Help a prospective Tesla newbie out. Thinking about buying a new Model Y Premium but not sure if now is the time to buy.

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Buy your car when it’s time for you to buy one. No point in speculating when the new shiny penny comes out. And there’s always another new shiny penny. My wife is not a hardcore anti Musk fan… she just doesn’t like him. However the product is good and it will benefit her. So she bought one. Has an hour commute each way four days a week. She’s uses FSD all the time. It makes the commute a LOT less stressful. It’s worth it to her… that’s all that matters. As for your long trips, you’ll have access to the supercharger network. Don’t worry about it. Just enter the destination into the nav and it’ll figure it out.

1. It depends how bad you or soon you need to make the change. You probably won’t get a HW5 car for a year at least. FSD currently runs just fine on HW4, but I understand wanting to wait. That one’s up to you. 2. The Tesla maps out where to stop for charging. It’s really a non issue. In fact the Tesla App lets you map it out ahead of time if you want. As for 200 mile daily commutes, you’ll be fine just charge every day when you come home. I would get a fast charger for your house. 3. Haven’t had power outage issue, but I would charge to 90%ish to stay prepared. May have to find a charging station thats working in that case across town. Electricty effects gas stations too. So they may be in the same boat. 4. Love my Tesla Model 3 Performace and FSD is amazing so it over rides the politcal stuff that can get annoying. How that product is value added in your life is whats most important. Not CEOs and peoples opinions.

I would recommend either trying to get a 48 hour demo drive of a Model Y or renting off Turo (or equivalent) for a couple of days. Try the car on your commute with FSD. Try charging. Watch some videos about all of the features and test them out. If you have a reliable place to charge for free or cheap (home or work), then you could potentially be saving a lot of money on your commute. The Tesla app has a basic route planner (you'll need to make a free Tesla account). ABRP (A Better Route Planner) is an app/website where you can choose a specific EV and map out destinations. Take a look and see if the places you frequent have charging. My experience has been road tripping with FSD is fantastic. I don't get nearly as much driving fatigue. It is slower - charging takes time. But I'm not overly concerned about squeezing every second of efficiency out of my road trip. For reference, I live near Salt Lake City, Utah. I've done road trips to Seattle, Las Vegas, Denver, and Omaha. I've also gone to Zion National Park. Never had an issue charging.  As for Elon, I don't have much advice for you. I love my Tesla. Elon doesn't change that. I, personally, wouldn't put much thought into which CEO is running the company I buy a car from.

Get it now. It will improve your life now. FSD will change your life in its current form, and will only improve in the future. The car will tell you where the charging stations are, and using FSD it will literally just drive you to them. I waited to get an EV until I had a house with a garage to charge in, and I regret waiting!

Get it now while its 0.99% APR or go for the standard at 0%. Crazy good deals for an amazing car. I also very much dislike Musk but try to separate the car from him (even though its hard lol)

In your shoes, I’d buy now. If your commute is really a pain in the ass, FSD could be a huge quality-of-life upgrade. That said, if most of your drive is on highways, basic Autopilot already does the job well. I’ve taken my 2024 Model Y on a lot of road trips—sometimes 900–1,000 miles in a day—and Autopilot helps a ton. So: if you have the budget, get a new car. If not, get a used 2023–2025 Model Y with Autopilot.

I could do either new or used. The appeal of buying used is Autopilot, which has just been removed from the new models. If I understand correctly though, even used, if you buy it direct through Tesla it, will have Autopilot disabled. But my current Rav4 Prime has its own version of Autopilot. I don't think it's as good as Tesla's but it does maintain speed and keep you in your lane.

The 0.99% financing is definitely a good reason to buy now. Later today I'll get an estimate for my trade-in on their website. If it's a good offer I might just take it. I guess the biggest consideration right now is HW4 vs HW5. I keep reading that HW4 is already pretty much maxed out with the current version of FSD.

I don't have great responses to all of your questions but I can tell you that FSD on model Y with HW4 is so good you're unlikely to have huge regrets not waiting for HW5.

If you wait for HW5 youll be waiting for who knows how long. HW4 is basically autonomous, from point A to point B, from your driveway to the parking spot. You literally just have to be looking at the road lol

I will say I'd only recommend a Tesla if you're 100% going to subscribe to FSD all the time. Autopilot no longer comes with new models, so the fallback if you don't have FSD is plain Traffic Aware Cruise Control, which is pretty pathetic.

Yeah, absolutely. FSD is pretty much the only thing making me consider a Tesla, and actually an EV in general. I'm happy with my PHEV but the daily commute is killing me. It took me an hour and a half just to get home today. I can see myself using FSD about 95% of my drive time. Definitely 100% of the time for my daily commute and also night job, then on weekends maybe 50% since most of my weekend driving is just short trips to the store other than my night job (musician in case anyone's wondering).

From a 76 senior, buy/lease Tesla with FSD now, it might save your life in your commute situations, which is the only reason to be considered. First EV 26MY LR AWD, 97% FSD 4800 miles. After my eye surgery, my wife supervised while I dozed off, home to hospital highway miles no issues. V14.2.2.5.

What do you mean by supervised? Does that mean that when you're in FSD, the passenger can be allowed to supervise while the driver is distracted? Or do you mean that your wife "drove" and sat in the driver seat while the car drove itself home? And yes, like I mentioned, FSD is pretty much the main factor in my consideration.

She was in driver seat in FSD even though she got driver license 6 months ago.

Ok, got it. I wonder how helpful FSD would be for my wife. She has a visual impairment and although she's able to drive legally, she has problems seeing at night and driving to unfamiliar places. She wouldn't be driving mine, assuming I buy one, but maybe a Model 3 is in her future....

I would think FSD will do wonders for her in day and nights. Before FSD, we limited our travels at night unless necessary. Now we ventured to Manhattan with no hesitation bc FSD will drive us home. Let her experience with FSD and built up her confidence in EV Tesla.