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Tesla Model Y after 1,200 miles: The good and the bad

Credit: YouTube | i1Tesla

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Brian Jenkins of i1Tesla has done plenty of videos on his new Tesla Model Y. With 1,200 miles logged in 3 weeks, the YouTuber is back to give his fans a look at some of his favorite and not-so-favorite features of Tesla’s newest all-electric crossover.

Like 1: Model Y All-Glass Roof

Jenkins first mentions the Model Y’s large glass roof. “It feels so spacious in there, especially in the back seat. The kids feel like they’re not confined at all,” he said.

Past Tesla vehicles have featured sunroofs or extended back windows, but the Model Y is the first car to utilize a one-piece glass rooftop. The new design adds the illusion of more space, along with a unique cosmetic look different to any Tesla car before it. Additionally, the higher roof because of the crossover body style is ideal for people with tall builds. Jenkins is 6′ 5″, and the Model Y is easy to get into and out of, despite it only being recognized as a “midsize SUV.”

Credit: YouTube | i1Tesla

Like 2: Model Y Storage

The Model Y’s storage is excessive, making it an excellent vehicle for road trips or vacations. “There’s the space of the Model S on the inside as far as storage, and the size constraint of a Model 3. There’s twice the storage of the Model 3 due to the trunk, and it’s a power trunk,” Jenkins said.

The Model Y’s spacious interior should keep all passengers happy, even those who are a bit larger than the average human being. Tesla also made improvements to the frunk’s seal, as Tesla Raj has mentioned in the past, along with adding ease of access options with the rear-seat fold buttons and power trunk capability. Some owners requested the power trunk hatch with the Model Y, and Tesla listened. Additionally, the trunk can even be accessed with Siri, as Ryan Wallace showed recently.

Credit: YouTube | i1Tesla

Like 3: Quiet Ride

In the past, some owners of the first production units of the Model 3 complained about excessive noise pouring into the vehicle cabin. The sound was due to wind creeping into the car during operation due to non-ideal sealing and improper insulation placement. Owners used DIY kits that insulated tires and provided a more secure seal to doors to decrease noise. While Tesla worked on resolving the problem in-house, the Model Y’s quiet ride is something that Jenkins noticed immediately.

“I thought there would be more noise because of the open trunk area. Without having a cargo cover, I thought there would be more noise coming through,” Jenkins said.

He notes that one more small modification added to the car that has helped with the noise in a minimal way. “I’ve made mine a little bit quieter by tinting the windows on the side, and the windshield. When you tint the windshield, it adds a thin layer of soft material which is going to help dampen the vibrations from the wind and makes it even quieter on the inside.”

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Dislike 1: Performance Upgrade Range

Jenkins notes the 21″ wheels weigh 68 pounds in the rear and 64 pounds in the front. These heavy wheels have led to range loss. While Jenkins said it is a great looking tire and wheel combination, it simply isn’t what he was expecting in terms of range loss. Jenkins had tested other wheel combinations in an acceleration test when he first received his Model Y and will check range with the other options at a later date.

The Model Y’s 21-inch wheels are between 64 and 68 pounds each. Credit: YouTube | i1Tesla

Dislike 2: Paint and Cosmetics

The Model Y Jenkins received was VIN 409, and he states that this could have contributed to his vehicle’s paint issues. “The paint was really bad. Not so much bad, there was just dirt in the paint where I had to spend hours buffing it out.” He also says the rear spoiler was accruing debris as the vehicle was most likely sitting in a parking lot near Tesla’s manufacturing factory, enduring the many different weather situations it was forced to deal with. Jenkins ultimately decided to wrap his car because of the paint issues.

Jenkins decided to remove the “T” emblems on the front and rear of the vehicle. The removal left two small holes in both of these areas. Jenkins recognizes that the symbols give the car unmistakeable identification marks as many people across the world are still unfamiliar with the vehicles. He stated he would be putting the “T” back on the front and rear of the car soon when he finishes the planned cosmetic changes.

The Model Y’s emblem holes. Credit: YouTube | i1Tesla

Jenkins’ first weeks with the Model Y have been enjoyable. He states he loves the company’s new all-electric crossover and is happy with how the vehicle has performed thus far. As Jenkins continues to churn out plenty of content on the Model Y’s performance and look, it will help the Tesla community understand the features they can look forward to amidst purchasing the new crossover.

Watch Brian Jenkins’ 1200 mile review of the Tesla Model Y  below.

 

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Joey has been a journalist covering electric mobility at TESLARATI since August 2019. In his spare time, Joey is playing golf, watching MMA, or cheering on any of his favorite sports teams, including the Baltimore Ravens and Orioles, Miami Heat, Washington Capitals, and Penn State Nittany Lions. You can get in touch with joey at joey@teslarati.com. He is also on X @KlenderJoey. If you're looking for great Tesla accessories, check out shop.teslarati.com

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Lifestyle

Watch Tesla’s “guardian angel” FSD feature take over for collision evasion

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Tesla’s Automatic Collision Evasion feature can be seen in one of the first owner videos of it in action.

Tesla owner Spencer (@scotsrule08) posted on Monday that the feature “worked flawlessly,” saying FSD reengaged itself just as he was about to hit a curb. Ashok Elluswamy, who leads Tesla’s AI team, shared the clip and wrote, “A guardian angel always looking out for you.”

The video arrives in the middle of a staged rollout. Tesla first shipped Automatic Collision Evasion with FSD (Supervised) v14.3.9 in software update 2026.27.6 earlier this month, which Teslarati covered as it reached cars. Update 2026.27.10, which began going out on September 19, carried the feature improvements with FSD v14.3.10, according to release notes tracked by Not a Tesla App. The newer 2026.27.11 build is now reaching another wave of vehicles.


The feature only runs on HW4 vehicles, and it requires an active FSD purchase or subscription with both FSD (Supervised) and Automatic Emergency Braking enabled. HW3 owners receive FSD v14.2 Lite in the same updates, but that build does not include collision evasion.

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Tesla’s release notes describe two triggers. The first is an imminent frontal collision that braking alone may not prevent, in which case the car can activate FSD to steer, brake or accelerate around the hazard. That scenario is limited to highways below 85 mph, with no pedestrians or cyclists detected and no slippery road surface. The second covers a driver who appears inattentive, such as reaching into the back seat, or who seems to have switched off FSD by accident. Spencer’s curb clip appears to fall into that second category.

Tesla plans big safety improvements for Full Self-Driving v15

Once the system takes over, the accelerator is muted and light brake input will not cancel the maneuver. Drivers need to apply firm, deliberate steering force to take back control, and the car chimes to hand control back once the danger has passed.

Elluswamy recently noted that earlier hazard prediction, faster reaction time and better collision avoidance would arrive with FSD v15, the next major version.

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Elon Musk

Elon Musk drops a surprise update on Boring Company’s next big dig

Musk says Boring Company could shrink the Austin to San Antonio drive to just minutes.

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Elon Musk says The Boring Company is working on what he called “a simple, precursor Hyperloop” tunnel connecting Austin and San Antonio, targeting speeds above 200 mph and cutting a drive that can take up to two and a half hours down to a consistent under 30 minutes. Musk posted the idea on X Sunday, in a reply to a repost of an AI generated video imagining a science fiction future with human colonies on other worlds, which he shared with the line “This is the future we shall bring into being.”


The Boring Company’s own account picked up the idea in the same thread, adding a detail about how the trip would actually work: “Because Loop/Hyperloop is express (i.e. no intermediate stops), one could travel from an Austin parking lot to a favorite San Antonio restaurant in about 30 minutes. As long as they both have Loop stations.” That framing ties the proposed intercity link to the same station model the company already runs in Las Vegas, where riders enter the tunnel network through small, garage style stops rather than one central terminal.

This is not the company’s first run at the Austin to San Antonio corridor. Boring Company floated tunnels between the two cities as far back as 2021, and later competed for a separate San Antonio Loop project tied to the airport before that specific bid stalled. Pitches for tunnels in Chicago, Los Angeles, and a New York to Washington corridor have followed a similar pattern of big announcement without a shovel in the ground.

What is different this time is the balance sheet, especially since The Boring Company closed a 3 billion dollar funding round led by investors in the United Arab Emirates earlier this month at a valuation near 23 billion dollars, giving the tunneling company more capital to chase speculative projects than it had during its earlier Texas pitches. The company is also mid-build on two other intercity systems it has actually broken ground on, inc;luding a Nashville tunnel linking downtown to the airport, where a second boring machine finished commissioning in June, and its Las Vegas network, where the station count keeps climbing on paper faster than tunnels get dug.

That gap between announcement and execution is the reason to treat Sunday’s post as an opening bid rather than a project. A tunnel spanning roughly 80 miles between two metro areas, running at speeds Boring Company has not demonstrated over any real distance, would dwarf anything the company has built. For now, the Austin to San Antonio Hyperloop exists as a caption under an AI generated space video.

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Elon Musk

Tesla eyes supply partners for Optimus mass production

Tesla certified three Chinese suppliers for Optimus mass production, signaling its robot timeline is accelerating.

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Concept rendering of Tesla Optimus in mass production

Tesla’s robotics team traveled to Ningbo, in China’s Zhejiang province, on September 16 and spent the following day auditing component suppliers for Optimus, according to a Bloomberg report cited by RobotAIGeek. The visit moved three manufacturers from provisional status to certified mass production partners: Tuopu Group, which handles actuators and chassis components, Ningbo Joyson Electronic, a sensor supplier, and Zhejiang Sanhua Intelligent Controls, which builds thermal management systems. All three already supply parts to Tesla’s electric vehicles, and the audit reportedly came with fresh orders that supply chain reports put at an initial batch of roughly 5,000 units.

Tuopu, Joyson, and Sanhua built their manufacturing base serving the automotive industry, where tolerances and volume requirements are already close to what a mass produced humanoid robot demands. Sanhua in particular has history here. Teslarati reported last October that the company had received a roughly $685 million order for linear actuators tied to Optimus, a volume industry watchers estimated could cover around 180,000 robots once production ramped.

Supply chain reports tied to this week’s audit put Tesla’s near term production goal at about 1,000 Optimus units a week by late September, rising to 2,000 to 2,500 units a week by the end of the year. That pace would put real weight behind the timeline Tesla has been building toward since May, when it wound down Model S and Model X production at Fremont to convert that floor space into a dedicated Optimus line targeting one million units annually. JPMorgan analysts who toured the factory in August confirmed the conversion took roughly four months, a pace Musk has called unprecedented for a facility that size.

New drone video shows Tesla’s Optimus Factory reaching a turning point

Fremont is only the first phase. A second, larger Optimus plant is rising at Gigafactory Texas, where drone footage shared by Joe Tegtmeyer last week showed the structural steel nearing completion on the north end of the building. Tesla has said that facility is meant to eventually support production of up to 10 million units a year, though volume output there is not expected before 2027.

Commercial sales of Optimus are still targeted for the second half of 2027, but production is expected to start well before then. JPMorgan analyst Rajat Gupta has said Tesla’s “Optimus Academy” program, which uses early units to collect real world training data inside Tesla’s own facilities, is expected to be running later this year. Bloomberg Intelligence analyst Ian Ma described the Ningbo audits as “a positive commercialization signal for China’s humanoid supply chain,” noting that sentiment could improve further if the visit leads to confirmed supplier nominations and larger orders. The Solactive China Humanoid Robotics Index rose about 1.4% on the news, though it remains down roughly 30% for the year.

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