Kids are hell on a car. Ever since we moved to a Tesla Model Y from the 3, we’ve been using the car far more as a family and taking trips with all three of our young boys almost non-stop. But that means they drop drinks, crush goldfish into dust, and generally touch every single bit of the car with sticky fingers. I finally have a way to prevent these from destroying my car thanks to Tesla Shields’ floor mats.

For the last three months since I took delivery of my Model Y, I’d been using the old floor mats I had from my Model 3 in my Y. This worked ok, but the cars are a bit different in size, so there were gaps in front of the mats, to the sides, and the back seat ones didn’t really sit right on the floor between the front seats because of the differences in width. These mats were good, but they were also one of the cheaper ones I found on Amazon years ago, not a premium car floor mat. When Tesla Shields reached out to me about testing their refreshed Model Y floor mats, I jumped on it.

Save %3 on any order from TeslaShields with this link

Disclaimer: Tesla Shields sent me a set of the front and rear seat floor mats in exchange for this review. They have not otherwise sponsored this post.

There are essentially two classes of floor mat you can get for a car. There are the generic universal ones made my companies that produce them in bulk across a huge range of car models. These tend to be cheaper, but of lower quality and not customized and fit exactly to the car. In my experience, they don’t hold up as well either. The other type are the ones made specifically for the exact car model and even model year. Since Tesla regularly refreshes their cars at arbitrary times when parts are ready, rather than waiting for new model years, finding accessories that perfectly fit the exact model you have can be difficult. Tesla Shields makes this easy by clearly offering different options by production date.

One of the things I was pleasantly surprised about when I picked up my Model Y was that floor mats are actually included. Maybe they always were, and it would make sense for a car at an over $60,000 price point, but I didn’t remember this from my first Tesla. While it’s great that these are included, they are pretty barebones fabric mats that just sit on top of the floors and end up collecting every particle of dust and dirt. There are animal crackers ground in that I imagine I’ll never be able to get out.

The moment I pulled out the Tesla Shield mats, I knew they would be a huge upgrade over the basic standard ones Tesla provided and the ones I had before. They are solid without being incredibly thick and unwieldy, but also molded millimeter perfect to fit exactly in the spaces on the floor between seats. They essentially create a perfect seal that won’t allow anything to get under them and onto the actual floors. Animal crackers and water bottles have met their match.

I also really appreciate the 3D molding effect they have. They are not unnecessarily deep, so they don’t feel like they take away space in the car, but they have a nice depth that means stuff gets collected into them and doesn’t spill out. Even the water bottle that our youngest loves throwing around the car hasn’t found a way to get water past these mats. My dirt covered Birkenstocks may cover them in dust and ground up homemade granola after a day hike nearby, but they don’t seem to scuff and they’re super easy to clean off. They’re relatively smooth and don’t have the honeycomb pattern our old ones did that collected every little pebble in the known universe, so they’re easy to keep clean as well. As someone who sees how much the value of the car has increased since I bought it, I’m heavily incentivized to keep it as close to mint condition as possible, and these mats are truly helping there.

Floor mats may not be the most exciting part of buying a new car, but they are incredibly important in keeping a car clean and feeling new. I like my car to feel clean and pristine as much as possible to keep me excited about getting into it, so products like this really play a huge role even if I don’t think about them much after putting them in. These are a huge upgrade over the stock and cheap mats I used to have, and with some major roadtrips, hiking, and going off road adventures for our family coming up this fall and winter - plus I might have to cart around three sets of dirty skis inside the car - I’m thrilled to have these for our family. They feel like the ultimate parent hack to allow me to enjoy so many adventures with our kids while still keeping my car safe and clean.