I've heard a lot of discussion about no-drill license plate mounting, but not a single discussion about where to safely drill if you'd like to permanently affix a front license plate to the Y.
I personally have had the factory adhesive come off, cleaned with IPA, applied a large amount of VBH in warm weather, and still had that fall off. I want to go through automatic car washes without having to remove some aftermarket plate mount and couldn't find anything out there. It's the law where I live and police like to target tesla owners for petty stuff like that. Even bragging about it on social media:
There are no holes in the front plate bracket, so I used new VHB tape to stick the holder on, then drilled two holes through the combined bracket and bumper. I used 1/4" diameter bolts, but whatever hardware you have on hand should work since you're drilling new holes in both pieces.
There's a steel crash bar right behind the bumper where the factory plate mounts, so there's not a ton of risk of damaging anything sensitive. Still I put some tape on the drill bit to make sure it didn't punch through too deep. Here's a picture of a Y with the bumper off to get a sense of what's back there:
View attachment 977442
Out of an abundance of caution I also put blue locktite on the bolts, since the Y bumper plastic felt exceptionally soft.
So far it's been 3 months and many automatic car washes and that license plate hasn't budged.
I'd love to hear about other's experiences and any gotchas. Looking at what's behind the bumper I think you could have even used self-tapping sheet metal bolts, but I wasn't quite brave enough to try that.
