The Tesla Model Y L makes sense as a concept on paper, but there’s been plenty of time for it to simmer in the month between the MIIT pictures dropping and the official on-sale date in China, and it’s still a bit puzzling. Sure, the Model Y has brand equity as it was the world’s best-selling car for a while, but considering most things aft of the front bulkhead are new, that’s an awful lot of sheetmetal to change just to build something that still looks suppository-ish.
Still, style is a matter of taste. If people want slightly frumpy cars, let them buy slightly frumpy cars. What often really matters is how they function, and while the Model Y L seems sound on paper, there are two things that immediately seem odd, and they’re attached to the rear seats.
Let’s start with a few notes on things that are less quirky but still good: The second-row captain’s chairs in this stretched, six-seat Model Y aren’t just heated, they’re also ventilated, a cure for BSTL if ever I’ve experienced one. While uncommon, it’s welcome to see ventilated second-row seats make inroads into more cars, giving second-row passengers first-class comfort. Less common still is the presence of heated third-row seats, a feature even most luxury SUVs don’t come with. Growing up, velour and ultra-processed school lunches had the same effect, but it’s nice to know that third-row seat warmth can still be assured in an age of pleather and healthy meals.
Oh, and the Model Y L isn’t exactly a slouch, but it isn’t as quick as the Performance trim despite sharing the same output. Tesla claims zero-to-62 mph in 4.5 seconds, quicker than most mainstream dual-motor electric crossovers but still a bit of a let-down.
However, we need to talk about the rear seat armrests, because as soon as I saw the first official interior pictures of the Model Y L, I thought they looked insane. See, most captain’s chairs feature fold-down armrests screwed into the sides of the seats, and while that’s fine and preferable to a console, it can restrict the width of the passageway between the seats. Tesla hasn’t done that. Instead, here’s a photo showing rear inboard armrests on great plinths rising from each seat base, like they’re stolen off a Hermann Miller or something.
On first glance, this seems wildly impractical and easy to strike your shins on, so I did some digging. It turns out that not even Tesla is slapdash enough to fix armrests in this position because that’s foolish. Instead, a YouTube video from channel AutoWorld shows that the rear armrests fully retract flush with the seat squab, and can be deployed at the press of a button. Yes, those massive supports just disappear down into the seats, an overcomplicated solution to be sure – but one for which I do kind of have to hand it to the engineers.
It seems like Tesla may have actually, genuinely improved a thing. The traditional fold-down armrests are great, but they do take up width in a vehicle, and they can be a bear to adjust if you’ve injured your shoulder. At the same time, having a sort of wall with the armrests up to catch things dropped by rear passengers is nice, and being able to adjust the height of each armrest without altering its angle seems more ergonomically correct.
So now the question is: Is Tesla the first to use this setup on a road car’s captain’s chairs? Digging into my memory banks and Google images, I can’t say I recall another thing to use a setup quite like this. The four-seat Range Rover uses a more traditional center armrest; all the really big American SUVs use either fold-down armrests or a fixed console; neither the BMW X7, Volvo XC90 nor Mercedes-Maybach GLS use the Model Y L’s setup; and the six-seat Model X doesn’t feature inboard second-row armrests at all. It seems like there’s some actual useful innovation going on here for once, and it seems complicated enough that I’m surprised the Germans didn’t think of it first.
Top graphic image: Tesla
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