Tesla Model X 2025: Practicality As standard, the car comes with five seats, and all of those get a generous amount of head- and legroom. What’s more, all of these seats slide and recline electrically, allowing passengers to easily play with their seating position. As an optional extra, the car can also be specified with six seats (three rows of two) or seven seats (three in the middle row and two behind). This gives it an immediate practicality edge over rivals like the E-Tron, I-Pace and EQC, which all have five seats only. Adults will fit in the rearmost chairs, but headroom and legroom are limited, so you’d only want to stay there for short hops. Access to the rear is made easy by those theatrical Falcon Wing doors. The massive openings mean it’s easy to clamber into any of the rear seats, and the cutout in the roof also means you don’t have to stoop when fitting a child seat, or strapping your offspring into it. Things aren’t perfect, though. They can be rather slow to operate, and they stop moving automatically when they come too close to another car’s bodywork, leaving the door hanging only half-open. If the parking space you’re in is particularly tight, this might mean limboing into your seat. The boot is pretty big in five-seat mode, on a par with those of competitors, but it’s pretty miniscule with seven seats in place. You can’t fold the middle row down flat like you can in rivals, either, which limits your capacity when carrying big loads. Tesla Model X 2025: Quality and finish Judged in isolation, the interior looks fine. The minimalist design looks smart and progressive, while many of the materials have a pleasing finish. Man y others, however, don’t, and with panel gaps that are often large and inconsistent, there’s a distinctly flimsy feel to the cabin. Well, to the whole car, actually, because you’ll find these iffy panel gaps on the exterior bodywork, too. This is especially disappointing given the lofty price of the car, and it becomes even more noticeable when you compare the Tesla directly with impeccably built rivals like the Audi E-Tron and Mercedes EQC, both of which are considerably cheaper to buy. Tesla Model X 2025: Infotainment The whole cabin is dominated by the huge portrait-orientated 17.0-inch touchscreen, partly because of its size, and partly because there’s so little other stuff to look at: everything is incorporated into the touchscreen system. Considering how complex it is and the sheer number of functions it has to deal with, it’s actually pretty easy to find your way through the menus without getting too lost. One or two functions are tucked away in some odd places, but overall, the system is fairly intuitive. Like all touchscreens, though, it’s not as easy to use on the move because you have to concentrate on pressing exactly the right bit of the screen. Some of the icons are a wee bit small, too, but there’s no faulting the speed and responsiveness of the system, and the graphics look really smart. Most of the functionality you’d expect is covered, including Bluetooth, DAB radio and Google maps navigation. If you're a fan of Apple Carplay/Android Auto, though, you’ll be disappointed, because Tesla refuses to support it. Tesla Model X value for money Value for Money Rating Reliability is something of an unknown quantity, because Tesla is too small and too young a company to feature in many reliability surveys. Tesla Model X 2025: Prices At the time of writing, brand new examples of the Model X started at around £90,000 for the Long Range and rose to just over £100,000 for the Performance. That’s considerably more than rivals including the Audi E-Tron, Jaguar I-Pace and Mercedes EQC, but in fairness, the Tesla is considerably bigger and none of the rivals can offer seven seats (which did cost a considerable amount to add, by the way). The Tesla doesn’t hold onto its value as well as its rivals, either, meaning you’ll lose a comparatively large slice of your outlay when the time comes to sell the car on, although used car buyers will be rubbing their hands together because somebody else has already taken the financial hit of depreciation. These weaker resale values won’t do much to keep monthly payments down for finance customers, either. Tesla Model X 2025: Running Costs Not only has Tesla been changing things constantly since the Model X was launched, but the way ranges (and fuel consumption and CO2 emissions) are tested has also changed during that time. For example, compare the old P100D’s range of 351 miles with the latest Long Range version’s figure of 314 miles, and you’d think that the older car goes further in the real world. It doesn’t, though, it’s just that it was tested under the older NEDC standard rather than the later - and more stringent - WLTP one. Compared with other electric cars, though the official range figures (even the Performance version manages 301miles) are significantly higher than those of most rivals. Like with any of them, though, you shouldn’t bank on matching that figure in the real world. Assume a figure of around 280 miles is more realistic in good conditions, and that’ll drop significantly in cold weather. A 7kW wallbox charger takes around 15 hours to deliver a full charge of the batteries. Obviously, rapid chargers will juice your car up quicker, and the good news is that Tesla has its very own network of these dotted around the country for exclusive use by its customers. As ever with Tesla, though, there’s some confusion around the terms. It was once completely free, then in 2017, Tesla changed its mind and began to start charging customers to use it, and then in 2019, the firm changed its mind again and made use of the network free once more for Model S and X customers. So, at the moment it’s free, but frankly, Lord knows how long that’ll remain the case for. Choosing an electric car offers buyers savings in a lot of areas, but insurance isn’t one of them: it seems our friends in the underwriting world are less keen to encourage motorists into eco-friendly cars, and are more keen to get their cut. As such, the Model X sits in insurance group 50, the most expensive group there is, which is hardly surprising given the astronomical cost of the car. Satisfaction Index