File:Besting the Best — The WSJ Review of Model Y (49978482171).jpg

When the Tesla Model S was released, it was hailed as the best car ever made (I collected press review quotes <a href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/jurvetson/8273926700/#comment72157632592674409">here</a>). It is somewhat amazing that over the following 8 years, nobody built a better car... well, other than Tesla itself.

Now, I may be biased, so let me continue to quote the automotive reviews. From today's <a href="https://www.wsj.com/articles/is-teslas-model-y-crossover-the-worlds-best-car-11591365620" rel="noreferrer nofollow">WSJ</a>:

“I look forward to a day when car critics can again suck their thumbs and opine about emotionally chilly styling and split hairs about human factors. Meanwhile, we have this car, this one program, beating the competition on core technology like a drum. From behind the wheel, everything else feels like a sluggish, sloppy antique, a squawking modem trying to connect to the cloud.

The Model Y’s satisfactions as a driving machine—its fierce, velvety acceleration, deep-pile powertrain isolation, the absence of friction and stiction, under load and under braking—are partly born of discontent with the current generation of stammering gassers, all with herky-jerky, multimodal drive programs.

From now until about 2030, and irrespective of what the U.S. federal government decrees, global car makers will be shrinking, hybridizing and digitizing their gas-powered engines until they vanish altogether. The endgame of petroleum will be a decade of dizzy, overtaxed turbo four-cylinders, cutting off and on at stop lights [start-stop hybrids], shuddering like washing machines.

Even setting aside the Y’s brawny batteries and humma-hunka motors, this car is a little dreadnought of innovation, advancing in fields as diverse as body engineering and HVAC systems. Because heating and air-conditioning can be a huge drain on batteries, Tesla developed a super-efficient heat pump for climate control; as well as a remarkably compact network of coolant loops coming together at the “Octovalve,” serving the thermal needs of disparate systems. The HVAC’s efficiency is crucial to the Y’s 316 miles of range.

The touch screen interface, and the graphical software behind it—smart, playful, situationally aware, connected to the hilt—sets a standard that other infotainment and driver-assistance systems undershoot by a mile.