Tesla Model Y – Sell Your Old One, Immediately!

Well, I wasn't expecting to be doing this quite so soon, but surprise! We're driving the new Tesla Model Y and we'll be giving you a verdict as to whether it deserves to keep its top spot as the best-selling car on the planet. And then I'll be grilling the man behind it to see if he's got any answers. So stick with me to find out whether Tesla's done enough or whether it's been a bit lazy with the improvements. So here we are in Berlin, home to Tesla's Gigafactory Berlin-Brandenburg, and unsurprisingly where the new Model Y has already started production. Orders are already open for the car in territories supplied by the Gigafactory in Shanghai, which is why China and places like Australia will see it first and the US a bit later. But seeing as Europe is getting its supply from here, we've got hold of one of the first ones to have a go in. And this place is big. Can you see why it's called a Gigafactory? So I think we'd better have a quick look around the new Model Y. Now, it's fair to say that I did look at this car in a studio very recently, like four weeks ago, and then suddenly Tesla turned up and said we could drive it, which feels a bit strange, but then it's Tesla and sometimes as a company it does feel like it's making it up as they go along. Still, I don't think anything much has changed in the last few weeks in terms of the hardware, but we'd better check. So I'm going to do a little walk around. Let me know if you think I forget anything. First up, it has both a new nose and a new rear. It's got these very slim headlights at the front with a full width light bar, which stretches all the way around. It makes it look completely different. It's got a lower nose. There's no badge on the front. And then a completely new front bumper with some air curtain type vents at the sides. You'll notice that down here, there's a camera that's moved to the front. That's to give it a better field of view in terms of the autonomous driving stuff that the Teslas have. It's also better for summon, which is that remote control that you can use in parking. It's got a washer because obviously it would get dirty. There's the usual two or three cameras up in the top of the windscreen there again for autonomous driving functions. It does look different. It looks slicker, but I have a feeling that it's actually slightly more generic. A lot of electric SUVs have these big full width light bars. And even though I think this looks better than the old car, I'm not sure it looks much like a Tesla anymore. We will get used to it. Coming down the side of the car, these are the optional 20 inch wheels. Standard are 19s, but the launch edition, which this car is, has 20s. Profile. It's still a Model Y, but it looks slicker because the nose is lower. It flows better up over the top of the car. And then it's got like a little ducktail spoiler at the back. And then as you come round to the rear, it's different again. So it has a completely new rear bumper, which actually sticks out a bit further. On the old Model Y, the flush tailgate with the bumper, if it got knocked from behind, would basically bend the one piece rear tailgate. And that was bad for insurance because it cost more. It took longer to get parts, all that kind of stuff. This has been sectioned. This bit is more sticky outy, so it will act more like a bumper. And then in the tailgate, it's got another shut line here, which means that you can replace smaller parts. That'll keep the insurance costs lower and weirdly, the leasing costs because the car can be fixed and back on the road. And then at the back, interestingly, again, it's got a full width light bar, but the bit that you see is actually reflected. The light is up under here, just above this Tesla logo, and this is a reflective surface. So it's an indirect rear light. It is apparently one of the largest in the world. So there you have it, a quick rundown of the external changes on the Model Y. But the one thing we want to know is how it drives, because that's something the Model Y was always quite heavily criticised for. It's quite noisy for an EV and also quite wooden, quite stiffened, felt like it jounced around quite a lot. Well, I'm here to tell you that basically you should sell your old Model Y because this is night and day better than before. There's lots of things going on. The suspension has been completely redesigned and it's got entirely different kinematics, so it's just a bit more mature. And the back of the car is now one piece casting, and it's reduced the component count from like 70 to one bit. So that suspension has a much more solid place to push from. It can do its job much more effectively. Add to that, it's got a lot more acoustic glazing, a lot more sound deadening. It makes it feel more expensive. And along with a raft of other changes, it makes it feel like there's a lot more money been spent on this car, even though it costs no more. The general Model Y vibe is still there. This car weighs nearly two tons, so it's still heavy. It's still fast. If I put my foot down, it still gets going. But in turning the reactions down, making this car a bit calmer, slowing the steering down, making the suspension and the acoustic kind of vibes of it much more quiet and calm, they've made it a better Model Y. They've made it a car that's going to be better for more people. And that's why I'm not bothered that the Model Y isn't necessarily more fun to drive, because it's taken all of the things that the Model Y needed to be and they've boiled them down into something that is a better family SUV. Going around this corner, it's reliable, it's predictable, it's repeatable. All the things you need from a family car. And as for the inside, we've now been driving around in it for a little while and it's improved without being a massive revolution. But it is definitely better. I've noticed that some of the materials, especially on the top of the dash, are a lot nicer quality than the old one. And it's now got this ring of light that sort of comes back towards your shoulders, which definitely helps with the ambiance. But that is on a lot of cars these days. So it's not something that I particularly get excited about. We've got an indicator stalk, which is nice. I find it very functional. The only thing is it only does indication and I feel like it could do some other stuff. We're used to multifunction stalks these days and that seems like it doesn't make the best use of what it could do. Steering wheel does have programmable buttons, though, so you can make them whatever you need them to be. It's got a couple of rollers that do different things. Again, you've got the 15-inch touchscreen that controls most of the functions in here. I've been using it again. You get used to it. It's absolutely crisp and clear and it works really well, apart from the fact that a couple of well-placed buttons, I think, would be more practical. It keeps the interior looking very concept-y, which is strange. It feels almost too bare to me. Some people will absolutely love this. I'm not sure that it's for me, but it does work. What I have noticed is that the connectivity is loads better. The Wi-Fi is really good. The wireless charging pads for your phone are super fast. There's loads of storage. I mean, that's a massive storage bin. And the little things that have improved have made a big difference to the inside. So you get heated and ventilated seats in the front as standard. You get heated seats in the back as standard. There's a lot of things in this car that just feel that little bit improved. They've evolved. They've got nicer to use, especially from the touchscreen. Everything feels just that little bit nicer. And there's a couple of little things. If you option it right, it feels quite plush. This is a launch edition car, so it gets all the toys. But this comes with a 16-speaker stereo, and it's got a subwoofer. It's quite a nice audio experience. And because the car is so quiet, it's a really good place to listen to your tunes. But backseat passengers, say hello, Alex and Jordan, now have reclining seats, though they don't recline very much. But they do fold electrically as well, which is useful. Plus, these two have their own 8-inch screen to do Gen Z things on, like play Mario Kart or whatever it is they do while I'm driving. There's also Bluetooth, so they don't have to listen to you. As for practicality, the boot is technically 20 litres smaller than the outgoing car. But we've been using it in the real world and haven't really noticed any difference. Done. Plus, the frunk is big, and it's got a drain plug if you do need to hose it out after dropping dirty things into it. In the UK, we'll get a 507-brake horsepower launch edition with all the kit first, and that will cost a fairly hefty £60,990 for the long-range all-wheel drive. That gets from 0-62mph in just 4.8 seconds and manages up to 353 miles of range on 20s or 364 on 19-inch wheels, a decent chunk more than before. The normal version of which, by the way, should cost more like £52,000. As ever, they get 250kW of DC charging ability, which should see 10-80% charge in 27 minutes on a supercharger, and 11kW of AC charging for the 75kWh battery. And there'll be a rear-wheel drive long-range for £48,990, plus a 57.5kWh usable standard range version for £44,990. Though it's worth noting that if you have the smaller battery, you only get 175kW of DC ability, so it takes a similar time to charge for less range. Oh, and there's a rumour of a super-range version with a 95kWh battery that could get up to 500 miles of range. But for the nitty-gritty, we decided to ask the man behind it. Hey, Lars. Hey, Tom. Good to see you. Good to see you. Now, I just wanted to ask you a couple of things about the new Model Y, because you had a lot to do with Cybertruck, but that's kind of a rockstar car. What's different about trying to improve on what is the world's best-selling car? Yeah. It's got to be harder. Yeah, I mean, you know, it's something that wracks your mind, but when you sell a lot of cars, like over a million cars, 1.2 million cars worldwide, obviously you did a lot of things right, right? Like in, you know, with Cybertruck, we could do whatever we wanted because no one knew what it was going to be, and we could decide, but you don't want to break the recipe that people love so much. Yeah. And so, like, when you're engineering that, and you're kind of doing your sort of mental process of, like, trying to figure out what to change, what to analyze, it's, like, super hard, because you just get stuck sometimes in this analysis of paralysis of, like, well, but that was great, and everyone loved it, so I'm not going to change it. And everything from, like, little things like, you know, steering response to, like, even just how the door opens or, you know, where the, where the, you know, we put the stock back, where the stock is, you know, and do we keep the shifting? It's, like, all these little things that add up to a great experience, and when you're trying to make those decisions with a bunch of engineers who only want to make it better, and you're the guy who's trying to balance it. It's like one of those puzzles where you have to shift the tiles around. Yeah, it's all the tiles, and then hopefully it still says 1 through 15 at the end, you know? So what would be one of the biggest things that you wanted to address initially that you thought, right, this is definitely something that we need to have a go at? I mean, you know, I think you mentioned it when we first met, but, like, we always knew Model Y would be, like, a great family car, but we, Tesla's always made fast cars. We make sporty cars. It's kind of, they look sporty, they're sharp, and I think we wanted to really give, especially the second row occupants, and vis-a-vis the front row, like, just a better driving experience and riding experience, really, just like. So we needed to improve the comfort of the vehicle, but we also had to maintain the sort of agileness that Tesla has become. We don't want to get rid of that and just, you know, make a Buick or a floaty, you know. A big sponge. Yeah, that's, like, not our style, and so that was really difficult to do. We had to do a lot of, you know, first principle engineering to, you know, improve the ride aspect without decreasing, you know, the response, and I think we did a pretty good job at that, and then on top of that, you layer in sort of, like, you know, when you're riding in a car, the feeling isn't just, like, your butt. It's also how you feel, like, around the sound and the psychoacoustics of it, and so we did a lot with NVH and impact noise to try and bring that down, and I think the result's pretty great. I think you're going to love it. You know, I love driving it still, and, you know, I'm a big car guy. You know, I've got a lot of cars. I like driving cars, but, you know, it's definitely going to be better for families, I think, both second row seat and just how it rides and feels in the utility. It's interesting that we've just driven it for about an hour, and it is completely different to the old Model 1. Yeah. And you tell within 100 feet. That means, you know, that when you're trying to sell a car, you only get 100 feet. Right. Is that the decision-making process? Sometimes that is the limiter. It's like, is this change going to be felt in the first 100 feet? Because you're getting the test drive. You're driving it out of the, you know, the store, and if you don't make an impression that someone says, wow, like, you've already lost them, and, like, sometimes we use that as the barometer, you know. So the interesting thing for me was that immediately the suspension feels a lot softer but not necessarily less taut. Yeah. So how have you got it to be both softer and not floppy? Yeah. I mean, that's a difficult thing to do. And it's like the trade-off, especially with passive systems, you know, the Model Y isn't adaptive damping like we have on S and X or Cybertruck. But, like, one of the things we tried to focus on in that sense was, okay, let's start at the source of the problem. You start with the tire. So you got all new tires. Yeah. And, you know, once you have a good foundation with the tire, you know, we decrease the rolling resistance, which generally takes away from handling, but through compound and sidewall iteration, we're actually going to make a more compliant tire. So are the tires getting better and more suited to you as they go along? Yeah. We've been developing tires since, you know, Model S with our suppliers, but, like, we know so much more in the tech, and, like, the tech we put in our tires is crazy. This has a new tread compound on the Michelin Passports here. And it was meant to make the rolling pushiness better, right, because you get that tactile feel just in the first 100 feet. But to do that, you have to soften the tread, which is counteractive to rolling resistance, which wants a really stiff tread. So we actually have multiple tread compounds across the tire, and the balance of getting all that right, and then reducing the vertical compliance of the tire to just absorb those little nipples. Yeah. A little bit gives you a better foundation. Once you have that foundation, you go into the suspension design. And having done the old Model Y, like, we kind of knew the weak points. You know, when you're developing a car, you get a year or two maybe to, like, go through all of it. Then you got to go to production. Yeah. We're here at, you know, Gigafactory Berlin. It's just started production of the new Model Y on Monday. Andre just told me we were up to, like, 450 cars in the first two days. So that's a pretty good rate to start off with. But, you know, like, you have those constraints of the factory and what they can do. And so you have to kind of get into production. And, like, when we were able to do it again, we had all the constraints at the beginning. We knew where we could push and where we could pull. So we really focused on, you know, grounding ourselves. Okay, let's increase the body stiffness where we know it's weak. Torsional stiffness of this car is up 5, 10 percent. Connection point stiffness in any given point can be up as much as 20 percent. And that coupled with the tire means, okay, now I've got a better foundation of the body, got a better foundation of the tire. And that means the suspension can do its job. It's got something solid to push from, and then the suspension's doing all the things it wants to do. So you get to then... So then we get, okay, now we can make the suspension work more. And then we go into kinematics and we say, okay, we want a little more compliance. So we focus on reducing the parasitics of the bushings. And then you change the kinematics so you absorb some more mechanically. Slow down the steering ratio just a little bit on center. See, that's counterintuitive to keeping your Tesla sporty feeling, but it feels much better as a driving experience for a driver. Yeah, you would say like, well, why did you slow down the steering? We wanted predictability. And sometimes a sporty feeling isn't just about being quick. It's about being predictable and linear and progressive in the build so you know what's going to happen. And I think, you know, it's still a fast steering ratio. Don't get me wrong. It's not like we went to 20 to one and you got the super slow rate. It's still about 11. It was 11 to one, maybe it's 12 and a half to one now overall. On center has gone up maybe just one because we have sort of variable steering ratio. But you get that connection. And then I think we did a really much better job. Instead of masking it with the effort build and the assist, we actually really tried to make that progression much more linear. And that way you get the feedback as a driver. And that predictability makes it feel more sporty without, you know, really just making it feel darty. I think it's a better SUV. Do you know what I mean? It's like, it feels like, even driving along, the noise suppression is so much better. And there's a lot of acoustic changes. It's got acoustic glass and all that stuff. But it feels like some of that's coming from the suspension. Not necessarily the sound deadening. Yeah, I mean, you've got to start at the base. The source of all the... There's only four things touching the road, right Tom? They're all tires. So you've got to start there. And we did. And then with that suspension working and the body stiffness increasing, it allowed us to lower some of the bushing rates. So you get more isolation right at the source. And then you don't have as much transmission to the body. Of course, yeah, you said we got acoustic glass. We added some, you know, wheel liner absorbers to catch that airborne noise from the tread pattern. We've done some things like that. But really, you know, most of the NDH improvements have come from that ground up, like fix the source. And then, you know, we get in and yeah, the cabin's more isolated. And it makes this kind of like almost like cloud-like space when you're driving. I feel so separated from everyone around me when I'm driving the new Model Y. It's like a really awesome feeling, especially like, you know, when you've had a tough day and you just want some decompression. And with the second row experience now, like we have the second row seat, but also we have new Bluetooth feature in the rear where you can hook up two sets of headphones. You can get your kids in the back on their headphones. No, you don't have to talk to your family if you don't want to. But, you know, I really think that that makes it a better SUV. What's the pressure like? Like you mentioned the fact that Model Y was best-selling car in the world and that's across all platforms, not just electric. When your boss comes to you or your management team comes to you and says, we want you to improve the best-selling car in the world, that's a different thing to say building a Cybertruck. Yeah, build a Cybertruck. Total like space age, do whatever you want. So how do you approach it? Does your brain just go, oh God? No, I mean, as an engineer and especially like in my role, you know, I think I've been trained to never think it's good enough. Yeah. And so like the minute we came out with the Model Y, we already wanted to change things and improve it. So there's always ideas ringing in your head, right? About what you should improve. But when you know, like honestly, the biggest kind of scariest burden we changed over all four factories like this week. You know, like 1.2 million cars. It's like, so you have this supply chain behind you of, you know, hundreds of suppliers across the globe that we also have to bring along on the journey. And, you know, we only have one spec. We don't do market-based spec. We don't do a European spec, a China spec. It's a world car. It's the same car. And so like you've got three or four suppliers that are making the same parts for each of these factories. So like the challenge is like, okay, yes, we want to change, you know, the damper from, you know, like what was a deflecting disc valve to a frequency-dependent valve. Okay, but we've got three suppliers, two suppliers, different regions, different factories, different assembly methods. How do we make all of that the same? So that's all got a momentum. It's got an inertia. Yeah. And it's like you've got to, it's like changing the wheels while the car is moving, you know? Yeah. And like, you know, last Friday, they built the last old Model Y. Monday, they're building the new Model Y. It's like, it's a lot to get moving. So I've been in Japan doing some work with people doing different batteries. And what's next for EV? What do you see as the next big challenge or the next big step for electric vehicles? Yeah. Is it battery tech? Is it solid state? Is it, what's got your interest at the moment? Yeah. I mean, I think that, you know, obviously autonomy in the US is huge. It's coming here in a few months. And I think like a lot of our mental space is around if the world in 10 years is going to be autonomous, how do we change the car into a better space for that? So that's definitely on my mind all the time, especially as we get closer and closer to, you know, unsupervised in the US. But like, aside from that, we're always trying to work on efficiency. And really like what we realize is, you know, that comes from many, many places. You know, it starts with the powertrain, sure. But the tire matters, the aerodynamics matter. And like, if we look year over year, battery cell technology is incrementally improved and everyone's waiting for this like jump in solid state or something. But like, that's not going to happen. Or it'll be very expensive. Yeah, like exactly. You're sure we can make it at the lab level and it'll work. But like to do it in scale is hard. And so we're always looking to just be constantly improving everything incrementally. And like, if you look, you know, year over year, our range has always gone up. I think the big challenge for like further adoption is really getting that range to the point where people don't have anxiety and the charging rate up. And a lot of people are like, oh, that's got to come from the battery itself. But for us, it comes from, if you have a lower watt hour per mile or watt hour per kilometer, like, you know, that makes everything better. It means you need less batteries. It means your charge time goes up. And so on this car in particular, you know, you'll see the sticker ranges, depending on, you know, WLTP, CLTP, EPA, whatever the range has gone up five, maybe 10%. But in reality, what's more important to us is the customer real world fleet range. We get all that data. We know this is going to be 10% better. Is that pulling that mainly from aerodynamics in this situation? So the aerodynamics of this car, the CD gets as low as like 0.22. It's much more aerodynamic than the old car. But it's actually coming from the tire, the bearings, the low voltage loads, the brake drag. We have a really cool brake system in this car. I don't know if you felt it, but actually we've got like a, it's brake by wire with a hydraulic pass-through. Okay. And so what that's allowed us to do is like pull the, you know, the hydraulic pass-throughs just for safety, you know, at the end. So I mean, the pedal doesn't have to move when you're driving an autopilot or whatever to apply the brakes. And so we're able to pull the pads back just a little bit longer because we can speed up the application of the hydraulic fluid to give you great brake fill still, but get lower, you know, friction on the discs when you're driving. And so all of these little incremental things, like to any one evaluation would be like, ah, we shouldn't do that. But when you start adding up quarter of a percent here, you know, half a percent there, you know, you save the pain weight. Yeah, yeah. Eventually it makes a difference. It does make a difference. And almost like airplanes. Yeah. Every, every gram matters. Like every, you know, new meter of friction matters. And we, you know, it's got new bearings. It's got new tires. It's got new brakes. It's got, you know, improved oil pump methodology in the drive unit to get the friction down. We have a new fluid we call KAF, kick-ass fluid. It's like better tribology. You know, at Tesla, we like to... That's so Tesla. I bet. Is it really good to put on your hands? It's really slippery, you know, but it like cleans the mud off pretty good. And so like all of these little things, you know, we added in and then we even like the magnets, we have new segmented magnets in the motors that were like add a little bit of efficiency. And so all of these things add up. You don't have to change the battery at all. And not one of them has to be a headline. No, none of them. It's just got to be incremental. Whereas you could say like, okay, Tesla came out with new battery technology, 10% more range, whatever. We did all these other things to get 10% more range. What's next for you? What are you going to start working on now? Oh, man. You know, I think the next... We got a lot of work to do over the next couple of months with Model Y to get it back up to ramp. So that's like on my mind all the way. That's why I'm here in Berlin with you. It's like this first factory to change over, I guess, technically. Maybe Shanghai did it first, I think. Well, they both started Monday, but Monday in Shanghai is before Monday in Berlin, right? It's like New Year in Tuberland. I think they were a day earlier, but yeah. So that's consuming a lot of our brainpower. But then we have Semi and Cybercab coming really soon. The factory for Semi just got done and closed the doors in Reno. We're putting the equipment in. Same thing's happening in Texas for Cybercab. There's a lot of new vehicles coming out in that regard. We've got the new lower cost models this summer. There's a lot of changes going on at Tesla this year in terms of our lineup. And it's hard to keep it all straight. But it's exciting. It's super exciting. We're still a really small team. We have an engineering team here in Berlin that did a lot of work launch on this car. And we have one in China that was a big part of developing many of the interior components of this car. And we have one in the US. But when I add them all up, it's still half the size of what I was in my job 10 years ago when we made half as many cars. Sorry, twice as many cars. So it's like the ratio of engineer to car is half. It's mind boggling. Do you enjoy your job? I love my job. I don't have to work. I want to work. It doesn't feel like work. I'm really fortunate to have one of those jobs that I just have my hobby at work. I have cars at home. I tinker with old ones. What have you got? So my favorite car is my 1964 Volvo P1800S. It's the best looking Volvo ever. My family's Swedish. OK, I didn't expect that. But I've got a lot of the cars I worked on as an engineer. I've kept them for nostalgic reasons. I was just looking at a Model T because I'm nostalgic. Don't do it. It's 18 miles an hour. I know. But I needed a pickup to get stuff to the garage. And it was a pickup Model T. And it was only like 5k. And I was like, it's made of wood and bits of leather. Wouldn't it be great to show up the home center in a Model T pickup? I just need to dump the wood in the back. So tinkering on those cars is fun. But then to get and define the future and what people are going to experience, it's like your day job. It's like, wow, how many kids are that lucky? I feel like I'm just a kid working in the garage with his dad every day. Right. Well, now I've been driving it for a while. I have to say that the new Model Y pretty much addresses all of the issues of the old model. It is really, really good. It looks slicker than it did before. But weirdly, I don't necessarily think it looks more distinctive anymore. There's a kind of placid androgyny to it that makes it look a little bit like other electric SUVs that are out there. But the big change is to the experience of being in the car. It's more efficient. It's quieter. It feels just as fast. It steers better. And it rides completely differently. It's a much better family SUV and a much better electric car. I think this is pretty much everything you could have asked for from a revised Model Y. So, yes, I do think the Model Y deserves to keep its crown as the best sort of electric SUV on the planet. There's just one problem. There's a lot of other manufacturers that are coming up with really, really good products. And Tesla has moved this game on a little bit. But next time, it's going to have to be revolution, not evolution. It's good, but other things are coming.