A Lifted Off-Road Tesla Suddenly Makes a Lot of Sense to Us

Last week we covered the soon-to-be all-electric Ford F-150. We wondered whether it would make a good adventure rig. We wondered if electric trucks will catch on. We wondered if the sounds of dirt roads across the country will suddenly hum with the whisper quiet sounds of an electric motor, rather than the throaty gravel of a gas burning 6-cylinder engine. We wondered which electric truck/SUV would be the first to break into mainstream use.

But we hadn’t really thought about the new Tesla Model Y, which, we totally forgot, includes an “Off-Road Assist” mode.

What does that do? Well, this, according to Tesla:

Off-Road Assist is designed to provide overall improvements when driving offroad. In addition to allowing the wheels to spin, Off-Road Assist balances the torque between the front and rear motors to optimize traction. Off-Road Assist improves traction on rough and soft surfaces where one side of the vehicle may lose traction while the other side still has traction. When Off-Road Assist is on, the accelerator pedal provides more gradual torque, which is useful for crawling at low speeds (for example, over rocky surfaces). When enabled, OFFROAD displays on the touchscreen above the driving speed.

Cool. But what does that look like in practice?

Also cool.

Surely the lift (not sure how much) and the AT tires are really bad for the range of the car, but we’re not sure how big a hit. Brian, the owner of the car, and the host of the i1Tesla Youtube page, has other vids of him camping in his rig (we’ll put one down below) and he was impressed by the relative lack of range hit he got when he attached his Roofnest rooftop tent.

What does this all mean? Other than that this guy apparently has a no-limit Tesla credit card? We’re not sure. But we like that people are out there, experimenting with these cars, showing us what’s possible.