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Comment by hansendc | Hacker News Reader

The rear visibility felt weird when I test drove it for sure, coming from a normal sedan. But, over a year in to ownership, it never feels tiny when driving it. All the cameras and sensors make it a MILLION times better to maneuver in small spaces than my old car. It was more a matter of getting used to something different (and I'd argue objectively better) rather than an overall downside.

As for the headrest, I've never thought about it once myself.

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Why is it objectively better to have less rear visibility? Note you can have both excellent rear AND cameras/sensors.

Do you not feel its tiny when driving on the freeway?

Not sure how you'd get to objectivity, but there are tradeoffs. The M3 and MY have higher rear which provides more trunk and rear passenger space. I drive an M3 and usually keep the rear seats folded down to add a little more visibility out the back. Cameras and visualization compensate sufficiently in my view.

It's to me a minor negative in a long list of positives, and not a reason to avoid Tesla.

The Y's overall visibility is objectively better than my old sedan. It's also really hard to have that really aerodynamic shape and good rear visibility. The Y's visibility reminds me of a Prius in a lot of ways.

I've never thought once that the rear visibility was a problem on the freeway.

Thanks!

FWIW We went with the VW ID.4. $20k cheaper with federal rebate, and absolutely love it. Doesn't feel cheap. No issues with visibility or headrest size, prefer mechanical door locks, and appreciate not having a single offset screen. Wish CarPlay was a little more integrated with the rest of the car, and I miss physical buttons for things like setting temperature (which is even worse on a Tesla Y as there are no buttons, but it seems at least their touch screen has more things visible at once than the VW does). Having to touch a touchscreen while driving is difficult, even as a passenger, because unless you're on the most perfect road ever the shaking will make it hard to tap your target.

> Why is it objectively better to have less rear visibility?

Because it's an artifact of the tapered afterbody that makes the cars the most energy-efficient on the road. Teslas beat every other EV on range, and the tiny handful of cars that do better (Lucid Air being the most notable) do so with significantly larger batteries. Everything has tradeoffs.

FWIW: a few years of driving a van in my youth cured me of reliance on the center mirror anyway. This is very much an ejectable feature in my mind, something very much worth trading for ~30 miles of extra range or whatever.

There are plenty of other quirks like this. The Y has a very poor turning radius (to reduce the void size in the wheel wells) too. It only comes in five boring colors. The third row seating is real and useful, but the headroom is comically small (same tapered afterbody). Everyone has their own list. The car isn't perfect.

But it's absolutely as close to perfect as anything else I've driven.

> and the tiny handful of cars that do better (Lucid Air being the most notable) do so with significantly larger batteries

The Lucid Air does it with both a bigger battery and better efficiency.

I think the Air is sort of the exception that proves the rule. Though it's also early and independent verification on production vehicles is still in the future. They're only barely shipping right now.

No, there are no rules being proven. The Air is just a more efficient car.

The Mustang Mach-E has greater range for less money than the Model Y:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lSmSiOo-v8s

That's more battery for your money.

The Mach-E RWD variants with the 88 kWh battery get about the same range as the Y with 77.8 kWh. That's significantly less efficient, not more.

I didn't say the Mach-E was more efficient. I said you get more battery for your money.

In the end what's going to matter to most people is how far they can drive for the money they spent.

You should also watch the video. Tesla's EPA range figures are inflated. You need to do range tests in the real world (like in the video) to see more practical results.

> I didn't say the Mach-E was more efficient. I said you get more battery for your money.

In response to my point that Teslas were more efficient than other cars, though. I guess I don't understand "battery for your money" as an advantage. If you buy a pickup instead of a sedan, do you usually claim that it has "more fuel tank for your money" when people complain about gas mileage? Ford ships a slightly cheaper car with a significantly more expensive part. That's bad for Ford and at best a wash for the consumer (though it does cost more for electricity, that's a small pert of operating an EV). That's a disadvantage, right?

> I don't understand "battery for your money" as an advantage.

Why would I spend more money for less battery when I can spend less money for more battery? More driving range is an advantage.

> do you usually claim that it has "more fuel tank for your money" when people complain about gas mileage?

These are EVs, not ICEs. Live in the real world, not a rhetorical one.

In any case, for EV pickups you absolutely want more battery for your money. You want it for range, you especially want it for towing range, and you also want it for vehicle to load applications:

https://media.ford.com/content/fordmedia/fna/us/en/news/2021...

The Honda e and Hyundai's E-GMP platform cars (Ioniq 5, Kia EV6, Genesis GV60) also support V2L:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SsmQaVSYx-c

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b_JQCsIjtkM

Volkswagen's MEB platform cars will apparently get V2L support next year, maybe only on next year's models.

When will Teslas get V2L support?

This is getting very Gishy. I'll just repeat the original point upthread and depart: Teslas (and the model Y in particular) have poor rearward visibility because of a tapered afterbody, and this was done as a deliberate design decision (one of many) that makes them the most aerodynamic cars on the market. None of that has to do with towing or V2L.

Teslas are not the most aerodynamic cars on the market. The Mercedes EQS is.

I think you're spending too much time with Tesla's advertising materials and not enough time with practical realities.

Mercedes got one good test from Edmunds that looks a little better in terms of km/kWh than a Model S (but not the Y or 3), and one duck from Nyland that showed them way behind. If you're trying to claim that car is clearly better then the only thing you can possibly be citing is... advertising materials. Practical realities say the production EQS fell way short of where it claimed it was going to be last spring.

Again, the only car out there with a realistic claim (i.e. in independent testing) to be significantly better than a competing Tesla is the Lucid. And not by a lot, but it looks real.

You claimed Tesla had superior aerodynamics to any other car on the market. That's factually not the case.

I always find it funny that people get so bought in to something as trivial as a car brand that they're unable to differentiate fact from fiction any more.

That's the power of advertising I suppose. They've advertised at you and it worked.

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