FIRST DRIVE: 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 bestselling 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 gigaa Berlin Brandenburg and unsurprisingly where the new model y has already started production orders are already open for the car in territor 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 going and this place is big can you see why it's called a gigafactory so I think we 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 4 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 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 which makes it look completely different um 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 um that's to give it a better field of view in terms of the autonomous driving stuff that the the Teslas have it's also better for summon which is that remote control that you can use in parking um it's got a washer because obviously it' get dirty there's the usual two or three cameras up in the top of the wind screen 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-in 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 duct tail 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 cuz 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 will keep the insurance cost lower and weirdly the leasing costs because the car can be fixed and back on the road uh 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 criticized for it was quite noisy for an EV and also quite wooden quite stiff needed felt like it jounced around quite a lot well I'm here to tell you that basically you should sell your old model y cuz 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 a 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 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 2 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 [Applause] 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 um 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 multi-function stalks these days and that seems like it it doesn't make the best use of what it could do um 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 15in touchcreen 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 um it keeps the interior looking very concept 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 um the Wii is really good the wireless charging pads for your phone are super fast there's loads of storage I mean that it's a massive storage bin and 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 um 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 touch screen 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 so 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 8in 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 L 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 $6,990 for the longrange all-wheel drive that gets from 0 to 62 mph in just 4. 8 seconds and manages up to 353 M of range on 20s or 364 on 19in Wheels a decent chunk more than before the normal version of which by the way should cost more like 52,000 quid as ever they get 250 KW of DC charging ability which should see 10 to 80% charge in 27 minutes on a supercharger and 11 KW of AC charging for the 75 KW hour battery and there'll be a rear wheeel drive long range for 4899 plus a 57. 5 KW usable standard range version for $449.

90 though it's worth noting that if you have the smaller battery you only get 175 kilowatt of DC ability so it takes a similar time to charge for Less range oh and there's a room of a super range version with a 95 KW hour battery that could get up to 500 Mi of range but for the nitty-gritty we decided to ask the man behind it hey Lo 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 it's got to be harder yeah I mean I you know something that racks 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 a 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 and 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 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 do we keep it shifting it's like all these little things that add up to a great experience matter 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 like 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 up I mean I 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 they look sporty they're sharp and I think we want to really give especially the second row occupants in in 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 agile that Tesla has become we don't want to get rid of that and just you know make a Buick or or floaty you know a big Spong 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 principles engineering to you know improve the the ride aspect without decreasing you know the 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 psycho Acoustics of it and so we did a lot with mvh and impact noise to try and bring that down and I think the results pretty great I think you're going to love it um you know I love driving it still and uh you know I'm a big big car guy you know a lot of cars I like driving cars um but I you know it's it's it's definitely going to be better for families I think both second row seat and and just how it rides and feels in utility it's interesting that we've been we've just driven it for about an hour and it is completely different to the old model one yeah and you tell within 100t that's I mean you know that when you're trying to sell a car you only get 100 feet right right like 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 or like the because you get in the test drive you're driving it out of the you know the 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 Tau yeah so how have you got it to be both softer and not floppy yeah I mean that's difficult thing to do 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 snx but 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 it's got all new tires yeah and you know once once you have a good foundation with the tire um you know we increase the the the the or decrease the rolling resistance which generally takes away from handling but through compound and sidewall iteration we're actually make a more compliant tire so are they getting better the tire is getting better 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 pil Sports here um and it was meant to make the rolling plushness 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 the little nibbles 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 when you're developing a car you get a year or two maybe to like go through all of but then you got to go to production we're here at you know Giga Factory Berlin uh it's just started production a new model y on Monday Andre just told me we were up to like 450 cars in the first two days so that's pretty good pretty good rate to start off with um but you know like you have those constraints of the factoring 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 focus 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% connection Point stiffness in any given point can be up as much as 20% and that that coupled with the tire means okay now I've got a better Foundation at the body got a better Foundation at the tire and that means the suspension can do its job you got something solid to push from and then the sup so get then so then we get now we can make the supension 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 Drving Experience for a driver for this kind of you would say like 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 like it's not like we went to 20 to1 and you got the super slow R like um you know it's still about 11 it was 11 to1 maybe it's 12 and a half to one now like overall on Center's gone up maybe just you know one because we have sort of variable steering ratio um but you get that connect connection and then I think we did a really much better job instead of masking it with with you know you know the effort build and the assist we actually like 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 dir or or I think it's a better SUV do you know what I mean it's like it feels like a 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 sort of stuff but it feels like some of that's coming from the suspension definitely necessarily the sound deadening yeah I mean you got to start at the base the source of all the there's only four things touch on the road right Tom they're all tires so you got to start there and we did and then like 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 now 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 nvh 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 um we have new uh 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 what you know 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 you what's the pressure like like you mentioned the fact that model y was bestselling car in the world and it's that's across all platforms not just electric yeah 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 cyber Truck Yeah build a cybertruck total like space do whatever you want thing so how do you approach it is it is it do you 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 that honestly the biggest kind of scariest burdens we changed over all four factories like this week yeah you know like 1. 2 million cars it's like so you have to 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 when we're we we we don't we only have one spec we don't do Market based spec right we don't do a European spec a China spec it's a world C it's a world car it's the same car and so like you got three or four suppliers that are making the same parts for each of these fact 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 inertia you know and it's like you got to it's like changing the wheels while the car is moving you know and like you know last Friday they built the last old model why Monday they're building the new 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 in term Battery tech is it solid state is it what what's what's got your interest at the moment yeah I mean I think that you know obviously autonomy in the US is huge is 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 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 um 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 power train 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 will be very expensive yeah like exactly you sure we can make it at the lab level and it'll work but like to to do it in in in scale as 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 self but for us it comes from if you have a lower wat hour per mile wat hour per kilometer like you know that that makes everything better 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 is gone up five maybe 10% um 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 though so the aerodynamics of this car the CD gets as low as like .