2023 Tesla Model X Long Range Tested | American Shock
When you're supposed to get a Plaid but end up with a Long Range, what do you do? You take the 2023 Tesla Model X Long Range for a weekend trip to see just how 'long' that range really is.
Tesla's third-ever model, the Model X, rolled into the market back in 2015 and has since seen many powertrains powering it. There's been a 60D, a 75D, a 90D, and a 100D since then. In the time frame of writing this article, the flavors of X have boiled down to the Long Range and the superlative Plaid pair of models. But more importantly, since its launch, Tesla has kept on expanding the brand's own charging network. I'll explain why this external factor has a tremendous impact on the experience of using the car later in this review about the 2023 Tesla Model X Long Range.
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I've never in the history of writing for this website seen a price drop like Tesla Motors pulled off this year on the Model X. The brand managed to facilitate a price drop of nearly 20%, dropping the price tag from €116.490 to €101.990 overnight. Their party trick isn't ripping out hardware this time around. No, it's their forging technology for body parts called Giga Press. Pioneering isn't something new for the brand and they have pioneered this forging technique into mass production with success and are now dropping prices because of this successful cost reduction.
They ripped out hardware you ask? Well, yes but not without an effort to compensate and they did it with a valid reason (according to the brand) of course. Since 2022 the brand has been fasing out radar from the Model X and since this year they also dropped the ultrasonic sensor. These systems were previously feeding the Autopilot function and are now replaced by a system called Tesla Vision. This system, which is essentially camera input combined with unique software, should offer the same Autopilot experience but without the costly external sensors. Sadly, I found the system unreliable for anything but highway drives. On B-roads, the system can't handle curves, resulting in erratic steering adjustments by the system. Tesla promises to develop the system further though, and in a few years Tesla Vision will undoubtedly be competing with systems fed by (expensive) external sensors.
X Factor
Time for some facts about the 2023 Tesla Model X Long Range, which is essentially the Dual Motor All-Wheel Drive version. Power for both engines is 252 kW and combined they can offer 670 horsepower. Stuffed inside the belly of the beast is a 100 kWh battery pack running on 400V architecture. The peak loading speed is 250 kW and the WLTP range is 576 kilometers.
There’s a lot less power in the non-Plaid version of the Model X but in 99% of all circumstances, you won’t ever feel that difference. Offering 670 horsepower and an estimated 1000 Nm, the two motors of the 2023 Model X grant the 2.3 metric tonne SUV with ample acceleration potential (0-100 kph in 3.9 seconds). Only during brief intervals on the Autobahn did I yearn for more. I did however lusted after a more direct steering feel and less vague brake feel, but these qualities of the Model X are only sub-par for the industry standard. Overall the American BEV behaves as to be expected when driven by the driver.
Sometimes You Win, Sometimes You Lose
Although the balance between price and quality is leveling out, this isn't due to big quality leaps in the interior. With Beau present on one day of testing the Model X, he kindly lent us his ability to meticulously analyze interior quality. It wasn't long before he found loose stitching on the seats and squeaky interior panels. Sure, the brand is American and thus has a different interior standard than EU vehicles. But on a car with this big of a price tag (still), it's not what you want as a customer. Despite that, the multimedia was on point. The audio was of high quality and the screen in the center console was bright enough, even on sunny days.
Quality issues in terms of the materials, other than the stitching, weren’t omnipresent though. No, what was omnipresent in the cabin was the arguable choices the brand made when it came to ergonomics. I learned the hard way that the elongated windshield turns into a furnace during heat waves as the car was unable to keep the cabin temperature low enough when stuck in traffic. But fair enough, that windshield is a design choice critiqued plentifully. Fresh to complain about is Tesla’s choice to put the indicators on the steering wheel. Not one roundabout could I successfully find the button to indicate I was leaving the roundabout. Last on today’s complaint list is the choice to drop the physical gear selector for the touchscreen-based interface. After a week I still struggled to get the speed into parking maneuvers because of the time it takes to swipe the screen, compared to just flicking a stick back and forth.
External Range
What sets the 2023 Tesla Model X Long Range apart from the competition isn't inside the car though. No, what sets the car apart from the competition is the brand's own wide-spread charger network. This network successfully takes away range anxiety, planning stress, faulty chargers, and payment hassles other BEV drives are faced with. It was a refreshing experience on the road trip to Germany not feeling like I was driving pioneering technology but was using a matured form of transport.
Tesla offers a holistic approach to BEV transport with this network instead of relying on external factors and they have done so since the moment they started over a decade ago. This results in an experience hard to equate, it turns the BEV experience into something that works in the real world.
This approach is what makes the brand the success that it is. It makes the 2023 Tesla Model X Long Range the success that it is. You're not buying a car, you're buying the BEV transport that the brand has successfully deployed. At this point, I'd still struggle to convince myself for an actual purchase but if Tesla tackles the quality issues too, the future looks bright for the manufacturer.
