Lots of people have opinions. These are mine as to the supremecy of the model y:

• Purchase experience. In case the entire world has not clearly understood what the past 20 years has increasingly shown: people would rather order online in person. Let that sink in deeply if it causes you pause. Here’s how Tesla makes that work:
  • You can test drive a tesla – this is entirely optional. I test drove a model S and model Y before deciding sedans are the worst and the Y, being “not a sedan”, is good for me. I am now convinced all the test drive did was excite me make the purchase – however i now know, as will be described next, that this was entirely unnecessary.
  • When you go to pick up your car a few weeks later (took 4 weeks for me, at a time when tesla was advertising 6-8), you spend ~1 hour inspecting the car and ensuring the title is transferred. Better yet, you get the car for 1,000 miles or 7 days (whichever comes first) – then you can send it back at zero cost. This is an amazing deal. I’m not sure you get that kind of a guarantee with any major car company.
  • Tesla will fix any delivery-related issue at no cost. When i accepted delivery I noted some superficial items that needed fixed:
    • Greese from seat on rear carpet. Tesla tech cleaned it up on
    • Scuffed portable charger. The charger looked like someone had been carrying it around in their (large) pockets for a few weeks. The tech switched it. I didnt like the one he found any better so he switched it again. The guy was VERY accomodating.
    • Windshield washer fluid connector was disconnected. I didn’t discover this until AFTER i drove home, but thankfully the connector was under the hood and i simply stuck it together
    • Paint missing on bolts around rear liftgate and front doors. I didn’t notice the liftgate bolt problem until recently so i have not bothered to fix it, but the paint on the front door bolts was fixed on the spot during delivery.
• Service. After accepting delivery I noticed a few issues: Tesla came TO MY HOUSE and fixed them at zero cost. Turns out they had to come twice due to missing parts. The issues they fixed were minor:
  • There was a scratch on part of the passenger sun visor. They replaced it
  • The inner liner had slumped down (near sunroof). They reconnected it. If it happens again they recommended taking it in.
  • The weather seals around the back doors were detaching – they put on new ones
  • The Tesla floor markers inside the front doors were wiggly – they removed them and put new ones on
• Autopilot.
  • Having autopilot on is best described in one word: soothing. Its like having a buddy drive for you – almost. You do have to let autopilot know you’re not asleep by jerking the wheel every 15-30 seconds, but even then your roll as driver is more as a supervisor of a much more aware computer. It has more eyes, including sonar and radar, and keeps track of 1) what is around you, 2) where you’re going (your route), 3) and when you need to fuel (it even picks where you should stop to supercharge)
  • At least once autopilot saved me when i became drowsy. Good lukc getting that in a normal car
  • It does an excellent job on highways – making complicated interchanges correctly where I as a human have failed.
• Speed. While tesla does sell a performance model Y, the standard long range left me feeling like i was manning a rocket ship. After a month of driving the tesla i went back to our other gas powered car. I used to think it was a fast car – but it feels like a joke compared to the tesla. Im convinced if i were raised on teslas and then asked to drive any standard gas powered car i would think it was broken – it doesnt even appear to accelerate compared to the tesla.
• Charging. There are two main components here:
  • Supercharging. I took a trip across the country to see the how the Y and supercharger network would do together. It was absolutely a pleasure; we ALWAYS had enough energy to make it between superchargers. The only problem we found was coming back from UT, we wanted to drop down to Nauvoo, IL, however we were on HWY 80, and the only way to hit Nauvoo and keep on our trip was to drop straight down from Davenport, then go back to Davenport. The better, time savings route would have been to drop from 80 to nauvoo, then continue on HWY 74 – however this was not possible as there wasnt a supercharger near enough to let us continue on this route; so we ended up ditching nauvoo. Moral: while the superchrger network is currently very good, it needs ot be several times larger – kind of like the network of gas station.
  • Home charging. I spend seconds connecting my charger to my wall at home. No more gas stations. No more oil changes. The best.
• Being part of the future. I love time/life-saving technology. There is nothing more human, in my opinion, than trying to improve. The tesla is like a breath of fresh air to an industry that hasn’t changed much in a generation. It is layers of improvement all at once in a single impressive package. It hits on several themes:
  • Less is more. As in less buttons is more better. My odyssey has over 60 buttons in the front. The tesla has 6ish – 4 for windows, 2 for the door locks. Everything else is on that one big beautiful screen.
  • Audio commands that work. I can tell it to navigate, call people on the phone, send text messages, all while NOT diverting my eyes from the road if i dont want to.
  • Over the air updates. I have received one update every week or so, improving things such as efficiency, autopilot, etc. I truly feel like the car is getting better as i own it.
  • Electricity vs gas. Other than the fact that it takes a lot longer to charge than to get a full tank of gas, tesla has shown the model Y is superior in almost every way. While we clearly have a long ways to go – maybe faster superchargrs or longer-range batteries would help – for most people their daily commute is entirely drivable with the model Y today, where the recharging is done overnight at home.

As I was contemplating purchasing a new odyseey or the model Y I wasn’t sure if the model Y would be as good as the odyssey. I took a risk on the model Y. After the past few months I now have the opposite view: there is no way anyone could tempt me to sink a dollar into a new gas powered car. The features gas powered cars offer are fairly irrelevant – fancy interiors and updated trims. But who wants to smell gas odors in their garage just because you had to move your car? Who really wants to go to the gas station or have their oil changed? Who really wants to visit a dealership to find a car? Or to take it to a repairshop to fix its vastly more complicated (and, from personal experience, breakable) interiors? Not I.

In short: the big car makers approach (end to end) is leaving the gas powered industry in Tesla’s dust. My message to them (in case they’re reading this humble blog): be like Tesla or you’re going to die.