The Model Y is Tesla's first car to use a heat pump instead of electric resistance for interior cabin heating. Some electric vehicles from other manufacturers, including the Nissan Leaf, Renault Zoe, BMW i3 EV, Jaguar I-Pace, Audi e-tron, and Kia Niro, had already implemented heat pumps. In cold weather, the Model Y heat pump can be up to 300% more efficient than other Tesla cars' use of electric resistance heating. Because of this, the Model Y should be more energy efficient than other Tesla cars in cold weather. Electric cars can lose 40% or more of their range in cold weather (at ambient temperatures below 20 °F (−7 °C)) when heating the interior cabin.
Given this mechanism that the Tesla Model Y car uses to heat the interior cabin, what are some pros and cons of this design?
The heat pump in the Tesla Model Y runs the same heating operations as other cars but much more efficiently, significantly increasing driving range for the same battery size. Most other cars use electric resistance heating which consumes much more energy to perform the same job.