The Tesla Model Y Premium RWD Is a Better Computer Than It Is a Car - MotorTrend

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I never understood the complaining “diving” in to the controls to change things. How much are people messing with settings of any car while driving? You should be driving. Everything is two taps.

Or a voice command. Agreed on drive the car, not screw with settings on the road.

I pretty much exclusively use voice when driving. Either take 5 minutes to learn the menus or don’t fiddle with it while driving.

If my kids don't ask for music swaps, then I touched the screen absolutely zero times while driving haha.

And Tesla has better “driver profile” functionality than any other car available. Seat positions, mirrors, steering wheel height, nav, etc. is all set in the profile

So many people have been using shitty AC for their whole lives. They think they have to crank it back and forth between full and zero in order to operate it.

Yeah but when you do have to find something every once in a while it’s very distracting. Also not two taps when you can’t figure out where it is.

This is to be expected. Traditional automotive media a programmed to look at panel gaps, ride quality, and ‘handling’ (in an family CUV-I personally think is hilarious to worry about unless it’s dangerously over damped) along with perceived interior ‘quality’ (which are styling and material considerations-which are highly subjective). ‘Car is computer’ is grossly oversimplifying things and is exposing old school, lazy thinking. Aren’t these automotive journalists? A quick AI definition of journalist: ‘Journalists aim to inform people about events, issues, and trends that affect society. They often verify facts, interview sources, and provide context or analysis to help audiences understand what’s happening and why it matters’ My issue is that these publications aren’t providing context of WHY these decisions are made within Tesla.  Integrating AI is a ‘party trick?’ I’ve talked to parents-you know the ones who are primarily buying CUVs-who’ve found the fact that AI can keep their children in the backseat entertained with facts about the area they are in, taking language lessons, or even creating grocery lists and the like for family dinners, or recommending new restaurants in the area.  I’ve never talked to someone and said ‘my EV couldn’t charge at a EA charger but my partner, kids and I looked at the wonderful interior ambiance and central display and said gee, this ain’t so bad!’  The reality is a lot of Tesla features/decisions are made to add to the family and user experience, and instead of asking themselves ‘why?’ and actually doing the work to find out, these publications protect their OEM connections and regurgitate the same talking points repeatedly. This is contributing to the traditional automotive media decline IMO.

what exactly are you looking for? Changing destination takes way more time looking at the screen with buttons or knob, as you have to manually scroll until you find your letter. Changing music - button on wheel or voice commands Changing temperature - I agree with this one, on Model S I could do it with button on wheel. What else are you changing mid drive that is easier with buttons? Give me some examples

Auto-climate gang 👌

It’s a good thing that Tesla AP/FSD is included and among the best in the market. So it’s not a big deal to turn on AP/FSD for two seconds, navigate the touchscreen, and then go back to manual driving if you want. If the road is SO chaotic that you can’t activate or use AP/FSD for even a few seconds… then you shouldn’t be fiddling with whatever it is, anyway.

Lights, wipers, climate (defog/defrost) sometimes. And mirror dim definitely, it's bad to do through the menu and I'm glad to have a S3XY Knob to one click that. Less if you know the car well and how to control it with the left wheel or voice or such. But for the average person not familiar with the car, it can be difficult. The auto setting for all of those does not always work well enough such that you wouldn't need to touch them. Sometimes I need rear lights on, sometimes matrix off for example.

I only did a short test drive last week, but having the side mirror control on screen was quite annoying. It’s not often that I have to shift them slightly while driving, but it’s not great to have to get that control up on the screen. Meanwhile in my old Prius, I can adjust them very quickly with no difficulty with the buttons at any time.

Lights. In particular, turning the lights on when it rains because for some reason the car does not automatically do that. Fog lights are basically impossible; if the fog is bad enough that you need them, then it is bad enough that you cannot look away for long enough to activate them. Wipers are also not ideal, but for those you at least have the scroll wheel. Temperature can be assigned to the scroll wheel. Not seat heating or air recirculation.

Side mirrors only need to be set up once and thats it. If you have more than 1 driver, each has a profile and the mirror settings are saved to the profile

And despite me being the only driver in my car, I still find myself having to adjust my mirrors. Sometimes you just have a tall day or a short day.

I stopped reading Motor Trend for the same reason I stopped watching YouTube car reviewers… these people drive EVERYTHING from a Bugatti to a Tata Nano, and they always forget what it’s like for a regular person who hasn’t driven everything to drive that one car they are testing that hasn’t benchmarked it against the specs and dynamic of cars not even close to it. The Model Y and Model 3 are currently the best and only viable option for an EV, why… NACS, NO built in ‘take it to the stealership’ for ‘repair’ bullshit when sloppy thrown together hardware or software goes wrong, the brand won’t completely abandon it two years from the day you buy it, battery technology (Tesla knows what it’s doing with battery management) and in general Tesla is the pioneer here, all others are still refining and learning basics. It won’t always be this way, in my view, the two most viable competitors to the Model Y and 3 will be the Rivian R2 & 3 and the first Ford Universal EV platform truck. Competition is great and so is the current Model Y Juniper.

I’ve switched from a Model 3 to an ID buzz and the profiles is probably what I miss most. Really an underrated feature.

Fog lights? Tap the lights icons on the screen and the menu for fog lamps pops up at the bottom of the driving screen instead of music or tyre pressures or whatever. It would be better as a voice command, but it’s easier than fumbling for them by the light switch under the dash on some cars.

Only annoying thing is having to turn off the auto wipers every time I engage the cruise control. The rest is fine.

I know how to do it. It is not a safe maneuver in actual fog. It requires hitting three small spots on the screen without haptic feedback. Get it wrong and you can turn the lights off.

One thing I never understood was the glovebox thing. MKBHD, Doug Demuro and other journalist would point out how easy it is to open the glovebox whenever they review another EV or Tesla’s competitors. How often are people opening the glovebox? All I ever put in there is the car’s manual, registration and insurance.

What?! I’ve never had that. Even when slouching, the view isn’t so drastically different that you need to adjust them. Or you sit up straight for the half second when you need to use it. What a non-issue for 99.999% of people

So accurate. I almost wish Tesla would delete the manual climate mode so people don't hurt themselves. Tesla's auto climate is so simple and nice to use. Literally just adjust the temperature that's always at the bottom of the screen, and the car does the rest.

fair enough, these are valid reasons for wanting buttons.

Ah. Fair enough. Sorry. In some TMC exchanges I’d seen folks poking into car->lights->fog lamps hence the egg-sucking description.

Just to be really mean, Tesla moves the light button up and down and sometimes hides it completely.

The suspension is the weakest part of this car. The handling is fine, but going over bumps is horrible. I can’t imagine how bad the legacy Model Y must have felt if this is the improvement.

People also forget voice commands

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You must live in a very low-crime area.

Before I bought my Model 3, this was something that concerned me. I and my SO fumbled thru the menus on my demo drive and it made me uneasy. Especially the HVAC air direction. I pushed thru and decided it was still the car for me. Since purchase and driving my 2023 Model 3 for 2 years, I can confidently say that 90% of the menus are “set it and forget it”. I can do anything important from the steering wheel while driving. I even realized that don’t even move the HVAC directions as much as I thought I would.

What, no gloves?

And even that is an easy voice command.

Hard throttle whine? What are they talking about? Many of the Y’s adjustments can be done via voice command. The screen is very easy to use and adaptive cruise and lane centering auto steer are unmatched in the industry.

You should be moving your attention around the vehicle (through mirrors) etc. every few seconds anyway to be an attentive driver. AP is strict, but not too strict most of the time, so if you look from the screen to the road frequently, you should be okay.

I usually just use voice controls for glove box. Voice control as a whole works surprisingly well most of the time for things like wipers, lights, nav, climate, songs, etc.

Need an automated voice command for that

I double click my scroll wheel for FSD and then click the mic button and say “windshield wiper off” every time. It’s almost instinctual at this point.

Yeah, but your center console divider doubles as an ice scraper. jk

I have my glovebox set to holding down the left scroll wheel on the steering wheel

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Well they got all the numbers on acceleration wrong so it is difficult to take serious. And what about all the stats that real people care about? Noise, room, updates, "mileage" (power is not free), country of origin, support of their cars. All these things matter more than how a family SUV handles corners for most people.

Reviewers experience cars when they’re brand new. Most cars take a week or so to get used to. After that you don’t mess with much.

Seriously. And since the Tesla never overheats because I can set a maximum internal temp, the car is just “nice” inside 95% of the time. People use cars badly.

I have tons of stuff there in my other car. I have nothing but registration and insurance there in tesla. Thanks for keeping my docs neat and organized I guess.

Same and even music is a voice control away.

Wait just a second here. It’s possible to shut off auto wipers while in FSD?

I regularly check in with the settings, especially after a SW update to see if anything has changed or can be tweaked, but I do it while parked.

I hate that I have to manually turn on the passenger side vents every time in my Model Y With just the driver vents automatically turning on the passenger side is always hot In a warm and sunny place, the only way to be comfortable is to have all the vents flowing cooled air

You mean like every vehicle I’ve driven since I bought a used 2001 Saab 9-5 almost 20 years ago?

Model Y suspension/ride is it's Achilles heel. That price point needs to be better

Some others have similar systems, but no other system I've seen is as nice or comprehensive as Tesla's. But I'm mainly just talking about the people who try to say adjusting climate in a Tesla is a pain because of the touchscreen and nested menus. No, it's not. It's insanely easy. Just a simple temperature control that's always in the same spot at the bottom of the screen. And it's especially easy to adjust because you can use the screen edges to grip with your hand. No harder than a dial. Just cleaner.

I’ve posted this multiple times, I have a profile and so does my wife, when I click mine or my wife’s everything adjusts but everytime I get in the car with my phone, her profile is activated. My phone is set to my profile not hers. I don’t get it

hmm. Maybe relink your phone to the car. I've also had things like this happen on a new car with a family member and it took some frustrating to sort out but this should definitely not be happening.

The most I've ever done is adjust it by half a degree celsius or adjust the seat ventilation.

same. The stated use-case by GP is punished strongly because searching menus is more time expensive than most people give it credit for and it tracks "total time". So you will be 80% of the way done doing something and have to take a 30s break to reset attention monitoring and it is INFURIATING UX

Yeah I feel like most of these functions they very intentionally moved to the wheel on the new designs and it mostly just works.

S3XY ecosystem (from Enhance Auto) will do it. It's a function on their Commander module which is the core of how their stuff works. I have a Knob package from them that includes it, and I can also use the knob to set the wiper speed manually when I need it and it's pretty good at retaining the speed. Does a bunch of other things but that and auto AP reactivation after a lane change is most of what I do with it. Also popping the glovebox. Super worth the money.

I think you're 100% right. For the money in NA, there's nothing close.

Yup, and even the seat ventilation can be automatic if you want it to. But you can pin it to the bottom of the screen for easy access to manual adjustment.

True but what important can you even fit there? That you wouldn't take with you? Some money I guess but wouldn't that just be for emergency backup?

Is she with you when you enter? It might be that her phone is primary or somehow stronger signal. Or like the other guy suggested, try relinking. And confirm once more that your phone is indeed linked to your profile in the keys submenu.

Yeah but you have to do it every time you turn on FSD.

>You must live in a very low-crime area. >True but what important can you even fit there? A gun?

If it's primarily your car, you should be able to set it to prioritize your phone.

the only thing I need to touch screen for is when the season changes and the AC would starting heating at pretty conformable temperature.

Better computer than it is a car, AND better car than any other cars at this price. Mic drop!

Damn. I can't be sure if you're kidding, perhaps not. Didn't cross my mind (not American).

Only half kidding (am American). Mostly just trying to say the craziest thing I could think of though lol

Really interesting how some reviewers have found it comfortable and others are citing it as a huge minus.

Mine turn on when someone is sitting in the passengers seat. Why would you need them on if you are the only one in the car? I live in Texas and I stay cool as a driver without the passenger vents on.

Mine runs all vents too if it suspects I have a passenger. The issue is most my driving is my work commute which I do solo I explained why I need it on. I feel a lot of heat from the passenger side of the car when only the driver vents are running. When it’s 90-100f outside and the cars interior temp gets to 170f while parked, there is a lot of heat that radiates from the seats and center console. With all the vents blowing it cools off the whole car and that radiating heat isn’t as noticeable on my right side as it is when only driver side vents are blowing. Might be causing a counter clockwise flow of air the air through the cabin when only running the driver side vents.

I really wish I could set the air con recirculation on and off in one tap from the main screen. Vital for passing areas with unexpectedly heavy fumes.

Well I loved being able to set the fan speed to 10 instantly before. Now it requires at least two taps.

When the original guy said "you must live in a low crime area" he did mean because a lot of people carry guns in there. Even in low crime areas it is very common in the U.S.

You've probably figured out that you can just say "wipers off" as well

Also, you can actually control the airflow direction of the passengers (front passenger-side and vehicles with rear touchscreen)... Try doing that with manual vents.

Ok, so maybe I’m weird but please don’t judge me. I feel weird whenever I do a voice command that sounds sort of like harsh. I say thank you to my Alexa more often than not. I don’t even realize it.

What does ‘busy’ even mean for the ride. I hardly notice the ride when I’m trying to keep from drooling on myself while FSD drives.

This 100. I don’t even care if Tesla’s shitty practices and cost cutting measures were the reason behind this, but ever since driving a Tesla, I spent a couple hours dialing everything in and I literally hardly touch anything in my car on my 90 minutes of driving a day. I don’t even look at the screen. Everything just freaking works perfectly and I focus on…driving.

Why not just use cabin overheat? It might use a few percentage points, but it’s so much better in the long run for any HVAC system to maintain a constant temperature then go through these extreme cycles.

I definitely understand what you’re saying, I notice that mostly in the winter when I feel cold air blowing on my neck from the backseat area as the front vents are causing that circulation. I’ve addressed it by pre-heating for a bit longer with a higher set temp. I’m not looking to maximize my efficiency, I’m looking for comfort. Doing the reverse should help with your situation - pre-cool the car for longer and to a lower temp before you go to it. And do you use a sun visor when you park?

And the screen shows little dots next to the pages that have had a change, making them easy to locate.

Lies. This car is flipping amazing

Naw- plenary of room for his little friend in the console

Anything remotely valuable that you cannot leave out in plain view (sunglasses, chargers, gloves, etc.)

While I’m at work cabin overheat uses more than 5% of the battery when it’s warm outside. More if it’s hot.

I have a roof shade and a windshield shade. I also have the windows vented all day. Before the roof shade it was unbearable to be in the car in summer thanks to the glass roof that turns these cars into ovens

Or they live in areas where outside temp can vary a lot. If it’s freezing outside and I’m wearing a thick wool sweater I’d like the inside temp a bit lower than when it’s sunny and warmer outside.

Not very surgeon of you

How long do you pre-cool your car for?

Don't forget the insane 8 year or 120k mile warranty. What automaker even competes with that?

This made me chuckle

Right, that’s a few pokes to change the auto-temp. I’m talking about the many, many people who don’t trust automatic climate features and set the AC or heat to MAX upon getting in the car. Then they turn the fans on and off throughout the drive when they get too hot/too cold. That’s learned behavior from cars with bad climate control.

Problem is that it will wholly disable auto working on cruise control. I'd want it to start with off, but be able to put it on auto whenever it starts raining. Last time I tried this feature, it wouldn't wipe at all on auto and I had to control it manually which is often less convenient than dealing with the flawed auto.

I haven't had this issue with the latest. I can set it to auto with the knob or steering wheel and it'll hold. Though I mostly prefer manual wiper speeds anyway.

Also for information if it helps troubleshoot: I update their app and then update the devices through the app. My car is a 2023 Model Y Performance with a Ryzen chip. No FSD, just Autopilot (non-Enhanced).

Cheers, could be they've fixed it or it's not a thing anymore or for others. It's been a while since I've tried that option on because of that.

What a stupid headline.

Why is that?

That and meaningful range

Don't use the AC, just the vent.

Brevity has always been a weak spot for me

ya cuz it’s got AMD

I do, car still gets to triple digits on the inside temp even when it’s in the 70’s outside

I keep those in the storage in the center console.

Hyundai/kia with their 10yr/100k?

I have a glovebox?

This sub is a trip. You..actually believe this don't you? I'm in market for a 2024 used EV and the Tesla isn't even in the running. Garbage build quality. Looking at Audi q6, Lyriq, BMW iX, ev9, and maybe ioniq 5 on lower end. You guys are in a weird, delusional bubble aren't you?

Premium?

Use your cabin overheat protection. I live in AZ and don't have your problems.

Motor Trend boss to tester, "Tesla doesn't advertise, make sure you say bad things, even if you have to lie." I have a pre-Juniper 2025 Y RWD. It rides better than our neighbors Lexus RX 350. I don't understand MTs handling and ride comments whatsoever. I volunteer as a driver to take super-seniors to medical appointments. I get rave reviews.

I agree. Better computer than other cars computer system. Better car than other cars *for the price especially the RWD. Overall great value. Only negative is Elon and I felt really guilty but still bought the RWD. It will be my mile eater commuter and long family trip car.

A loose & quiet mode, e.g. 22c +/- 2, would be nice.