u/Downtown-Bedroom4652

Has anyone here actually purchased or financed a new Model Y Performance through a company and successfully qualified for the EV FBT exemption?

I'm trying to get my head around how close the Performance sits to the relevant thresholds, particularly once options are added.

A few things I'm trying to clarify:

- Does the current Model Y Performance qualify for the full EV FBT exemption?

- Does it remain under the Luxury Car Tax threshold for fuel-efficient vehicles?

- If you choose a more expensive paint colour, can that push the vehicle over the threshold?

- What about the white interior or other factory options?

- Is the threshold based on the total vehicle price including factory options, but excluding things like registration, stamp duty and other on-road costs?

I'm specifically interested in hearing from anyone who's actually bought a Model Y Performance through their company or for an employee under the FBT-exempt EV rules.

Basically, I'm trying to work out how much room there is to play with options before accidentally turning an FBT-exempt Performance into a very expensive tax mistake.

Any first-hand experience would be appreciated.

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Yesterday I had to take my 89-year-old mum to her regular podiatrist appointment.

Normally I deliberately book these things outside peak traffic, but circumstances meant we ended up right in the middle of the afternoon school rush around Penrith.

Mum absolutely loves FSD. At 89, she is completely fascinated by the technology and gets a genuine kick out of sitting there watching the car drive itself.

So I thought, feck it, let's see how FSD handles this.

We ended up around Penrith High at pretty much the worst possible time.

Kids everywhere. Prams. Parents pulling in and out. Cars parked everywhere. Mums and dads rushing around. Your typical 3pm school-zone traffic clusterfeck.

And the Tesla just flowed through it.

It was actually quite something to watch. No drama, no hesitation, no stupid manoeuvres. It just seemed to skate through the chaos like a ballerina.

Then came the interesting bit.

We approached one of those ridiculously tight little Penrith roundabouts that feels like somebody looked at an intersection that had absolutely no business being a roundabout and said, "Yeah, chuck one in there."

We're turning right.

Coming the opposite direction is a bloke in a Ford Raptor, going straight through.

FSD is being very cautious and starts proceeding into the roundabout.

The Ranger is already most of the way through when suddenly the driver puts his indicator on and decides he's turning across in front of us.

The Tesla absolutely HIT THE ANCHORS.

Instantly.

That's the bit that genuinely surprised me.

I was watching the Ranger. I knew exactly where he was. But I honestly don't think I would have reacted and stopped as quickly as the car did.

There was no second-guessing what the Ranger driver was doing. The moment he created the conflict, the Tesla stopped.

The Ranger driver obviously realised what he'd done, stopped himself and gave us the apologetic wave to continue.

FSD, however, had apparently decided it no longer trusted this bloke as far as it could throw him. 😂

It wouldn't budge.

So I pressed the accelerator, completed the turn and carried on.

For all the criticism I've given FSD over some of its highway behaviour, particularly speed-limit recognition, this was one of those moments where you sit there and think, okay, this technology is getting seriously impressive.

Driving through that part of Penrith at school pickup time would normally require your full attention and a decent amount of patience.

Instead, with kids, prams, parked cars, impatient drivers and the obligatory Ranger thrown into the mix, the car just glided through it like hot butter.

And when somebody did something unpredictable, it saw it and reacted bloody quickly.

I'd actually love to see Tesla eventually take this one step further and have navigation understand these sorts of hotspots. If it's 3:05pm and your route takes you directly past a major school, perhaps FSD could recognise that and route around it where there's a sensible alternative.

But yesterday?

Credit where credit's due.

That was bloody impressive.

Has anyone else had this happen with their Model Y?

I was driving in completely dry conditions, no rain whatsoever, and the wipers kept randomly coming on. Not just once either, it happened multiple times.

The stranger part is that I manually switched the auto wipers OFF.

A little while later, Tesla had somehow switched them back to AUTO again. I turned them off again, and sure enough, they eventually went back to Auto.

This happened several times during the drive.

I understand Tesla uses the cameras rather than a conventional rain sensor, and I've heard plenty about phantom wiping, but why is the car overriding my setting and reactivating Auto after I've specifically turned it off?

Has anyone else experienced this?

More importantly, has anyone found a way to actually keep Auto Wipers disabled, or a workaround that stops the phantom wiping?

2026 Model Y Long Range AWD

Yesterday I did the return trip from Bullocks Flat after a week in the snowfields, again using FSD 14.3.5 pretty much the entire way.

Coming out of Bullocks Flat and through the Snowy Mountains was relatively straightforward. No major problems and generally very smooth.

Then I hit the Hume Highway.

The 110 km/h speed limit problem is definitely still there, and this time it was much more noticeable.

FSD would be travelling through a clearly posted 110 zone and suddenly decide the limit was 100 km/h. No new speed sign, no roadworks, nothing obvious to explain it. It would simply drop back to 100.

Then I'd pass another 110 sign and sometimes it would STILL continue at 100.

A couple of kilometres later, without passing another speed sign, it would suddenly decide the limit was 110 again and accelerate.

Then later it would drop back to 100.

100 → 110 → 100 → 110.

You get the picture.

It wasn't just the Hume either.

I had the same problem on the M4 heading west. It simply wasn't recognising the 110 km/h limit properly. What's really strange is that travelling eastbound on the same M4, FSD DOES recognise the 110 zones.

That makes me wonder whether this isn't purely a vision problem and there's some mapping or speed-limit database information involved as well. Why would essentially the same motorway work correctly in one direction but not the other?

Another thing I noticed is that it doesn't seem to recognise the illuminated LED 110 speed-limit signs mounted on the large overhead gantries. There are several of these along the route and FSD appeared to ignore them.

So I'd say 110 km/h speed-limit recognition remains one of the more obvious Australian weaknesses in 14.3.5, particularly because the behaviour seems to change depending on the motorway and even the direction you're travelling.

Apart from that?

Honestly, smooth sailing.

And this is where I think FSD starts becoming difficult to judge purely by counting interventions.

I'd spent the day skiing and then had roughly a five-and-a-half-hour drive home. Normally that's the sort of combination where you'd arrive home absolutely stuffed.

Instead, I got home remarkably relaxed. It almost felt like I hadn't driven five and a half hours.

That's probably the biggest compliment I can give it.

Yes, there are still bugs. The 110 km/h issue needs fixing. The following distance in Standard and particularly Hurry still concerns me. Complex roadworks can confuse it. Wildlife at night remains a serious limitation. Destination arrival and car park navigation can occasionally be completely bizarre.

But when you look at the entire journey rather than individual mistakes, FSD did the overwhelming majority of the driving.

After doing the Blue Mountains → Bullocks Flat → Blue Mountains run with 14.3.5, including motorways, country highways, mountain roads, nighttime driving, roadworks and Sydney traffic, I've made my mind up.

For me, FSD is worth every cent.

It's not because I think it's autonomous. It isn't. You absolutely still need to supervise it.

It's because after a hard day's skiing I can do a five-and-a-half-hour drive home and arrive feeling like I haven't just spent five and a half hours driving.

That's the part that's difficult to appreciate until you've actually lived with it.

PS: It's parking was on the piss at the Exteter TSC

​

Route was Blue Mountains to Bullocks Flat (Skitube), about a 5.5 hour drive covering motorways, country roads, roadworks, Cooma, and the Snowy Mountains at night.

Overall, it's a noticeable improvement over v14.3.3.

Getting onto the M4 from Lapstone is still a problem. I always have to take over because it gets confused by the merge. I'm not sure whether it's a mapping issue or something else, but it's been consistent since I got the car.

Once on the motorway, though, it was excellent.

Lane changes were well timed, it generally chose the correct lanes, and speed control was much improved. In Chill and Standard it behaved well, while Hurry mode sat around 5 km/h over the posted limit, which is exactly what I'd expect.

One thing that still needs work is following distance. Hurry mode still tailgates far too aggressively for my liking. Standard mode is better, but there were still times where it followed uncomfortably close. I'm genuinely curious whether Tesla has tuned it to comply with NSW road rules and safe following distance expectations. If it hasn't, that's something Tesla really needs to address because it's one of the few behaviours that still regularly makes me take over.

There were only a couple of real interventions on the highway.

The strangest one was overtaking two B-doubles. It moved into the right lane, at about 115 km/h, then suddenly decided to merge back into the gap between the two trucks instead of completing the overtake. I took over because I had no idea what it was thinking.

Roadworks also confused it. It looked like it wanted to follow temporary orange and black directional arrows as if they were a detour, even though the road ahead was open. To be fair, the signage was messy, so I can understand why it struggled.

The biggest disappointment was the new Cooma Superchargers.

It completely missed the main entrance. I looped around and approached from the rear laneway using FSD again. Instead of continuing another 50 to 60 metres to the Superchargers, it suddenly tried to reverse park into a motel car park where there were already cars parked. I had to take over again and drive to the chargers manually.

Then came the drive to Bullocks Flat at around 9:00 pm.

Anyone who's driven through the Snowy Mountains at night knows wildlife is everywhere.

There were kangaroos standing beside the road that were difficult even for me to see. FSD didn't appear to recognise them.

The biggest moment came when a 4WD in front of me suddenly braked hard and swerved. I looked ahead and there was an enormous dead wombat in the middle of the lane. FSD was going to hit it. I grabbed the wheel and avoided it. In fairness, a large dark object lying flat on a dark road at night is probably about as difficult a vision problem as you can throw at any self-driving system.

Finally, it also missed the Bullocks Flat Skitube turnoff despite navigation being set, and tried to enter a completely unrelated driveway. Another manual intervention.

Overall though, this version is definitely a step forward.

I'd say about 95% of the drive was hands-off. The improvements to lane choice and general motorway driving are obvious. The remaining weaknesses seem to be complex roadworks, destination arrivals, wildlife in regional Australia, especially after dark, and following distances that still feel too close in anything other than Chill mode.

For an Australian release, I'd call v14.3.5 a solid improvement. It's not perfect yet, but it's getting noticeably better with each update.

One question for those who know the road rules better than I do: has anyone actually measured the following distance in Standard and Hurry mode against NSW's legal requirement to maintain a safe distance from the vehicle in front? It still feels too close to me, particularly in Hurry mode. If it's operating within the law, fair enough. If it isn't, I think that's something Tesla should be treating as a high priority fix supervised or not.

Does installing this device void your Tesla warranty?

Three days into owning my Model Y LR AWD, and I've now logged about two hours using FSD.

Today was its biggest test yet.

Started in the Blue Mountains, drove to DFO Homebush, then into Sydney CBD, around Darling Harbour, across the Harbour Bridge, out to Frenchs Forest, then all the way home. I let FSD do almost everything.

The first thing that surprised me was DFO. It drove itself into the underground car park, found what looked like the closest available park to the entrance, and parked perfectly. The only time I had to intervene was at the ticket machine because, unfortunately, Tesla hasn't figured out how to feed parking tickets into the machine yet.

The CBD was where I expected it to struggle.

Instead... it just didn't.

It handled Sydney traffic far better than I expected. Lane changes, complicated intersections, traffic, merging, pedestrians, random Sydney drivers, it just dealt with it. There were actually a couple of manoeuvres where I thought, "I probably wouldn't have gone for that," but it pulled them off without any drama.

It's definitely not perfect though.

Biggest complaint is the tailgating. In Standard mode it sits way too close to the car in front for my liking. Switching to Chill mode made a noticeable difference.

Speed recognition still needs work too. On the way down into Emu Plains it briefly recognised the 110 km/h zone, which was the first time I'd seen it do that. After that, though, every other 110 zone was treated as a 100 zone. I ended up using Hurry mode just to get it cruising at around 105 km/h so I wasn't holding up traffic. At one point it also saw a 60 km/h truck speed sign and dropped itself to 60 km/h, so I had to override it with the accelerator.

It also still has this weird obsession on the M4 of diving from the middle lane into a left lane that's ending, only to merge straight back out again 10 seconds later. Hopefully that's something they clean up in a future update.

One thing I was happy about though, on a previous drive it tried to head toward the Leonay exit. Today it stayed on course without any hesitation.

Overall?

Honestly... 9.5/10.

If you'd told me a few years ago I'd be sitting back while a car drove itself through Sydney CBD, over the Harbour Bridge and home with almost no intervention, I'd have laughed.

The scary part is Australia is still behind the US software releases. If this is what we've got now, I'm really looking forward to seeing what the next few updates bring.

For anyone wondering whether Australian FSD is usable today, I'd say absolutely. It still has some quirks, but the fact it can comfortably handle Sydney CBD, arguably some of the most chaotic roads in Australia, is seriously impressive.

Curious how everyone else's Australian FSD experience has been so far.

When I told the service person why I was so surprised it was activated they looked more surprised than me.