Tesla Model Y customer cars hit the road

First customer deliveries of the 2022 Tesla Model Y have arrived in Australia – and most of them are white.

The first cars were manufactured in China late in June before being delivered to customers early in August.

All those early cars include the universal mobile charger (UMC), which allows you to charge the car from a regular power point or a 15A plug (which has a longer earth pin).

Later arrivals miss out, so buyers will have to purchase one separately if they plan to plug into a standard power point.

While Tesla hasn’t delivered many vehicles in Australia over the past few months, there’s now a lot more action in the warehouses that do an “express pick-up”, which aims to take less than 15 minutes to introduce buyers to their new ride and send them on their way.

A wander through the Tesla delivery centre in Sydney suggests most buyers are being frugal with their colour choice and selecting the Pearl White Multi-Coat, the only one of the five colours to be included in the Tesla Model Y starting price of $72,300 plus on-road costs.

Solid Black, Midnight Silver Metallic and Deep Blue Metallic cost another $1500 while Red Multi-Coat adds $2900.

We reckon at least 80 per cent of the circa-100 Tesla Model 3 and Model Y EVs we saw – there were more Ys than 3s – were white.

We only spotted two red cars and a smattering of blues, greys and blacks.

Perhaps it’s that people like the white, although our guess is that the price was more of an indicator of the whitewash.

And it seems Tesla uses colours to boost its profitability depending on the market because the colour pricing varies around the world.

In the US, for example, Tesla offers white and silver as standard colours, suggesting there’s no difference in the manufacturing cost. Blue is another $US1000, black another $US1500 and red $US2000.

It’s a similar story in Canada, Mexico and Puerto Rico, although the prices vary slightly.

Travel to Hong Kong, China and Macau, though, and same white hue that is ‘free’ in Australia comes at a price premium. Instead, it’s black that is the only “included” colour.

Perhaps Tesla is banking on the locals in steamy Asia wanting to shell out more for any colour other than heat-soaking black.

Most countries are like Australia, though. We checked various countries for their Tesla colour pricing, including the United Arab Emirates (UAE), Slovakia, Germany, Estonia, Ireland, Singapore, Norway, the UK and Sweden.

All made white the standard hue and charged extra for others, with red the most expensive.

France was different again. White is still the standard colour, but the vibrant red attracts the same €1190 premium as the silver, black and blue.

And in Spain they get slugged more for silver, blue and red, with white no extra charge and black only a modest premium.

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