Deep Dive
Shownotes Transcript
Welcome back to the Why Tesla Model Y Podcast. If you're a prospective Model Y 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 on the r slash Tesla Model Y subreddit, or you can follow us on Twitter at r slash Tesla Model Y.
Back when I was in the market for a Tesla, I was searching endlessly for a podcast solely focused on the Model Y, which didn't exist. So I ended up on Reddit and other forums to learn more about the vehicle. But I've always preferred audio content versus scrolling, especially of course on my daily 30 plus minute commute while I'm in the vehicle. So if you resonate with any of what I just mentioned, you're in the right place.
Ladies and gentlemen, this is episode 9. We got a special announcement to kick off the show. The wait is over. Nobody asked for it, yet it's here anyway. Official Y Tesla Model Y merch is now available. Hats, shirts, in differing designs. We've got bold, subtle, or just a simple minimalistic design.
available on our website. That'll be in the description of today's show, so feel free to check that out and support the show. It's much appreciated. I also announced this a day or two ago over on the Instagram. It's just ytestamodely if you want to follow along there.
Um, frankly, there's nothing too groundbreaking that I post on that Instagram, but if for whatever reason we're running behind with production or a day or two late in getting an episode out, you guys will be the first to know. So feel free to follow, uh, stay up to date with the show, but also provide your feedback in that forum as well. I find that an easier way to
Thinking about when I follow podcasts or podcast hosts or youtubers It's an easier way to interact and provide feedback or commentary and follow along other than just consuming the podcast So that'll be in the description of today's show Visit our our site again. We're not affiliated with Tesla in any way, but if you want to support the show and Purchase yourself a shirt or a hat would be much appreciated and
Let's kick it off as usual with what caught my eye over the past week. The first one again over on the r/TeslaModelY subreddit. This post is from Tesla-1000-calls. It says 23 Model Y long range three month ownership. Got this new inventory at 37k US dollars after instant tax credit.
Coming from someone who loves a loud car, a Lexus LC500 and Honda Accord Coupe with aftermarket exhaust, this car is the perfect daily. I did not realize the simplicity of entering and exiting the car without the key fob, just drive off without waiting for the car to warm up, the killer speaker system, and the instant torque until I get into my traditional ICE cars.
I also can fit plenty of golf bags and random material for my rental property. Don't get me wrong, I would still like a traditional sports car with loud revs and downshifts in the tunnels, but it just gets annoying sometimes and the Model Y provides a peaceful and relaxing experience. So, at the very minimum,
User Tesla-1000-calls, great looking few photos that they posted. It's an all blacked out Model Y long range. Excuse me, I believe...
Yeah, it is the long range. It was deceiving as it looks like they've got some wheel caps that look like the Uber turbine performance wheels. But regardless, car looks great. It's blacked out, blacked out license plate, blacked out wheels. Looks like they've got a little silver carbon mirror cap. So it's not my why of the week. And again, I try to avoid describing pictures as much as I can on this podcast. But yeah,
Tinted windows, there's a comment on here as well that says the tint is carbon tint at 20% in the front to match the pre-tinted rear.
Again, I wish that was legal in Texas. I think the legal limit is 25% for the front windows tint-wise here in Texas. So I wish I could go down to 20% because I agree. I think that at least matches the coloring. Again, it's not tint on those rear windows. It comes from factory colored to about 20%.
but doesn't provide any sort of heat or UV protection. So I still got the full wraparound tint all across the cabin. But anyway, that 20% in the front of this vehicle looks great. And I just wanted to read this post. I think it's always interesting to hear the initial feedback of folks like myself. Again, I purchased my Tesla back in January of this year, so I'm
shoot four months in this user was was three months in so it's great to hear having a very similar experience to myself the ease of entering and exiting without having to worry about powering on or off unlocking or locking the vehicle as long as you've got that phone key set up boom it's done that automatically for you but also yeah that instant torque the instant acceleration not having to wait for shifts and gears it's fantastic so great to see that um
This user is having a similar experience to me in a great first three, four months. A comment on here as well says that black sure looks sharp for 20 minutes after washing it. Helpful comment here. Quick wipe down every few days between washes never hurts anyone. Keeps that shine going. Agreed. Black is the best looking color on any vehicle, but it is very, very tough to keep clean.
another comment out here says same about to be four months in in mid-april with my 23 model y short range and i'm just loving it especially exiting and getting in the car every time one pedal driving is awesome too and i have enhanced autopilot and use it whenever i can and as much as i can um let's see anything else
Nothing else comment wise to read, but shout out to that user. Thank you for the post. It's always great to have positive feedback, especially a few months in new Tesla owners, but also it switches up the negativity and the issue posts that we see so, so commonly in the thread. All right, next post that caught my attention over the past week. This is from user glass coffee one.
It is a post on the supposed gas savings. I've mentioned it before, but one of my favorite features of the Tesla app is you can click into the charging stats and it'll show you what you've spent on charging year to date and it'll compare that with the gas equivalent, which the thought is that the total that you've spent on electricity will be far less than the gas equivalent that you would have paid with an internal combustion engine vehicle.
However, this user's post says $0 savings. $0 savings charging at home, technically negative. California PG&E is my utility. How are other PG&E customers doing?
So it looks like a small sample size. This user that posted just posted the month view, not the year view. And so the gas savings or lack thereof is showing that for the month, they've spent $91 in electricity to charge the vehicle and the gas equivalent would have been $85. So they're quite literally in the negative to power and keep their Tesla moving as they would be with a gas powered car.
Upon reading through some of the comments on this post, it sounds like a unique situation where PG&E, a utility provider out there in California,
It's kind of just gouging the market and taking advantage of this move to electric all the teslas that are out there in california Um, and they're hiking up the rates and so i'll read through a few of these comments But that's the general theme is that it seems to be unfortunately a pretty unique area where the utility provider is is um Even in off-peak hours the rates seem to be higher than even superchargers at least that I have around me here in texas. So um
a few comments um pg e their price raise should be illegal nice cool 10 cents per kilowatt hour and here in sacramento reply to that says i live in the same area and i'm in the same boat as op i just supercharge at 11 pm or later to get 23 cents per kilowatt hour better than the off peak at home which is more than 50 cents per kilowatt hour thanks pg e
That's absolutely insane. So that commenter there, again, it's not the OP, but said basically they're in the same boat. They went away from home charging altogether. And instead it will only supercharge at 11 p.m. or later because the supercharging fee is 23 cents per kilowatt hour versus off peak rates of 50 cents per kilowatt hour with PG&E. Um,
That's brutal. So I feel for you guys out there in California. I'm not sure exactly what markets PG&E serves, but it sounds like quite a few people based on the comments that I'm reading through. So let me read through a few more of these. PG&E is criminal. That is our supercharger rates here in Chicago.
California's green dream gas prices that'll make your Prius faint and electricity so expensive that will bring you back to candles electricity rates here power PG&E's bonuses not your car's 34 cents off peak per hour EV2A plan rate that is criminal um sidebar is Tesla ever going to update the app so that we can manually input actual cost of gas for our region
Agree with that comment. That would be nice because I think the average cost of gas around me is $2.75 to $3 per gallon. But for some reason it thinks the average cost or the gas comparison cost that it uses in the app is like $3.75 to $3.99, which is a bit inflated. So agree. That'd be nice if you could mainly plug that in.
One comment on here says, I knew it before I even read it, PG&E territory. PG&E doing more to destroy the transition to green energy than any company around. Which is scary, the thought of that, and that it's so easy for energy providers if, who knows where their funds come from, if they're, I don't know anything about PG&E, but if they're in some way tied to
oil production or massive oil conglomerates that are helping to fund these guys or there's money under the table with different energy providers. I'm not the one to speak on it, but that is worrisome if there is perhaps a
recognition by these energy providers of oh the markets clearly going electric all of these massive automakers are transitioning to EVs across the country but also across the world so they see the direction it's going and so that is the easy slow to that change is just bump up the energy rates so that that's that's dangerous if PG&E can continue to raise rates and if the off-peak
Price per kilowatt hour is 50 cents. That's absolutely absurd. So, unfortunate there for Glass Coffee 1 negative savings with electric versus gas. So, unfortunate to see. I don't know the exact location of Glass Coffee 1, where they're posting from. You've got to think it's California. I don't know particularly where, but...
Positive or not, last post was positive, this one was negative. That's what we're here for though, is to share the news, report on it, good or bad, so that you as prospective buyers, as current owners, can make informed decisions on perhaps not even just what vehicles we purchase, but where we live, who our energy providers are. Something obviously worth looking into before making a move into an area or into a new house, for instance.
all right next post that caught my attention over this past week uh this is a fun one it says towing the boat first time towing the boat really impressed with the performance this is from user finn's uh finsco eat work um they've got what looks to be a model y long range
And a pretty decent sized boat behind it. Definitely longer than the vehicle. It looks to be about an 18 footer, perhaps. Pretty aerodynamic looking boat, which I think has got to help when you're towing this bad boy. And that's actually the top comment on here. It says, the boat is fairly aerodynamic. That helps a ton with range. Another comment on here to summarize basically says, stupid question, but I bought the Model Y long range with the tow hitch. Haven't tried to use it.
any instructions that can basically point me on how to uncover and actually use the tow hitch. So short answer, if you have a tow hitch equipped Model Y, there's a cover. It's a little trapezoid, unique shaped black cover that blends in with that rear bumper. You can pry that off and your tow hitch sits beneath there. So pretty neat. That was really all I wanted to touch on there. There was somewhere on here,
where the OP commented on the range hit. And I don't want to misspeak, so I won't try to summarize without finding it. Let's see if I can find it though quickly. Yeah, can't find it. But from what I remember, this could be wrong, it ate up about 30% of the available battery to go about 85 miles. So not awful, especially when towing an 18-foot-plus vehicle
That's that's pretty solid. It's a deep boat Looks awesome. I I don't have the tow hitch equipped. I don't have a boat don't live near a lake I don't plan to haul around a bike rack or anything like that. So I haven't found the need for the tow hitch, but I Wouldn't have minded if the used vehicle that I bought had a tow hitch equipped for unique instances where perhaps I need to pull a flatbed trailer or something of the sort and
eventually but as of now i haven't need to use it i just thought it was neat to see this post see the photo which i think is pretty neat to see how much bigger the boat is than the actual model y but great to see and hear that it's it's more than capable of of towing i don't know the total weight but a solid size boat um oh my goodness this next post that caught my attention over this past week this was actually posted one hour ago this was from user illustrious rip 8281
Man, I wish y'all could see the photo. Perhaps some of you have by the time this episode's released. But it reads, got a little too close to the curb in the drive-thru. Does anyone know how to fix this? And it's a photo of some aftermarket wheels, I believe. I haven't seen these wheels. I don't know if this is a Model 3 or something, because I haven't seen these wheels before, but absolutely curbed to shreds. Typically, when you see a curbed wheel...
especially when you're going to slow speeds, like through a drive through, it's just a fraction of the wheel and a fraction of that outer edge that's curved before. Okay. You pull away from the curb. You're good. But this is over half of the, um, circumference of the wheel that's curved and terribly curved as in, um, the wheel itself, the rim itself is cracked. It's completely peeling it, peeling to shreds on the outer, outer rim. Um, and,
Again, I'm not sure if this is just a cover. It looks like, and it has to be some sort of just cover for their, um, and the more I look into it, it's, it's gotta be a wheel cover, some sort of hubcap for the wheels that came with the vehicle, um, but absolutely ripped to shreds. And so my first thought in seeing this was, and before I even purchased the Tesla, I got served those mag back wheel cover, um,
Basically aftermarket parts that you can place around the outer rim and outer edge of your your Tesla wheels because the the frustrating part about Tesla wheels and rims that they stick out a few millimeters more than the wall of the actual tire and
So the tricky part about that is that there's no grace whatsoever if you thought that perhaps you just barely tapped a curb, "Oh, hopefully my tire covered me there. Hopefully it just hit the tire." No chance with the Tesla, at least a Model Y, is that those wheels, those rims stick out a little bit further than the actual wheel of your tire. So anytime you get close to the curb, this is going to be the result.
This is a brutal one. This is perhaps the worst curb rash I've ever seen. It almost looks like a side collision because the rim is actually cracked. So let me read through the comments. Maybe we can actually dig into what actually happened here. But the first comment, similar question to it.
to what i had it says wait isn't isn't that a cover on the wheel i can see the broken black plastic and an intact wheel underneath am i taking crazy pills i think you're actually wheel actual wheel is just fine uh op replied said i don't know what that means but i hope you're right i do see the black cover looking thing cracked though but i would maybe have to take it off of all the wheels um so interesting it sounds like the original poster
Perhaps bought this vehicle used, had no idea that the vehicle even had wheel covers on it. But the more and more I look at this photo, it absolutely looks to have a cover on the wheel itself. And the rims underneath are completely fine. But it's hard to tell with the photo. Scrolling down. Yep, another comment says, is it just me or is that hubcap on the Gemini rim?
Again, this one goes in line with what I was thinking. It says, were you moving at quite a pace? Because personally, I would feel it right away and stop moving. You look like you did a good 10 feet of curb, which again, it's the worst curb rush I've ever seen. Over half of the circumference of the actual wheel is scraped to shreds. So yeah, it looks like they were going quite fast and did not pull away from that curb once they felt it.
Another comment, "No way this is a drive-through slow driving situation. This is trash beyond repair brought by a new wheel." However, OP replied to one of these comments and says, "Like I said, I was in the drive-through so I wasn't moving fast at all. Plus none of my sensors were telling me I was too close to the curb until after it scraped. The sound of that was horrifying."
that comment to add to that i mean frankly there's no sensors on the tesla that will tell you if you're close to a curb i have a 2021 model y long range with the ultrasonic sensors in the front and the rear but you think about it one it's not going to warn you for objects directly on the side of your vehicle especially as low down as a curb but even in the front it doesn't pick up curbs because they're they're low they're beneath the sensors so it doesn't pick those up
So you just got to kind of drive around those and judge that based on feel. So OP, perhaps you should be more cautious with your driving around the curbs, but also the good news is it looks like that's a wheel cover and some sort of cap put on the original wheel. So you should be fine. Just yank that baby off and put on a new one. All right, final post that caught my attention over this past week. This is from...
A proud new owner. It's from user HeyThereAlberto. It says, finally, a Model Y owner in all caps. This is... Okay. Yeah, great photos. Four photos posted. I know you guys can't see it, but he's got a cowboy hat on, very proud, standing in front of his new...
blue what looks to be long range model why it says after many months of watching this thread of people buying their dream car I can now say that I also bought one of my dream cars to you reading this take your time breathe you don't need to buy one because everyone on this thread has one do what's right by you save some money and make a nice down payment you are soon going to be a Tesla owner as well more than happy and grateful much love to everyone
So super positive post, big smile on his face. Congrats to you. Hey there, Alberto. Awesome to see that he had the patience. It sounds like to save up a good chunk of change and make a financially sound decision and not just finance the entire purchase, but got a great looking vehicle that the blue actually looks really, really sharp with those black wheels.
Black interior, really good looking vehicle. But a proud new owner, so shout out to Hey There Alberto. Post got a ton of engagement, ton of traction. It was only posted a day ago, but 404 upvotes, 102 comments. I'll read through a few of these. One of them says, you look like the guy that you're going to see parked in the supercharger spots in a jacked up Ram with a smokestack.
Congrats on the my my wife one of the really bad at sharp. We didn't want to wait so we went stealth gray Enjoy the ride man Another one says a model wise amazing, but based on your outfit congratulations for not driving a black Dodge Ram and Rams are catching a lot of strays mmm further posts or further comments
Let's see. A lot of people just saying congrats, awesome color. I read this with a cowboy accent. You're going to put long horns on the hood. Anyway, shout out to Hey There Alberto. Great looking vehicle. Always love to see folks that have the patience to make the right financial decision for them and don't get caught up with the hype of everybody else posting in this thread and the FOMO and end up pulling the trigger at the wrong time. So shout out to you there.
All right, finally, the why of the week. And bear with me because I thought I hyperlinked this post but I didn't so I have to go chase it down real quick. Let's see, bear with me, it's worth it. Bummer, can't find it. Let me see if I can sort, there it is. All right, worth the wait, thanks for bearing with me. So this is user UpstairsAir3422.
For my why of the week, it's a little different than standard. Typically, I pick a good looking Model Y and that wins my why of the week award. Just a great looking vehicle. But I thought this was a great kind of juxtaposition play. It's again from user upstairs air 3422. It says what I left in versus what I came back in already in love.
And so as the post suggests, and as I suggest, this is kind of the juxtaposition of the first photo. It's a Mazda 3, a white Mazda 3, reading through the post and some of the comments, it had 150,000 miles on it. It's white and it's got a black bumper, which he details in one of the comments. He hit a coyote on the highway, had to replace the bumper, it's a completely different color.
you swipe to the second photo it's a brand new stealth gray uh or excuse me it's not the stealth gray because it's a 2021 but it's a uh shiny great looking condition 2021 Model Y long range in gray it says I picked up a 2021 Model Y long range over the weekend and I'm already in love with it I have a buddy and some family members who own model threes of various trims but I like the slightly bigger body style
I got a new job last year and have had my eyes set on this for a long time. Full self-driving has been a little sketchy in the city but worked great on the highway. Definitely not worth $12k so I will not be taking any action after the free trial. Already have some black wheel covers on the way along with a sunscreen, a sun screen, it gets up to 130 degrees in the summer, all weather floor mats, screen protector, mud flaps, jack lift pads, and some other odds and ends.
Top comment on here. That Mazda 3 had a rough life, it looks like. And again, I know I can't detail a photo to you on a podcast, but again, I love the contrast and what he just simply left the lot with. And then this exact same parking spot, what he came back with a few hours later, a brand new, at least to him or her, Model Y Long Range, which is gorgeous looking. So yeah, the OP said, I had the Mazda for about five years.
Wow, had it for about five years and put 150,000 miles on it. Never had to take it to a mechanic except when I got T-boned by an Audi. I was shocked when they didn't total the car, honestly. And the black bumper was from about eight months ago when a coyote ran in front of me on the interstate a little after 11 p.m. She served me well, but it was definitely time for an upgrade. Another comment, I went from a Mazda 3 to a Model 3, solid moves. Congrats, congrats, what's the price of the Model Y long range?
OP says it's used with a little under 40K miles. I got it for $32,000. The reply to that, which is a massive other end of the spectrum contrast to the different peaks and troughs of the market when folks purchase, this reply sadly says, nice, that's about half of what I paid for a new Model Y long range in 2022. My now, and so for reference, that puts that Model Y long range purchase at $32,000.
uh 64k so quite a big difference but good attitude here it says mine now has just over 40k and i don't have buyer's remorse even though i got hosed on resale value i bought it to drive it not to sell it so not as bothered by that so jono drums good outlook there even though um unfortunately purchased at the the height of the market out the door price based on the op's reply uh says i want to say out the door price was around 34k
So, again, love that post. That one's my why of the week, just because of the story itself and the actual contrast of the two photos. Same exact parking spot. Rolling back in a few hours later with the new Tesla. Shout out Upstairs Air 3422. Quite the upgrade there.
That's all we got. That's episode nine in the books. Those are the posts that caught my attention of the past week. That's the why of the week. Um, as I mentioned, visit the link in the description to tech, check out some, uh, items in the shop as well as the Instagram. It's just why Tesla model. Why? Um, I'll post a poll as well over on Spotify. Feel free to leave me your feedback there as well as in the open text box. Um, with any comments, feedback, uh,
or things you want to hear in the next episode. Appreciate y'all's time. Catch you next week.