acarney
Active Member
Not sure what you mean by 'cracking worries'. Most brands of tint actually deflect UV/heat from the cabin and would reduce the chances of cracking from heat. Maybe I misunderstood.
A lot of brands actually don't. They might reflect the majority of UV rays away, but for solar energy it's a different story. For Xpel XR+ 30 (31% visible light transmittance) for solar energy it reflects about 6% and absorbs 77%. That means a huge amount of the heat it's blocking from the car is being absorbed or stopped by the film and not reflected out. Since the film is bonded to the glass that heat energy is going to transfer to the glass. Your sheet of glass is now going to heat up like normal, plus heat up any from the dark black color, AND receive a large majority of the heat that the film is blocking from the cabin.
Under normal conditions that probably isn't an issue; but maybe Tesla has a bad batch of glass, or a supplier with poor quality control, or just the sheer size of it and curve, or how it's adhered to the frame, or the amount of stress and flex it needs from every day driving... all of those factors PLUS additional heat might be enough to cause these stress cracks. Or maybe it's just totally unrelated... but I'm not sure I want to pay hundreds to have it tinted and then develop a crack and have it replaced. Six months down the road or a year maybe I'll change my position and tint it, but at the time (7 days after having the car) I didn't want to risk it or invest money on that glass...
I'm not sure how accurate IR thermometers are but I'll try to get a reading of my front windshield vs my back to see if there is a temperature difference.