Our Teraglide Pro: how the back of our Tesla became a kitchen, drawer and bed

If you've tried to sleep in the back of a Tesla (or most cars), you'll know about the slope. With the rear seats folded, the floor pitches towards the boot, and there's a kink right where the seats hinge. We tried it years ago in our old Model 3 with cushions and ad-hoc blocks of wood. Terrible night's sleep. The hips suffered.

The Teraglide is the fix.

We installed a Teraglide Pro in our Model Y Juniper in July 2025.

It's a modular plywood platform that drops into the boot, expands forward over the folded rear seats to make a perfectly flat floor, and packs in a retractable kitchen drawer and a slide-out bamboo bench underneath. Gas struts hold the rear lid up so the sub-trunk — where we keep our Kings fridge — stays accessible without dismantling the lot. No drilling, no permanent modifications, no goodbye to your boot.

Teraglide is made in Auckland, New Zealand, with renewable energy. They quote 42 seconds for set-up. We didn't time ours, but the day-to-day transition from "drive" to "camp" is genuinely a minute or two — pull the seats down, slide out the drawer, flip up the gas-strut lid, unfold the platform top. The car turns into a different machine.

The drawer is more than a tray — it's a kitchen station. We keep cutlery, chopping board, thermos, plates, kettle, salt-and-pepper, the whole travel pantry inside it. Slide it out, flip up the bench, pull a chair from the frunk, and there's a kitchen and dining table set up in under a minute. We've made French toast next to the Snowy River, brewed cuppas at obscure picnic tables, and hosted instant cafés in country campgrounds.

Two things we got wrong, so you don't have to:

We didn't strap the platform down on our first install. Teraglide actually messaged us after seeing the photos to warn us. The supplied straps were in the car for the next trip, but we hadn't fitted them — and sure enough, the first time we extended the drawer fully without anything weighing down the platform, the whole thing tried to tip backward. Lesson: fit the straps properly in your driveway, at home. They thread through the back-seat fold around the tether points, avoiding the Juniper's rear seat power cables. Fiddly, not hard.

The Pro is also the tallest configuration — wonderful for storage and a properly flat bed, but the gap at the back to crawl through is correspondingly narrower. Getting in feels a bit like a recruit on a commando course. A small folding stool to step on helps. Once you're in, there's plenty of room to sleep. Teraglide also makes a Core platform without the drawer, and a Solo, if you want lower or simpler. Ours is the maximum-storage option.

Things click together in obvious ways. Gas struts feel solid. There's a quiet pleasure in unfolding it on a cold evening, and looking at a kitchen, dining table and bedroom that didn't exist five minutes earlier.

If you're considering one of the Teraglide platforms, you'll find their site in the links below. The link is an affiliate one — sends a small commission our way at no extra cost to you.