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.
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.
