I hope all who observe had a wonderful Easter with your families yesterday! As you probably surmised from my absence this past week has been a busy one for me. I sold my old car on Monday, picked up my new one on Tuesday, and then took the new one to a shop to have the front-end wrapped in paint protection film to prevent rock chips.
With This new Model Y is so much more refined than my 2022 Model 3 I can hardly believe the same company built it. Not that the Model 3 was a bad car at all, it was phenomenal, but it was less refined and had the stiff suspension/ride of a sports car. I've noticed Tesla has also come a long way in terms of build-quality in the past four years as well.
Yesterday, as I was installing a screen protector on the Model Y, I noticed something strange—the screen protector I ordered was too big. I discovered the 16” screen that the car I purchased was supposed to have ended up being the older, 15.4”display instead. Along with the larger screen the car I purchased online was supposed to have a dark headliner and upgraded AI (HW4.5/AI4) chips in the car’s computer. After a little digging I found out that Tesla’s Fremont factory began installing these new items in the Model Y in mid-January and my car was built on January 5th. So, unfortunately, my car has the older HW4 chipset in it.
Don’t get me wrong, this HW4 chipset is perfectly fine but it’s already over a year old and, again, isn’t what I purchased. Tesla plans on allowing owners to rent their car’s computing power back to Tesla while their cars are not in use. This will be a pretty helpful revenue stream but to take part in this program after it launches you’ll likely need that most up-to-date chipset (HW4.5/AI4).
Long story short I didn’t get the car I ordered as the listing for the car I purchased clearly stated it had the larger 16” screen and all of the other upgraded features I mentioned. I’ve opened a service ticket with Tesla letting them know what I’ve discovered and we’ll see how they handle it. I’m still extremely happy with the vehicle and getting a slightly older model wouldn’t have been a huge deal if I knew what I was getting when I clicked “purchase’.
This particular car was listed on their website as existing new inventory so my guess is they were having one final push to unload the older cars as Q1 was coming to a close. I’ve learned a valuable lesson—never buy a Tesla at the end of the quarter. Unlike any other car company Tesla makes hardware updates (they call them refreshes) on their vehicles several times a year.
I'm still very grateful. I fully realize how lucky I am to even be able to own a car like this. My only qualm is I didn't get the exact vehicle I paid for and I don't feel good about that. I hope this was an honest mistake on Tesla's part and wasn't done intentionally to move older inventory. These kinds of hiccups are epidemic across most companies we deal with these days in the United States. The state of customer service is abysmal, truly enough to put you in a straightjacket. As a shareholder and fan of the Tesla brand I’m really hoping the company does the right thing here and comes up with a solution to make things right.
Swear Jars
In the hours in between all of these automobile-related activities I assembled what was probably the second most complex piece of furniture I ever have put together in my life.
This piece was only second behind IKEA’s PAX wardrobe I assembled a few years ago. The PAX came in nine boxes and took about two days to assemble (and a solid day to recover from).
Although this latest project looks simple enough after it was fully assembled absolutely everthing was flat-packed in pieces. This is why it was so tedious.
The latest project only ended up being about a three hour job but we love it. I can honestly say not a single coin had to be dropped into my swear jar in the entire three hours. Age and experience must be mellowing me out a bit.
All for now. Thanks so much for reading.
What about Subaru? Is that also fully EV?
The Forester is a hybrid. It's pretty nice, the hybrid system doesn't give you much of a bump in gas mileage but it does give you about 20 more HP. They paired Toyota's hybrid system with the trad Subaru boxer engine.
Always liked Subaru machinery because of their rallying heritage :)
They're amazing cars. We've pushed the AWD to the limits here in the Minnesota snow and there's nothing like them.
Call me old fashioned, but I like to see and feel my car before I pay for it. Hopefully Tesla is going to exchange your car to the appropriate model.
It's a lot of pressure to have to spot all of the deficiencies in a few minutes when you pick up the car—especially in the excitement of the moment of getting a new vehicle. I guess they give you 24 hours after you take delivery to find anything glaringly apparent that you want to have fixed. Tesla resolved the situation for me yesterday. They confirmed the car has the most up-to-date hardware and I got a discount for the smaller screen and different colored headliner, which were minor things to me.
I had something like that with my truck. It wasn't that I thought I was buying one thing, but the 2016 model I have towards the end of the year they added the module for Android Auto. In the beginning of the year they did not. Of course mine was assembled in the beginning of the year! I hope they take care of everything for you.
Thanks, did they do anything for you at all? My brother had a similar pandemic-era problem with his GM pickup. It was supposed to have heated steering but some of the parts they needed to make it work were in low supply so they sold the truck without it and they installed later.
I communicated with Tesla yesterday and they told me the news of the new chipset (HW4.5) originated from a typo in one of the company's news releases and then has taken on a life of its own online. He said there are zero Teslas on the road with HW4.5 and what I have on my car is the latest and greatest. I doubled-checked this using AI and it seems to be correct. They took a few thousand off the price for the smaller screen and different colored headliner and I can live with that.
No, I bought the truck used, so it was mostly just my bad luck. I was hoping it was just a software update that could maybe be done, but they said no. I would basically have to get a whole new head unit and at that point why not just get something aftermarket.
Oh, well that is nice. I'm glad they resolved everything in one way or another.
Oh, I see. That's too bad! Aftermarket would probably be the way to go in that case.
Thanks. I still wouldn't purchase another Tesla at the end of the quarter. They're pushing out a lot of new car inventory built months before to meet their quarterly sales numbers and the odds are far greater of something like this happening. Lesson learned!
Hello, dear friend @ericvancewalton, good afternoon.
I hope you also had a wonderful Easter Sunday; everything is fine here, we spent it with family.
Congratulations on your new purchase; I just hope you receive a positive response and that they deliver the car you bought with all the upgrades you mentioned.
Enjoy it!
Thank you Luis! It was a wonderful Easter. I'm glad to hear yours was too!
I think it is disappointing when things don't go as expected, particularly for a company like Tesla that takes pride in its innovation and quality.
I'm so happy they handled it well. Apparently news of the HW4.5 was a hoax sparked by a typo in one of the company's news releases. I have the latest hardware on my car and that's all I was really concerned with. Now I can just relax and enjoy it.
Perhaps an appropriate refund will work. Exciting nonetheless.
They took good care of me, thankfully. Very exciting. We're about to break it in on a 1,700 mile roadtrip to Arizona.
While I was reading your most recent post, I was wondering how you had noticed the differences. I just read here how it went. A bit of misinformation makes us have different expectations. A hug