I have new Tesla Model Y for about 1 week and I would like to summarize what new buyers can expect to make sure they will not be disappointed. I will split everything into the following categories: good, bad, and in-between.

Bad

Most of the functions of your new car are controlled by a computer and a lot of functions are quite ambitious. And even Tesla is making EVs for more than a decade it is nothing from a software point of view. So be prepared to deal with glitches and bugs in software. Just as an example, I would like to connect my car to the Wi-Fi network. It couldn’t see my Wi-Fi network, so I decided to add it manually. But when I entered all details and tapped Add button, Tesla asked me: “Do you want to remove that network?” After some tapping, I realized that there are two buttons one under another, and the “Forget” button was under the “Add” button but received notification first. Restarting fixed that issue. The next example is that game I was playing a few days ago is muted now and does not play any sound at all for some reason.

Some intended actions are not polished yet. For example, there is a setting that tells the car to unlock only the driver's door instead of all doors. If you have passengers, then you have to press and hold the open door button on the driver’s side to unlock other doors. And because your door is already opened, it works well, when your passengers are ready to sit immediately.

But in my case garage is a little bit too tight and I don’t want kids to open doors as they can hit another car or wall. So, I prefer to drive out of the garage and then everybody will enter. But then I need to unlock their doors. Normally there is a button to lock and unlock all doors. But in Tesla, you will have to press unlock button on the driver’s door. Then the driver’s door will open, and you must hold that button to open all doors and then close the door.

It feels like a lot of actions to just unlock all doors. Another option is to tap on the screen to lock all doors and then another tap to unlock all doors because the speed wasn’t high enough to lock doors automatically. Perhaps there are other ways to do it better, but I didn’t find them yet.

You should be prepared that some things may not work. As I wrote, it looks like the button that opens the trunk does not work for me. After I press it the car will make some quiet noises, but nothing happened. But it works fine when using the Tesla app.

And I cannot unplug the Wall Connector charger normally by pressing a button on the charger. The button definitely works because it opens the charging port. But when my car finished charging pressing that button does nothing. I will still have to confirm it with the technician but looks like something does not work correctly. Again, unlocking the charging port from the Tesla app works well.

And there are many small issues like that, and you should be creative to find a way to deal with them or to find a workaround. As I wrote before, if you are not ready for it, then you should wait or buy another car. I saw a few videos dated 2021 and 2020 and I see a huge difference in software quality, and I think in a few years it will be much more polished.

The next issue is a bit funny. A few years ago, Tesla had a chip shortage and they decided not to provide data to the front two USB-C connectors, and now they can only be used for charging. As a result, data is only available in a single USB-A connector in the glove box. It is the same port that is used to record Dashcam and Sentry footage. Sure, you can buy a USB hub, but many of them are not 100% reliable and you don’t want to lose recording when something important happened. Another issue is that some of these hubs became too hot.

And a funny bit is that you can buy original Tesla parts and restore that functionality by yourself. It just requires taking some panels off. I just don’t want to risk it and do it by myself. But I would happily pay Tesla to restore it officially and in a supported manner. Just in case official parts would cost you around $60.

But to be honest, I need data in a USB port only to plug the game controller to play games. Tesla never supported playing music from your phone via USB cable and I don’t have music on a USB flash drive or something similar. I read that they plan to add Bluetooth game controllers and then I would be happy.

Another questionable thing is the absence of an indicator that there is a vehicle in your blind spot. On my Honda CR-V, I can see that there is a car, and I don’t even start indicating. And if I will start indicating I will get a loud sound notification about it.

Technically in Tesla, you can check the screen and it will show that there is a vehicle in a blind spot, but it will take time to get used to. Also, even if I will start indicating, I can see a blind spot from the camera on the screen and see a vehicle in the blind spot and cancel my turn. I didn’t try to indicate when a vehicle is in my blind spot yet, but from what I know Tesla will notify me in some way. But when I want to turn left, I used to check the left side, and now I need to turn my head right to check the screen. Perhaps Tesla's solution is safer because the safety system may fail in a regular car and the driver will assume that it is safe to turn.

The next thing is removing of radar. I personally think it was a bad decision. Radar allows the car to scan far ahead without seeing that far. If a car starts breaking far in front of you, the camera may not catch it for a long time because the size of that car may grow just a tiny bit. But radar definitely will detect this, and the car will start breaking or slow down much early. It could help a lot in icy and snowy conditions.

And if there is rain or snow or your windscreen is just dirty, the camera will have a lot of issues. For example, I was trying to use autopilot yesterday and the car constantly put wipers on the auto, and was trying to clean the windshield without any rain or snow. It was quite annoying because it was clean but every 10 seconds wipes trying to clean it. I had to disengage autopilot at the end.

And biggest issue personally for me was the removal of parking sensors. As I wrote above, my garage is a bit tight, and I thought it would be easier to park Tesla and it will warn me when I’m too close to some objects. But to my disappointment, it doesn’t do it at all. No warnings at all. It can happily crash into the side of the garage or hit some objects in my garage. I parked the car about like 10cm (4 inches) from some object that would damage the car badly and got absolutely no warnings.

Compared to my Honda CR-V 2018, there is less space in the trunk. I can put a bicycle in the trunk of my Honda, but there is no way I can do it in Tesla. The trunk is simply smaller. There is space in the frunk and space under the floor in the trunk, but Honda has much more usable space. And Honda and Model Y are very close in external dimensions.

And the last bad thing I would like to mention is the absence of the Home Link. For a car that cost almost $70 000, I personally think that it is unacceptable. You can buy it from Tesla for $300, and that cost includes scheduling service, the delivery cost of that unit to your home, and labor costs. Plus, some profit. I’m sure that it would be much cheaper to install it in the factory and I think the cost would be between $60 to $100 max. Maybe it is also because of the chip shortage, but I think it was like that from day one. But it is definitely not the level of a premium car.

In between

Maps guidance is enough to drive, but it is far away from let’s say Apple maps. Maps themselves are quite nice and very detailed, but they required you to look at the screen, while on Apple maps it is enough to just listen. Also, exits are not as detailed as in Apple maps or Garmin maps in my Honda CR-V.

The back mirror is close to useless in Tesla because the back window is very small. But to be honest this is an issue with many SUVs and in Tesla, you can pull footage from a back camera at any time even if you drive forward which helps a lot.

Good

Ok, enough about bad things and let’s talk about good things.

The first thing is about performance. I read a lot about it, but it is quite different when I was experiencing it by myself. The performance is just awesome. And it is quiet. It is quite hard to describe. I’m pressing acceleration and I’m preparing myself for a lot of noise,  vibrations, and most importantly for a delay that will happen to spin up the engine. But instead, my car is instantly and quietly accelerating very fast. It is a very awesome feeling.

And there is another funny feeling when there is you and a sports car at a traffic light. And on the green light, you press the accelerator, and your car silently jumped ahead leaving that sports car far behind in a hopeless attempt to catch up producing so much noise that it looks like the dead will raise from their graves. Of course, I didn’t race any supercars, but my Model Y is faster than most typical sports cars you see on the street.

The next good thing is about Sentry mode and Dashcam. Most of you heard stories about damage to your car when you were away. Some of you experienced that firsthand. Well, Sentry mode will record as much as possible in such cases, giving you evidence for your insurance company. Yesterday one lady touched my car with her dress, and it was recorded and I can see it from all cameras. I was impressed.

The same applies to the Dashcam. I had a lot of cases when I barely avoided a crash because some idiot decided to change lanes just in front of me and would hit me if I didn’t slow down. I personally had a case when somebody hit me when my car was standing still and because I didn’t have any evidence it was my word against the word of another person. And my wife had a similar case. But now you will have footage and will have something to back your words with.

Safety is also quite high for any Tesla. Multiple tests by USA and EU authorities show that it is a very safe car. I’m not planning to get into any accident, but it is not always dependent on me. And active safety is also working very well. I already had a situation when my car came too close to another car, and I immediately got a loud warning.

Next is sound quality. It definitely feels premium. In the beginning, I used Bluetooth, and the quality of the sound was very good. And I tried the Tesla streaming service and a few other sources and the quality is definitely awesome to my unprofessional ears.

Another good thing is AC. Very often I had to wait in my car in summer. I can run air-conditioning, but it requires a running engine, and it feels wasteful. And sometimes the wind is blowing from the back of the car to the front and all that exhaust gases will go inside. But in Tesla AC is available and does not require an engine to run and it is always available.

The heating is also great. Most modern cars cannot provide any heating until the engine will warm up. And if there are really cold outside it will take quite some time, especially because many modern engines are small, and they use turbo technology. Yes, you can use heating seats, but it will be much better if the whole car is warm and not only the seats. For example, booster or child seats will not be heated that well. And Tesla can provide heat almost instantly.

And to finish the subject of cooling and heating, you can prepare your car to a nice temperature far before you will enter it. You can do it even if you are in another country if you have internet. Yesterday I was leaving a restaurant and it was quite cold outside and I parked far away. I used the Tesla app and by the time we arrived at my car, it was very warm and nice inside. Moreover, if you are leaving your house at the same time every day, you can set it in the Tesla app, and it will prepare the car for driving and it will reach the necessary temperature by that time.

The trunk opens better than my Honda CR-V and requires much less space behind the car. In fact, it needed pretty much no space. But on Honda, you can open the trunk by swiping your leg under the bumper and that is absent on Tesla as far as know. But I would trade leg swiping for the safety of my car and my garage door.

Very often I had to wait in my cars and usually, I’m playing games or read on my phone. And even though my screen size is almost the maximum modern phones can offer, I would not say it is comfortable. Tesla has a lot of entertainment. You can stream video; you can play games or browse the internet. And all of that on a 15” screen. So, it is much easier to pass time.

It looks like for most issues, Tesla’s technician will come to your place, saving a lot of your time. Any visit to my dealership will take at least 2 hours. 1 hour there and 30 minutes to them and 30 minutes back. And any fix will usually take hours because I will have to wait until they start work on my car.

Another nice thing is Biohazard mode. I remember a drove a few times close to Las Vegas and they had a really stinky area. And even though we knew that we are about to pass it, there is nothing we can do and we have to breathe that stink for a few minutes. I didn’t test in Tesla but from what I heard it works very well in such conditions.

And lastly, there is a very nice feature that plays a chime on the green light when you stopped at the red light. It does not happen often for me, but sometimes I got distracted and miss the green light. Tesla will remind you about that before cars behind will start angry honks. Tesla also supposes to notify you if you are about to cross an intersection at the red light, but I don’t know if it works because I didn’t do it.

Conclusion

In the conclusion, I found that personally for me there are much more good things than bad, and they are more valuable to me. It is why I bought this car in the first place. Also, I hope that most negative things will be resolved soon and the overall impression will be much better.

I hope it helps someone.