Recent snow in Seattle and a trip into the Cascades has left me feeling “meh” about the Model Y as a legit winter car. For context, I grew up in Michigan (5 years in the U.P.) and lived/skied in Colorado for 7+ years, so plenty of snow driving. My other car is a Range Rover Sport, and the Model Y was driven in Chill mode with new Vredestein Wintrac Pros.
The Model Y is fine for the occasional trip in snow, but falls pretty short of being a decent winter car.
Specific gripes:
1/ Sloppy power delivery between front and rear motor. Several times I was taking a chill turn or doing slow and straight acceleration with barely any throttle and I could feel the back end sliding out. Never felt that in similar situations with the Rover and I know the Vredesteins are grippy, so chalking this up to the Tesla’s power delivery.
2/ Frozen handles. Super annoying and clearly a design flaw. I literally had to punch the doors to jar them loose several times.
3/ Absolute sh*t wipers. Part of this is the design of the front defroster, but they were constantly frozen. The only option was to put in service mode and blast the front defroster to at least temporarily thaw them. Throw in the fact that there are Zero quality aftermarket options that fit the 2021 Model Y with new sprayer design, and this is comical.
4/ No way to keep climate on while loading. Maybe there is a setting or trick that I don’t know about, but every time I would open the hatch or a door to load something, the system shuts off.
The good news is a lot of this can be fixed with software. The traction issue can be fixed with tweaks to the motor control software and the wipers improved with a proper winter wiper setting that keeps the blades higher up on the windshield.
They’ll need to change the design of the handles or add heaters to fix the frozen handle issue.
I was hoping to sell the Rover, but looks like we’ll need to keep it for regular trips to our cabin.
Jimbo
The Model Y is fine for the occasional trip in snow, but falls pretty short of being a decent winter car.
Specific gripes:
1/ Sloppy power delivery between front and rear motor. Several times I was taking a chill turn or doing slow and straight acceleration with barely any throttle and I could feel the back end sliding out. Never felt that in similar situations with the Rover and I know the Vredesteins are grippy, so chalking this up to the Tesla’s power delivery.
2/ Frozen handles. Super annoying and clearly a design flaw. I literally had to punch the doors to jar them loose several times.
3/ Absolute sh*t wipers. Part of this is the design of the front defroster, but they were constantly frozen. The only option was to put in service mode and blast the front defroster to at least temporarily thaw them. Throw in the fact that there are Zero quality aftermarket options that fit the 2021 Model Y with new sprayer design, and this is comical.
4/ No way to keep climate on while loading. Maybe there is a setting or trick that I don’t know about, but every time I would open the hatch or a door to load something, the system shuts off.
The good news is a lot of this can be fixed with software. The traction issue can be fixed with tweaks to the motor control software and the wipers improved with a proper winter wiper setting that keeps the blades higher up on the windshield.
They’ll need to change the design of the handles or add heaters to fix the frozen handle issue.
I was hoping to sell the Rover, but looks like we’ll need to keep it for regular trips to our cabin.
Jimbo
Last edited by a moderator: