Tesla Model X review

That’s the million dollar question. Tesla’s UK pricing is as changeable as the weather is here, but with the Model X currently not offered on these shores we can’t even offer you our best guess right now. You can still purchase one through the Tesla Inventory if you wish: at the time of writing a used version could cost you anything between £45k and nearly £90k.

You can still go through the process of ordering a new Model X too, with the options limited to the wheel size, colour choice, interior finish, number of seats and how clever you want your driving assistance tech to be. We asked Tesla when the Model X would be available again in the UK and it currently has no timeline for its return. Hmm.

Imagining that you do get your hands on a Model X, owning a Tesla is as little hassle as driving one. Have a home charger installed for a few hundred quid if you want the convenience and have off-street parking, but early buyers – if they’d bought the car from new – could do all their top ups for free at a Supercharger. We don’t yet no if this deal with return when the Model X does, though it seems unlikely.

If yours is second hand, home charging will be your cheapest way to top up, as even today’s crazy energy prices haven’t quite reached the 67p/kWh it’ll cost you to use a Supercharger. Still, building its own charging network in parallel with car sales was, of course, Tesla’s genius. The joy of being a company coming at things afresh and unburdened.

Just mind the claimed range. Tesla says all Model Xs will travel over 300 miles on a charge, but the reality is about 220-240 miles, and when we last tested one in cold, stormy weather, about 200 miles was the reality, at an average not much over two miles per kilowatt-hour.

When you stop to fill up, the latest Model X is capable of charging speeds of up to 250kW, which will have you on your way again in the time it takes to empty your bladder and then refill it with service station coffee. Just bear in mind that some older Superchargers can’t yet reach that peak rate, which may also suffer if a particular station or hub is busy. Imagine your extended family all streaming movies on your piddly wifi at Christmas. Yeah, it’s like that.

But we digress. On the whole the Model X does seem to use less electricity certainly than the Jaguar I-Pace, and betters the Audi e-tron mostly too. As we discovered when we tested all three together in Devon a few years back.

The old version of the Model X came with a healthy four-year, 50,000-mile warranty, with eight years cover for the drivetrain and battery. Meanwhile the £2,500 government grant has long since gone the way of the dodo, so there’s no more state incentive for your ultra-green choice of personal vehicle. Sorry.