escape outside of that with, with no major, major injuries outside of that. And so this is, um, terrifying. It's hard to see. Um, but obviously this stuff happens and knowing that you're in a well-built vehicle, uh,

that can withstand obviously up to certain levels, situations like this, obviously airbags deploy as they do in most cars, but the frame itself, the fact there's no engine in the front, it has all that extra room, the frunk, so to speak, to basically be the crumple zone, as you see in this first picture in this post, worked well here. And so it's glad, really, really good news for King Aoki that you escaped with frankly such minor injuries. So

Hang in there, that's a scary situation, scary medical condition, but I wanted to read that one off just as a testament to the just solid frame that's around Teslas that I think we don't think about often. All right, so switching gears a little bit, the final item I want to get into today, that's really it actually for the post that caught my attention over this past week. The last one is more of a personal antidote.

I got a massive bolt. It looked like a dang rivet. I don't know how deep it was. They never took it out. They just replaced the tire. But I got a massive bolt in my tire during a road trip this past weekend. I really wish that Teslas came with spare tires. They don't. I'm wondering, actually, if any of you guys out there do carry a spare. Obviously, jacking up a Tesla is a bit of a unique thing.

Situation itself with the you know little doughnuts basically that you need you can't just pop it up on the frame as You can with with most other vehicles But anyway, I got the flat tire. I wanted to detail at least my Experience with Tesla roadside assistance walk you all through the situation. I know flat tires. It's not unique to Tesla I'm not pretending. This is man Tesla

tires are so cheap that I got a got a nail in my tire. I had to replace it. That's not the goal here at all. It's more so just to share my experience with roadside assistance with the options presented to me so that you guys know if you're in a similar situation, tire blows out on the highway, kind of what you can can expect.

So, so for, I guess a little bit of background, um, I was traveling, I was up in Dallas from, from Austin, Texas. So thankfully I made the three hour drive up there. Um,

Without blowing a tire completely fine so that that was the good news, but then once I got up there to Dallas Right when I got off the highway I've got a dog in my backseat a three-year-old my backseat I rolled down the window for the dog To stick his head out the window and I noticed as we came up to stoplights We were cruising at slower speeds off the highway. I heard this clicking sound and

that was scary familiar and it was the sound of this massive bolt in my tire. Every time the tire made a rotation, boom, it was clicking on the concrete. So the faster I went, the faster the click sounded and so on. So that's the background. Right as I was pulling up, I think it was Saturday. So it was Saturday night to my place in Dallas and

I noticed crap. There's a bolt in the tire. I reached out to the roadside assistance folks to see if the mobile service folks could come out and help me swap it out because I knew it was Saturday night. Service centers aren't open. I know service centers are not open on Sunday. So let's see what mobile service can do if they've got a loaner on hand or something similar.

So I put in the roadside assistance request for the first time 10 p.m. on Saturday. I got a quick response. The response time was great. They were, I wouldn't say super helpful, but they were extremely responsive and quick to respond. They asked for the tire specs, so I shared that with them.

We had a little bit of dialogue, but eventually they said, so bad news. The soonest our mobile tire can come out is May 7th, which would have been tomorrow, Tuesday, May 7th. This was Saturday at 10 p.m. at night. I had to get back to Austin on Sunday, May 5th, just to get back to work by Monday.

So that wasn't going to work for me. And that text went on to read, the service center is not open until Monday. How do you want to proceed? So 10 p.m. on Saturday, the thought going through my head, I ended up declining the service at that time. Basically, I don't want to tow. I'm not going to a service center. I can't wait until Monday. I can't wait for the mobile tire guy to come out in three days. So I declined the service. I wanted to think about it that night. And I had to leave the city the next day.

So that night I did some research, found some local tire shops open. Very few of them that were open on Sunday. Most are closed. Discount Tire, unfortunately, came highly recommended. I've heard great things about it. Working on Teslas, typically they can, free of charge, patch or plug a tire. So I thought, great, let me check out Discount Tire. Of course, they're closed on Sunday. So I found a tire shop open at 8 a.m. the next morning. It was four miles away. I called ahead, um...

They have the, had the exact tire in stock. Um, and it was a foam lined tire for the record, Goodyear foam lined, um, tire, which I was told, unfortunately they can't, I don't know how true this is, but they can't plug a foam lined tire. So basically I had to end up replacing it, but I'll get into that in a bit. Uh, so it was four miles away. Um,

tire shop open at 8 a.m. I thought okay perfect I'll take off in the morning if I haven't lost any tire pressure which I hadn't which was a beautiful thing the bolt itself and my tire seemed to be working as a plug essentially and I opted to try to drive it

Tried to drive the four miles on it. That turned out to be a poor decision. The tire blew out just after 8 a.m. As I was driving to the tire shop, I was two miles away, four minutes away from the shop. Thankfully, I had the radio off because it was a rather quiet blowout. It wasn't full-on blowout tire ripped to shreds. It was just a quick, cool little... And so I knew, because I was listening for it, I knew there was potential for it. And sure enough, it blew out.

a couple miles away from the shop, so thankfully I was on the highway going at low speeds. I was cruising at 60. I needed to go a few miles. Probably should have gone slower and not gotten on the highway in general for that situation, but was able to pull off to the side. Found a spot, thankfully, where folks merge onto the highway. One of those little triangles separating the highway and the merging ramp kind of backed into that...

deep part of the triangle. So I had a room around me. I wasn't too tight on the tiny little shoulder on the highway.

So at that point, I put in another request to Tesla Roadside Assistance. This time I directly asked for a tow. I said, hey, my tire's blown. For the record, as I mentioned that morning, the PSI was at 40, even with the bolt in my tire, exactly as I left it the night before. So I thought, great, I can drive the four miles to the tire shop. Ended up not being the case right when the tire blew. Within 10 seconds, it was down to one PSI.

So yeah, I put in that roadside assistance request that said I'll need a tow. They said the tow truck ETA is 60 minutes. So I thought, okay, that seems a little long, but okay, I can wait 60 minutes. That's not a big deal at the end of the day. So let me, I'll just kind of read through a bit of the text thread with Tesla Roadside. They said...

blank towing, basically this third party towing company, will be arriving in 60 minutes. They'll reach out before arrival. Thanks for your patience. Enjoy the rest of the day. I said, thanks. 45 minutes later, so 8.45, they said, help be arriving soon. I figured, okay, they said 60 minutes, should arrive around nine. They weren't there at nine. I texted at 9.10. I said, hey, is there an ETA update?

They said help will be arriving in 35 minutes. This was at 9.11. So basically saying that it's going to end up being an hour and 45 minutes. They won't be there until 9.45. So I tried to clarify that. I said, okay, why an extra 35 minutes? Then they said, I'll call their dispatch team now. I'll get an update at ETA in one moment. And then...

Basically at 9:30, they said they confirmed their drivers en route and their GPS shows roughly 20 minutes. I apologize for the delay. So I said thanks, appreciate your help. I know it's out of Tesla's roadside hands, frankly, because they're dispatching a third-party towing company. So this is not necessarily to blame Tesla roadside against, just sharing my experience.

All right, so then they followed up again 9:50. They said hey I spoke with the tow provider their drivers about five minutes out So you should be seeing them arrive shortly Long story short they arrived a little bit after a little after 10 o'clock and so I was on the side of a on the side of the highway for a little over two hours and

Once the tow truck driver got there, he actually called me when he was five, 10 minutes away. He said, Hey, can you just send me a pin of your location? Cause I've looked around. I can't find you anywhere. Turns out Tesla roadside, they sent the wrong pin or sent my location incorrectly to the tow provider. So he was at the wrong spot. So he had to come track me down. Um, so we ended up getting it sorted, but that, that was odd. And I think my first overall feedback was that, uh,

The roadside assistance options for when you get a flat tire are pretty bland. Like there's not enough options in the roadside assistance section of the app.

Basically, if you select you have a flat tire, I don't know if it was time of day, what the situation was for my instance, but if you select roadside assistance, you select that you have a flat tire, it seemed that the only option you had was to get towed. And it had a preset service center location that was relatively close and you weren't able to change it. You weren't able to change the drop off location. In my instance, I was thinking, okay, it's Sunday. I know there's a tire shop open that has the tire I need in stock.

Please just tow me to this location. And so obviously Tesla service centers were closed on Sunday. So when the tow truck driver picked me up, great guy, I asked him, hey, can you take me to this tire shop? It's two minutes away. They got the tire in stock. I can't go to the Tesla service center. They're closed today. I got to leave today.

And he said he couldn't he looked at me and I was like, oh no, he basically said nope I can't do it. I have to take you as Tesla service center and again that the drop location So the Tesla service center was not editable in the Tesla app. So After a brief conversation, I eventually was able to have the tow trier take me to the third-party tire shop that was open that day The only nuance says I had to pay out of pocket which I was I was fine with and

it sounds like it that was the issue was that he had to take me to the tesla service center for the tow itself to be covered by tesla so 100 120 ish bucks for the tow to the tire shop that was open that morning um was well worth it in my book unfortunate but but worth it um so fair enough um my only i think recommendation or feedback there for tesla and i provided the feedback

after they said, "Hey, fill out this survey about your roadside assistance experience." I said the same thing, but I think the drop location itself in the roadside assistance section of the app should be editable, or at least there should be a pick list of your options, or at least what your preferred options may be, whether that be getting a tow, getting a patch, getting a plug, getting a loaner tire. Obviously, that's going to vary based on the situation.

But there should be different options other than just, hey, we're going to dispatch a third party tow truck service to come out. I've seen some posts about the Tesla mobile service folks. I wish that was an option. It just for whatever reason seemed like it wasn't on that day. The other thing that caught my attention that I had no idea about is when I was talking with the tow truck driver, we were trying to figure out the drop location, taking me to this tire shop that was open.

The tow truck driver said he actually, and for reference, he said primarily what their tow truck company does, they work with Teslas. He said he had already picked up two that day. He was going to pick up a few more later that day. He had another schedule. He's picked up Cybertrucks before. So the good thing is he was more than capable of towing a Tesla. He had a flatbed. He knew all the wheels had to be off the ground, etc., etc.

But what caught me off guard was the tow truck driver said he could have actually stopped on the way to get me to get and basically pick up and bring me the exact tire that I have as a loaner, which I had no idea was an option. And so the way that works is basically Tesla can give you a loaner tire. And the way that works is, you know, you swap out the tire, you put the flat one in the

the way I understand is I would then drive to the service center of my choice and I'd get it fixed when I'm able.

which would have been a dream situation. And so it sounds like in order to even have that as an option, again, it's not displayed at all in the app, in the roadside assistance section. The tow truck driver told me that I had to explicitly in the app, when I say I've got a flat tire, there's only one section that's editable and it's just an open field text box. He said, you should specifically specify when we're dealing with roadside assistance, when putting in that request,

"Hey, I've got a blown tire. I'm requesting a loaner tire. And then here's the specs of my tire." So 250 and whatever numbers follow.

So that would have been a great situation. I think I could have been more drastic in my roadside request of, hey, I've got a road trip. I've got to finish out today. I've got to get back on the road today. I can't be towed to a service center. Perhaps then if I detailed my full situation, you know, Tesla roadside assistance would have been more accommodating, would have given me other options. But I thought that was interesting that the third party...

Tow truck driver who has experience dealing with quite a few Teslas and Tesla Roadside, he actually gave me that suggestion. It was never mentioned by the Tesla Roadside assistance folks. He said, "Yeah, I do it all the time. I could have stopped by Tesla service, got a loaner tire for you, could have swapped it out, put the flat one in the trunk, then you go get the flat one fixed." That would have been perfect. Would have saved me a ton of time and probably a good chunk of money.

Um, but again, my, my reason in detailing this experience, I know it sounds perhaps like, okay, you got a flat tire, big deal. Um, it's just that Tesla's are unique. There there's not spare tires and Tesla's jacking tests is up or unique in itself. Roadside assistance is a unique, um,

portion of the app that I got to dabble with a bit. And so my point in sharing the experience just so that if and when it inevitably happens that you run over a nail, perhaps it's not a blowout, but you notice PSI dropping, you're stranded on the side of the highway. Hopefully it's not for two hours like I was. Thankfully I didn't have my wife, my kid, my dog in the car. It was just me because I was headed to the tire shop anyway, just didn't make it.

So it happened in an ideal situation, but hopefully it doesn't take you guys two hours. But also I think what's really important is in that open field text box in the roadside assistance request section of the Tesla app,

lay it all out there, lay out the situation. When you need to get back on the road, be sure specifically knowing now that loaner tires are a thing from Tesla, put that in the request of, hey, I've got a flat. Any chance I can get a loaner tire, quickly swap it out, get on my way. That would have been the best case situation. Unfortunately, I had no idea that existed. I

Just the tow driver, through his experience, brought it up to me. So overall, learning lesson for me. Basically, Tesla Roadside Assistance, in this instance, seemed to just be a middleman. They were, thankfully, I mean, I didn't have any other options, but they were putting the pieces in place. They were dispatching the third-party tow truck service. But honestly, next go-round, if I'm in a similar situation, I need help, I need a tow perhaps,

granted, now that I know that there's a loan or tire option, I may still give Tesla roadside assistance another shot. Um, but I later checked my insurance policy. I ended up actually paying two bucks every month on my car insurance that includes Geico roadside assistance, um, which basically that 120 bucks I paid for the tow with,

because I didn't go to the Tesla service center, it would have been free. Um, but disclaimer, if you do use Tesla roadside assistance, they tow you to a Tesla service center. The tow is complimentary. Um, I was just a problem child and requested to go elsewhere. Um, so I think the response time having to wait on the side of the road on the side of the highway for two hours, it was 8am. I wasn't in a rush. It was, it was fine. Um,

I didn't have anywhere I urgently needed to be, didn't have the full family with me. I could afford to wait. I was in a safe location. I wasn't on a tight shoulder of the highway. But if it was any other situation late at night, I got the family with me. I'm in a tight shoulder of the highway. I would have been pissed off if I had to wait two hours in that situation. I mean, it would have been quicker for me to look on Google Maps, find a tow truck company and call around myself. So that was frustrating. And so I think...

One, be cautious of what you type into that open text box in the Tesla Roadside Assistance app. Lay it all out there, request a loan or tire. But two, check your car insurance. Like with GEICO, tows anywhere. If you, I'm sure there's a mile limit on it, but if using the GEICO Roadside Assistance, it's free. So that situation, you know, service centers are closed on Sunday, you need to tow on Sunday.

Check out different options or just know that you ought to pay out of pocket if you go with Tesla roadside. That's it. I know that's a venting session for me. It turned out to be an expensive day. I don't know if I'm a sucker and the tire guy talked me into it, but they said the tow truck dropped me off, called the guy at the tire shop ahead of time. So he was expecting me, but he looked at the tire and

Of course had the tire in stock. He also sold me on my other front tires, the front passenger side. And it made sense. The wear was, the tread was wearing quite a bit in the center of the tire. It was getting low towards those kind of notches on the tire to gauge how much tread you have left. It was quite run down in the center of the tire, but not the outer sides, which is,

i learned just indicates that you have too much air in your tire you got to i learned just indicates that you have too much air in your tire you got to i learned just indicates that you have too much air in your tire you got to deflate it a little bit to make sure deflate it a little bit to make sure deflate it a little bit to make sure that it wears evenly that it wears evenly

So the tread was running thin on my front right passenger tire. The other thing he pointed out is that if I were to just replace the flat front left one, because it would have been so new and the front right one tread was okay, but it was getting low, the car would naturally start pulling a bit to the left just because of the new grip and tread on the brand new tire in the front left.

so long story short had to pay for an alignment had to pay for two new tires so it was a costly day but that's also the downside supposedly of these foam insert tires that tesla uses for noise dampening and making it quieter is that at least i was told i think it's honestly probably fake news i think it's possible and i've seen folks say that it's possible for foam insulated tires

Excuse me. I was told that you can't patch or plug those foam insulated tires. So again, perhaps I'm a sucker. I fell bait to the tire salesman. But end of the day, I've got two new tires on there. Should be good to go. I'm just curious if any of you guys out there actually do carry a spare tire. It really, really makes me want to find a way to carry a spare tire, carry a jack with me, carry the little donuts to jack it up myself so that I can replace it myself, get back on the road.

Because getting a tow truck involved, Tesla roadside assistance. Again, if I'm in any other situation, it's late at night, it's rainy, I'm with my family. I want to pop it up, take the tire off, put a new one on and get on my way. So it turned into half, three quarters of my day. Tire shop was busy. They were one of the only ones open on Sunday. It turned out to be a long day. Again, not meant to be complaining, just sharing my experience with those of you out there that may find yourself in a similar situation.

thanks to Tessa not having spare tires. I'm sure it's for good reason, but really makes me want to carry a spare. So anyway, um, that is it for episode 13 and rather long one today. Uh, but I think there's some fun post mix in there. Nice event session, um, for, for myself after that, that, uh, interesting weekend with the massive bolt in my tire. Um, so cheers to those of you out there that have stuck around for 45 minutes. Um,

prayers up and let's hope that that we don't find or suck up any nails in our expensive tires um i'll see you guys next week i record typically monday night so you can expect it tuesday morning to hit your your podcast feed wherever you listen to those i appreciate you guys as always leave a five-star review if you have not yet already would be much appreciated and i will see you guys next week