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Model Y unveiling event 2019-03-14 (official thread)
- Thread starter Matt L
- Start date
Daniel in SD
(supervised)
Haha. I wish but the market would suggest otherwise. People want vehicles that look like this:
Daniel in SD
(supervised)
Model W! Lift it and add black plastic around the wheel wells and you've got a Model Y.
SageBrush
REJECT Fascism
An x3 does not look like a Macan. thats why the Macan loses space on the inside in comparison. both are imo ultimately better looking than the y.
very much agree. where is the utility? think they would of learned with the model x seat folding flat debate that lasted for months. made this point in another thread..but top selling SUV's are that for a reason. practicality. if you have to put your dog in, then your luggage do to the sloped end,,, the family wont buy it. there is a reason other vehicles do not have this shape.
I cannot remember which car magazine I read it in, but it was a recent letter to the editor explaining the origin of SUV. was total marketing. to myself at best the model y is a cuv, but kinda more a jacked up hatch. i do wonder if the volvo cross country v90 is higher (and its considered a wagon).
I hate these things and the Benz equivalent too.
I still think the bulk of the SUV market wants that high roofline all the way back, otherwise what exactly is the point? And notice, designers can do things with the windows and such to fool the eye into seeing a fastback rear, when it's actually rather squared off.
I would try to find an example but I think you know what I mean and anyway I gotta run at the moment.
My first impression when my husband took me to the Tesla store after he ordered his car and wanted me to sit in one and go for a ride, was "this is definitely a sports car". You do sit lower to the ground and getting in and out was harder than say my Toyota Avalon by quite a bit. Also no grab bars. I got use to the lower seating but it was something that was one of the first things I noticed. Sexy and sporty!
One on the observations that I had from last night's reveal was in 11 years Tesla has developed quite the exciting beautifully styled product line and truly is an automobile company and much more. The fact the vehicles are all packaged as a BEV, well quite the accomplishment by Team Tesla.
woodisgood
Optimustic Pessimist
Truly extraordinary how far they've come. I have no connection to Tesla or Musk's companies (other than owning one of their vehicles), not even a shareholder. But as a Bay Area resident, I beam with pride in probably much the same way Detroit residents may have once felt about their local innovators. Lot of hard work going into the amazing things the crew at Tesla is accomplishing.
Cupidchild
Member
I would not buy such a thing. Design looks really ugly. Like Audi hatchback.
StealthP3D
Well-Known Member
If you don't know what the point of the sloping rear is, I suggest you ask my friend Cd.
Cd is the guy who tells you how far you can go without needing a Supercharge. Or how big your battery needs to be.
StealthP3D
Well-Known Member
Isn't the monthly electrical service fee required whether you have an EV or not? If so, why would add that in, that's not a cost of running the EV! One fact no one appears to consider are the miles one drives to get electricity or gas. If you charge at home, this is zero.
EV owners can look forward to declining electrical rates thanks to cheap solar and wind. $0.23/kWh is highway robbery! On the other hand, it's pretty easy to guess that gasoline is unlikely to get any cheaper than it is right now (and potentially much more). I know, some of you are paying off Nuclear power plants that will never create a single kWh of power. And some of you are paying for regulators in the pockets of the utility companies and/or power producers. Greed in America runs wide and deep and nobody seems to care a bleep!
StealthP3D
Well-Known Member
I'm fully aware of the point to the sloping rear. There has to be some balance, however. An item built to serve a task, needs to be able to serve that tasks sufficiently well to justify its purchase. There's a lot of storage capacity and third row headroom they've given up by styling it this way.
It has 300 miles of range on the LR version. Even if a higher tail lowered it to 285 I don't think that would kill it. In any case, the tradeoff probably wouldn't be that great to raise it a little in an effort to get a little more U for your SUV. Aerodynamicists are pretty clever and the rest of the car is sleek enough I'm sure a happy medium could have been reached.
I think they should have made it look more like the Aztec:
It's funny how in retrospect people are starting to appreciate the Aztek for being pretty groundbreaking for its time. It still gets a lot of deserved shade thrown its way, but by and large we have arrived where it predicted we would.
A significantly more vertical rear hatch could increase Cd from 0.23 to say 0.29. That'd result in maybe a 13% range reduction to around 260mi for LR and 200mi for SR.
StealthP3D
Well-Known Member
I posted that photo with my tongue planted firmly in cheek.
I think the proportions and styling clues of the Pontiac Aztek are so far out of whack that it makes me wonder what Detroit was thinking!
I posted that photo with my tongue planted firmly in cheek.
I think the proportions and styling clues of the Pontiac Aztek are so far out of whack that it makes me wonder what Detroit was thinking!
I know you did, but really if you just increase the wheel size, is today's prevailing design language that far off from what the Aztek was?
Mind you, I'm not defending the thing. I dislike about 90% of all SUVs on the road today, and I include whatever people want to call crossovers within that group.
I did see one cool Aztek in my life, someone in GM somehow got the green light to shoehorn a complete Corvette C5-R drivetrain into one:
(not my pic)
Probably in most cases, you are correct. In my case, I have a separate feed and meter for my EV, so the monthly fee is indeed specifically for the EV. I apologize, I should have mentioned that. But it is only $7 and adds only about 1.5 cents to the cost per kWh.
StealthP3D
Well-Known Member
Yes, I think modern car design has to be more balanced and aesthetic than the Aztec. Pontiac learned that the hard way with a string of atrocious designs. Not only did they look bad but they were mechanically/electronically ancient as well.
Please! That is the kind of thing that is hard to "unsee" after looking at it (I had to delete it to avoid the need for a "spoiler alert" in this reply). Please warn us in the future!
I'm no fan of the aesthetics of SUV's and CUV's either. But I think that is primarily because form follows function and when I look at most of them I can only see unaerodynamic, top-heavy, inefficient vehicles that drive like a bad dream and have a poor ride quality. The original Ford Bronco actually drove well in comparison, particularly with a simple shock upgrade. Remove the hard-top and the handling was actually admirable for the day. That is, if you can get past the powertrain based on the ICE and a crude transmission. But, here's the thing: That was back when you could pretty much drive almost anywhere off-road, without a permit, most back-country access had no locked gates and private logging land was the same way (at least out here in the West). The fact of the matter, no one buys a CUV to go off-road.
So I think Tesla is doing a good thing here by making a road based CUV. They are redefining the market segment for the modern age (and it's about time). Legacy auto makers will still have strong sales of CUV's with more rear height but the market is huge and it will take time for EV CUV sales to ramp up. The Model Y range of 300 EPA miles is extremely optimistic without battery capacity or energy efficiency upgrades. And 300 "real world" freeway miles is even more optimistic. In regards to that last point, any increase in the rear height of the vehicle is going to have a dramatic effect on that number, regardless of the EPA number. Because the range hit of poorer aerodynamics targets highway range like a scalpel. And that's going to be unacceptable to those who are buying the Model Y to load up the family and the adventure gear and hit the great out-of-doors. Because that might require a bit of a drive in areas far from a Supercharger.
Cheap gas brought us the SUV craze, gas, adjusted for inflation, is cheaper than it was in the 1920's and not by a little, by a factor of over 10! Can you imagine paying the equivalent of $25/gallon? All of a sudden. sleek svelt vehicles would be all the rage.
I went car camping in New Zealand 20 years ago with three (total) people in a Nissan SX200 (I believe). It was a small, two-door hatchback. We had backpacking style tents and cooking gear and space was tight. Imagine our surprise as we watched the following at the adjacent campsite:
A local New Zealand family of five crawled out of a tiny sports sedan, smaller than our Nissan. They proceeded to unpack things from every corner of that little car and within 15 minutes flat they had a HUGE two-room stand-up tent, a canopy for a seperate "kitchen" a sink on folding legs, a two burner cookstove on another table, a food cooler, five lawn chairs, and assorted other accutrements that had our eyes bulging and our jaws hanging low. Oh, yeah, then they set up the croquet course. We were gob-smacked! How did they do it? We were living like peasants in comparison. The knew how to live with what they had. Americans buy all the crap in the world and then figure out they need a Ford Expedition to fit it all in. Then they need an hour to pack it all up, two hours to set up camp and then they proceed to make hot dogs and live like peasants. Cheap gas.
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