Welp - After declining 1 VIN, and received a damaged VIN in early December, I finally have my car. A few observations:
1) I really get the feeling that whomever prepares these cars for delivery really doesn't care. There were stickers left on the roof glass, misc junk on the floor, chip in the paint, goo left on the trim, and a general lack of care and attention that you'd expect when you're picking up a nearly $70k car. I tried to chat with someone about these issues at delivery, and no one was around. Ghosted. I noted them on the service app and accepted delivery.
2) The MYP is much quieter than my wife's 2019 Model 3.
3) The ride of the MYP with the 21" wheels isn't bad. It is choppy on rough roads, but not nearly as harsh as what I was fearing after reading some reports. If you're careful not to punch it directly into a pothole, I think these will be fine for our crappy Montana roads.
4) The phantom braking is NO JOKE. I almost got hit. Empty highway, autopilot on, coming up behind an 18-wheeler with another car going faster than me approaching from the behind,, timing was such that I expected the car behind me to pass me before I changed lanes to pass the truck, but as the car got about 4 car lengths behind me and I was about 10 car lengths from the truck, the MYP slammed on the brakes and the guy behind me had to do the same and change lanes. He looked at me like I was crazy or an a-hole which is understandable. I was shocked. For the remainder of the trip, it did the same as I approached about 50% of the same truck situation, and almost 100% of the time it would slam on the brakes whenever I encountered an 18-wheeler coming the other way on a 2-lane road. This was with both TACC and autopilot. It's un-usable and IMO dangerous. Nothing like the radar-equipped Model 3 that my wife has which handles these situations with ease. Camera-only sucks. The car was delivered with 2021.43.102 so I'm hopeful that an over the air update will improve things, but why Tesla chose to deliver a car with this build is beyond me... Autopilot and TACC should be disabled when it's this bad. It's a definite risk and a really poor representation of the Tesla experience for anyone who just got a new car. Shameful.
5) It's funny how stoked I was when I placed the order, but no after all this drama, I feel kind of ambivalent about the car. This sucks because it's the most expensive car I've ever purchased, and the whole Tesla experience of vague EDD's, damaged cars delivered, carelessness of preparation, poor workmanship and software quality... all these things just leave a bad taste. I was the biggest Tesla fan and supporter 6 months ago, but now I'm not so sure. Tesla as a company just doesn't engender trust to me... they seem like they're shooting from the hip, making mistakes, failing to take responsibility for these mistakes, and expecting the customer to be adapt/accept for all these misgivings. The whole vibe feels arrogant and weird and consequently my pride of ownership has taken a serious hit. Just venting here, but that's my feeling about the whole experience.
Here's the car with some temporary PPF applied and mudflaps that I had to install at pickup - because in Tesla's wisdom, you don't need mudflaps or PPF in the rocky mountains. SMH.