Do you love a little highway wind blasting through the top of your car and ruffling your hair?
Then a Tesla may not be for you. The EV maker’s current consumer models — the Model 3, Model Y, and the soon-to-be-discontinued Cybertruck — offer glass roofs that are fixed in place.
During an episode of “Jay Leno’s Garage” released on Monday, Franz von Holzhausen, Tesla’s chief designer, explained why the movable glass roof panels once offered on the Model S are no longer available.
First, Tesla thinks the novelty wears off on drivers.
“I mean, we’re a very data-driven company,” he said. “We looked at the data and realized that people use the sunroof when they maybe first get the car.”
Second, nixing the sunroof makes cars easier to build.
Von Holzhausen said Tesla’s old motorized sunroofs were “really complicated” and that Tesla saw the features “in service quite a bit.” It was heavy, he added, and required a lot of parts to build.
Manufacturing simplicity is one of Tesla’s core strengths. Its cars require fewer parts and fasteners to build than its competitors.
This year, Tesla has taken some striking steps to make vehicle assembly lines even more efficient: In April, the company stopped making the Model S and Model X (the latter of which CEO Elon Musk once called a “Fabergé egg,” because of its complicated design, including its signature falcon-wing rear doors).
Last week, Musk posted on X that it was winding down production of the Cybertruck. On Monday, Musk said part of that rationale was the “opportunity cost of the complexity of Cybertruck.”
Leno, while walking around a 2027 Model Y L with a fixed glass roof, compared tilting and opening sunroofs to a home hot tub: an exciting feature owners might use at first, but one that quickly loses its appeal.
“It’s just, you know, a lot of parts to build it,” von Holzhausen added. “If people aren’t using it, why go through the hustle?”
In the latest Jay Leno’s Garage episode, Lars Moravy and Franz von Holzhausen explain why Tesla removed the opening sunroof from the Model Y L.
Jay specifically asks: “There’s no sunroof anymore, right?”
Lars/Franz confirm it has been omitted.
Why they dropped it (per Lars):
✅ Tesla is data-driven: people tend to open the sunroof a lot in the first week or so after buying the car, then almost never use it again.
✅ It’s a complex, heavy assembly with many parts that shows up frequently in service.
✅ Not worth the cost and complexity if owners stop using it.What they did instead:
✅ Kept (and improved) the fixed panoramic glass roof.
✅ Added triple silver coating on the roof to better reflect heat and keep the cabin cooler.
✅ Major upgrades to the laminated glass layers so it rejects heat/sunlight and blocks UVB + UVA “like the best sunscreen in the world.”
✅ Brought the rear glass all the way to the spoiler (more square rear glass) for better visibility.
✅ Used thicker/insulated glass overall to cut cabin noise.
✅ Antennas are embedded in the glass so there’s no external roof antenna.— The Tesla Newswire (@TeslaNewswire) November 9, 2026
Read the original article on Business Insider
The post Tesla has a very Tesla reason for killing off its sunroof option appeared first on Business Insider.
