It wasted no time dominating the sales chart; could it do more to win hearts in an increasingly competitive sector?

Price: $76,200 (not including $8625 Clean Car rebate)

Powertrain and economy: Single rear-mounted 60kWh motor, 220kW/420Nm (non-factory assessment), RWD, combined economy 13.2kWh/100km.

Vital statistics: 4750mm long, 1920mm wide, 1623mm high, 2891mm wheelbase, luggage capacity 847 litres, 19-inch alloy wheels.

Safety: Five star ANCAP.

We like: Good range, Supercharger network, acceptable power, excellent build quality, roomy, some clever touches.

Not so much: Unorthodox functionalities, driver assist inconsistencies, no luggage cover.    

GOOD giggle doing the rounds: Elon Musk decides to merge Tesla and Twitter into a single company.

 He launches the new ‘Twisla’ car … which proves instantly popular, but many buyers are left frustrated that it can only be driven for 280 metres at a time.

Yeah, yeah … poke the bear at your peril. We all  know how thin-skinned Teslarati are. Anyone who dares question anything about the great visionary is dancing on a razor’s edge.  

But, then, that’s always been Elon Musk’s bent, too. Snootily referring to other car makers as 'legacy firms' is the least of his polarising industry statements.

At time of writing, there’s been the saga of Tesla product price decreases – far more dramatic in North America and China than here, as it transpired – and Tesla’s $US860 billion year-over-year market value drop - a fall twice larger than the valuations of Toyota, Volkswagen, and General Motors combined – and the law suit over ‘that’ tweet; the one that also affected stock values, earned the sender a $US40m fine and saw him forced out as Tesla CEO.

As we head into 2023, it seems as hard as ever to know what represents a greater threat to Tesla - the loose cannon at the helm or the army of car makers coming after it?

Ah well, running with Musk has always been an entertaining ride. Same goes for the car on test.

Teslas are singular in their difference to other electrics. Though at root the Model Y is a spacious rear-drive five-seater in the crossover frame, cannily priced and configured, packing a decent 60kWh drivetrain with good range (WLTP-attested as being 455km; likely, from test experience, to get within 20-30km of that in reasonable driving), there are quirks to consider.

Basically an inflated Model 3; no body panels swapped, yet the two cars sharing something like 75 percent of common componentry and identical in mechanical makeup, it’s here at the right time. Model 3 has been strong, but with everyone wanting big bodyshapes in a crossover/SUV theme, this one is the golden child. It’s only availed since August, yet secured best-selling electric for 2022. That’s unprecedented and impressive.

You could call it the country’s best-selling mobile entertainment device, too. Interactive features is a big thing with Tesla – it feels people get bored when they need to charge an electric car - so, even in base format, as tested, the Model Y is truly ‘game-on’. 

They’ve taken advantage of the car’s massive power capacity and electronic strength to make it a portal for games, music and even movies; with Netflix, YouTube and Disney Plus – for which you have to set a subscription and pay your way. There’s also Caraoke (which, even if I had a decent singing voice, I’d be too self-conscious to sing along to, though I’m sure there’d be plenty of owners in America who wouldn’t be so reserved) Anything to keep the big kid at the wheel (and any actual little kids on board) occupied.

It’s bound to be an allure for buying in, and though I’m among those who would have preferred they’d dumped a lot of the fluff and simply given it Apple CarPlay, I wasn’t immune to the fun.

There’s an upgrade to support an on-line gaming platform. I’m indebted to the neighbour’s visiting 13-year-old grandkid, for guiding me through ‘Beach Buggy Racing 2’, a driving sim with significant Super Mario similarity. Good fun, though I abandoned when realising that, in requiring the car’s steering wheel to control the direction, there’s no divorce from swivelling the Y’s as well. I stopped, rather than risk wear my neighbour’s highly-priced tarmac driveway.

Do we need this stuff when other devices you can carry with you will deliver all the same? I were to be totally pragmatic, there’s only one gee-whiz feature I’d likely think of long-term interest. I’d probably want to carefully trial a Tesla in dog mode, by which you set the air con to keep the cabin cool, before committing my beagles, but from mucking around with it, the system does seem really useful.

What did seem a bit ironic, also, was that the oldest Tesla tricks, fart and dance mode, achieved longest engagement and giggling reaction. The car’s choreographed actions to a banging electronic rendition of ‘Auld Land Syne’ (sorry sub-division, it took a few goes before I worked out how to turn down the volume via the phone app) won over my immediate neighbours. And, erm, their’s. Even without auto-open on its doors, the Y’s in-time light flashing, mirror waggling, window sliding and boot lifting and closing in time is quite something.

Setting aside such frivolities, the car still dictates being a deep-set exercise in electronic engagement to bring out its best. While it’s a bit of a faff to set-up and disengage, and requires Tesla authorisation, the app that makes your phone a key to more than just being an alternate to the credit card-like one you’ll slip into your wallet, sure makes life easier.

Electrics are a brave new world for many. Tesla’s eschewal of an orthodox dealer structure means national spread without local representation; unless you are in Auckland, Wellington or Christchurch, this brand is not exactly on the doorstep. How smart that is for a brand that now already put thousands of cars into circulation is brought into even sharper focus by Tesla’s bent to do things differently - mostly for the sake of it – in terms of the car’s operability. It’s so bravely futuristic that expectation on the driver to have the nous to fathom everything is heavy.

Some stuff is clever. To make the car work, you sit in it. To turn off the powertrain and start it’s lock up, you get out. Polestar and Volvo have the same. It’s a superb idea for an electric car.

Not everything’s immediately intuitive. The double-twitch action to activate cruise on the wand selecting Drive and Reverse is novel; likewise the indicator wand also activating single-sweep wiping, screen wash and the wiper speed. 

Adjusting the steering column or mirrors is basic made harder than it need to be; Tesla’s route demands into a menu and then using the steering wheel buttons. That’s irritating. All the more so when, half an hour into the drive, realise you need to finetune things further. In any other car, that’d be safely achieved in seconds, on the move. With this one, you have to stop and start all over.  

More grumps. The ‘buttons’ for the climate control are too small, and although there are rear seat heaters, only front seat occupants can activate them, because the control is on the touch screen.

Linking your phone is easy. Downloading the contacts menu? It engaged on that job with my iPhone at pick-up and was still striving to complete it when the test ended, 10 days on. It wasn’t as if my phone and the car didn’t get on: I could still make, and receive, calls.

I get why it the big screen is centralised; it means you can build a car in left, or right, hand drive much more cheaply. Head up displays are, nonetheless, a wonderful assist. Tesla would win fans by putting one in. As is, the speedo is a teensy display at the top right-hand corner of the screen. Eyes on the screen are eyes off the road. I don’t like that.

So there are Muskisms to adapt to. It says much about the intrinsic quality of the Y you’ll find a way to accept them.

As a Model 3 conversion, the Y most obviously demands a taller top half. It’s a slightly awkward extension and, like all Teslas, there’s sense it’s more designed than styled. As the fulfilment of Musk’s ‘S3XY’ pack, it’s not set for the catwalk. The latch over the power inputs is a sweet execution but as with the sedan, it’s the overall aerodynamic cleanliness - no fake grilles or spoilers, and flush door handles – that impacts more than any particular sense of it being flairful. I wonder, already, how well it will age; the S and X have definitely become visually less impressive as time ticks on. 

Overall, I’d suggest the colour everyone goes for, white (because it’s the sole choice that’s ‘free’), does so much on its own to dilute kerbside appeal. During test I spotted a Y in gunmetal grey and was impressed. In that hue, lines simply lost on my whiteware were so much better accentuated. It just immediately became a smarter, more interesting car.

The interior is quite plain, and the seats could do with a reshape (I’d suggest Elon lures a Volvo hire) but what gets sacrificed in panache is made up for in practicality. Equipment-wise, there’s a lot with the Y that hits the X spot. Choice of 'vegan' leather is prescient and no foul for comfort and visual appeal. Although the 19-inch wheels aren’t actually full alloys, the faux styling is convincing. You get a panoramic glass roof, navigation with live services, two wireless phone chargers, two-zone climate control with a HEPA air filter, a 13-speaker 'Premium Audio System', powered and heated front seats and heated rear seats.

Plus, it’s a big car. Not so much in overall dimension, but certainly within. Though only 50mm longer than a Model 3, at 4751mm, the Model Y is a considerable 181mm taller. Of that, 27mm goes into increasing the ground clearance to 167mm, so the body height is stretched by more than 150mm, which benefits not just head room but also the rear passengers’ seating position. The cabin is almost comically roomy, and the boot is utterly massive. Tesla quotes a volume of 854 litres, and while that's measured up to the roofline when everyone else measures to the parcel tray, which this car lacks, patently the space on offer is vast. The 60:40 split rear seats fold flat with the press of buttons inside the electric tailgate; do that and you achieve 2158 litres of space. The handover guy reckoned it’s big enough to sleep in. I didn’t, but took his point. That’s a van-like space.

There's useful underfloor storage in the boot too (ideal for stashing your charging cables) and the 117-litre 'frunk' in the nose is also large enough.

What also appeals is how much storage is in the cabin proper, with deep and extremely useful covered bins in the centre console. Suede-covered wireless phone charging pads, sited beneath the screen, do a decent job of holding your phone in place when driving. There are four USB-C sockets dotted around the cabin, plus another USB-A socket inside the glovebox.

US-made Teslas have long been criticised for having at best variable quality levels, but all our Ys (and 3s) come from China and the test car’s impeccable presentation suggests that’s a good thing. The overall silence of electric cars tends to exacerbate any interior rattles and creaks; this car had one, but it was barely perceptible and only occasional.

That’s also perhaps a tribute to the body materials and construction. The body is mostly steel but with a lot of aluminium too, including a huge single-piece casting for the rear under structure. That clearly helps torsional rigidity, and there’s also a weight saving. Sure, because of the batteries, EVs are unavoidably heavy. But within EV-dom, any medium-large car that sneaks under two tonnes, as this one does, is doing well.

Tesla owners love to talk up the sportiness of their cars; but they really mean the highly-fizzed dual motor versions with tyre-frying Ludicrous mode. This one paces along smartly, but ultimately is more gracious that gut-pulling. Like most electric cars, it is only available with a single speed transmission, but that’s no hindrance, as there’s an abundance of instant torque. Ultimately, though, it’s a car that just swooshes along; it won’t embarrass in the passing lane, but really is more at home just running in all-but regal silence at the legal limit. 

I didn’t mind that – no-one needs to be in a hurry when it’s the holiday season – but, all the same, it seemed quirky that, as a requisite for press loan, Tesla pre-set the car’s maximum speed to a perfunctory 137kmh.

Handling is good, likewise grip. But the ride quality and steering are due more work. The first is in a no-man’s land, not so harsh as to be wholly disagreeable, but nowhere good enough either. The car feels fine on smooth motorways, far less impressive over coarse chip. Comparing it to the category barometers, Hyundai Ioniq 5 and Kia EV6, will remind that legacy car makers aren’t the dullards Elon makes them out to be. They’re much better at this sort of thing.

The Model Y's steering operates, thankfully, via a round wheel rather than a silly yoke. It can be adjusted between Comfort, Standard and Sport. The latter was my preference from early on, all are too obviously artificial in their weighting. The tendency to fight constantly with the lane-keeping steering system, depending on the road markings, is a hallmark of many modern cars with lane assist also showing here. Your wrists might suffer.  

The Model Y received excellent marks in crash testing. Hot-footing off a big drop isn’t part of that regime, but it’s also the car that made headlines for keeping a family alive when the driver decided to take one off a massive seaside cliff in California.

 The Y has dual frontal, side chest-protecting and side head-protecting (curtain) airbags, plus a centre airbag which provides added protection to front seat occupants in side impact crashes. Autonomous emergency braking (Car-to-Car, Vulnerable Road User, Junction Assist and Backover), a lane support system with lane keep assist (LKA), lane departure warning (LDW) and emergency lane keeping (ELK), and an advanced speed assistance system (SAS) are standard equipment.

Tesla internationally markets driver assist at tree levels: Autopilot, Autopilot Assist and Full Self Driving. This car had Autopilot. The key ingredient is the adaptive cruise control, which works well. Adjusting the speed with a scroll wheel is very easy, it anticipates fairly well and is confident and smooth.

The tester also had a beta version of Autosteer, which sets out to enhance the lane keep and enable intelligent automatic lane changing. Autosteer is the core constituent of ‘Full Self Driving’, a highly-controversial add-on that costs almost $12,000 here and is a subscription that apparently disables when the care changes ownership. I thought the lane keep was not well-resolved, being overly-intrusive and poorly disciplined. 

Autosteer failed to impress. I tried it in the environment it would seem to be best designed for, a three-lane motorway. In the outside lane and while passing a semi-trailer, the car momentarily and unexpectedly went into full emergency braking mode, having seemingly mis-identified the guard rail as a danger. Fortunately, the lane behind was clear. Hardly a ringing endorsement for Tesla's technology, but there you go. 

Much better is the performance of the battery. Tesla still leads the rest of the motoring world in terms of its battery performance and charging, and while other car makers are catching up fast, it’s still a strength here. The range estimation seemed incredibly accurate and the energy usage was very unruffled.

This car was set up for using the Supercharger network and I loved it; for reasons not worth going into, I choose the worst time for my inaugural visit to my local station; it’s right in the middle of a shopping centre carpark and, of course, I had to replenish right into the middle of the last shopping day before Christmas. Still, while getting to it was a test of patience, using it was an utter joy. 

Driving around town enforced how superb the all-round visibility is but, conversely, how wide the car feels and how much road-space it demands. One consideration that remained always in mind was that the turning circle is very large. 

The electric car scene has exploded over the past two years; while Tesla is still a very strong performer, it clearly has competitors.

Within its space, the Model Y’s main attraction is really just that: It’s a very roomy car for the money. Sooner or later, there’ll be a seven-seater version to undermine the Mercedes EQB. The performance is decent, the range very solid and the Supercharger replenishment, which I heard being criticised by Tesla owners as not being the most cost-effective subscription, is nonetheless brilliant in how it operates.  

The operability irks, poor steering feel and the so-so ride just have to be accommodated. Perhaps there could be some improvement to the latter from finetuning the tyre pressures. Tesla recommends these to be in the mid-40 Psi area, which is awfully firm.  

As for the driving assists? I feel others in the price range deliver better resolved apparatus; the Kia EV6/Hyundai Ioniq 5 siblings are a good example. As I write, another headache for Tesla is a claim from a former engineer that the famous video shot in 2016 showing how Autopilot could capably drive a Model X was faked.

The electric crossover sector is ripening this year. The Korean products already seem good Y challengers; this year the Mustang Mach-E, Skoda Enyaq and VV ID.4 join in.