World's best-selling car is now even better as Tesla updates Model Y
Of course, there wasn't a lot wrong with the Model Y prior to the latest upgrade, hence it claimed the mantle of the world's best selling car in 2023 and 2024.
But it's a competitive market and Tesla was determined to continue striding ahead.
The Tesla Model Y Launch Edition has clean and confident lines This likeable SUV has undergone extensive re-engineering to maximise efficiency, comfort, connectivity, and safety, with a completely redesigned interior and exterior.
The Model Y is a very efficient electric car, with a range to rival the best electric SUVs.
The AWD Launch Edition, tested here, offers a WLTP-certified range of 353 miles.
Charging speeds of 250kW are among the best, meaning you should be able to add around 150 miles of range in 15 minutes at a Supercharger.
The Supercharger network is reassuring for Tesla drivers when it comes to charger availability The suspension, wheels and tyres have also been updated to ensure a smoother and quieter ride.
The first thing you notice is the redesigned exterior, featuring improved aerodynamics.
It features a lower front-end with a full-width, three-piece lightbar. Below it, a redesigned front fascia enhances width and stability, integrating aerodynamic ducts for improved efficiency.
At the rear, an innovative 1.6m lightbar uses indirect reflected lighting, making it one of the industry's largest.
The redesigned tailgate looks smart The redesigned tailgate, spoiler, and extended diffuser enhance aerodynamics, stability, and impact protection. A revamped tow hitch features a quick-release cover for ease of use.
Tesla Vision, relying solely on cameras and neural networks, gives the Model Y an edge in aerodynamic development.
Other new aerodynamic features include a thermoplastic rear spoiler and ultra-efficient 19-inch wheels.
A new front camera, now integrated into the fascia, provides an expanded view, complete with a fluid washer and heating for fog prevention and defrosting.
The Model Y remains the most efficient SUV in its class, with the Rear-Wheel Drive variant achieving just 13.9kWh/100km—lower than many small city cars.
With Tesla's Supercharger network and Trip Planner, long-distance travel feels stress-free.
The cabin has an uncluttered feel In terms of the cabin, a strong emphasis has been placed on interior refinement.
It's a pleasant and relaxing place to be, with premium aluminium and textile materials found throughout, along with ambient lighting that each driver can customise to their own liking.
One criticism of previous models was that wind noise at high speeds was a little intrusive. Tesla has tackled that issue with 360-degree acoustic glass and other sound-dampening materials, reducing road and wind noise by as much as 22 per cent.
Ride comfort has been improved with a stiffer body, redesigned suspension geometry, and damping tech.
The vehicle has a mature and sleek appearance from all angles A refined front suspension and steering ratio has boosted highway stability, while optimised rear suspension reduces impact harshness and improves ride quality over rough roads.
The redesigned front seats are more comfortable and better ventilated than before, while the new centre console features smooth-sliding aluminium doors, extra storage, and cupholders.
The cabin remains minimalist and uncluttered, but a design flourish comes in the form of aluminium accents that now enhance the steering wheel, door trims, and instrument panel.
Steering wheel controls offer quick access to key functions, while a precision-engineered indicator stalk ensures effortless use.
The upgraded Tesla audio system delivers an immersive experience with up to 16 speakers.
It's not easy to make significant improvements to the world's best selling car, but Tesla has achieved just that.
Tesla Model Y Launch Edition
RANGE: 353 miles (WLTP)
TOP SPEED: 125 mph
0-60MPH: 4.1 seconds
PAINT COLOURS: Black and Quicksilver
INTERIOR: Black
WHEELS: 20' Helix 2.0 Wheels
ACCESSORIES: Tow hitch included
PRICE: Launch Edition no longer available for sale but was originally £60,990.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
The Sun
12 hours ago
- The Sun
Best used cars with biggest price drops in 2025 revealed – including three Ford models £1,000s cheaper than last year
A NUMBER of the nation's most popular used cars has seen significant price reductions this year - including a sought-after luxury EV. Data from AA Cars reveals some of the best deals drivers can find on vehicles aged three and four years old, reflecting increased stock and softened demand in the used car market. 3 3 3 Experts at AA Cars believe buyers now have more choice and negotiating power compared to just a year ago. Leading the list is the Tesla Model 3, which has experienced a dramatic 27% drop in average price year-on-year. The sleek EV, one of the world's best-selling cars, has fallen from £21,905 in 2024 to £15,993 in 2025, saving buyers an impressive £5,912. This sharp depreciation highlights a broader trend in falling EV prices, driven by increased supply, the introduction of more affordable models and the maturation of the used EV market. In second place is the Ford Ranger, a rugged pickup truck available in both single and double cab configurations. Its price has dropped by 18%, offering buyers savings of more than £4,000. Another standout luxury vehicle is the Range Rover Evoque, down 16%, with average prices falling from £24,714 to £20,712. Other notable four-year-old models include the Ford Kuga, Ford Focus, BMW X1 and Toyota Yaris, all showing reductions of 10 to 13%. For three-year-old vehicles, the Ford Ranger and Range Rover Evoque again lead the savings, with price cuts of 17 to 18%. SUVs such as the Volvo XC40, Ford Puma and Ford Kuga continue to offer excellent value for families, while smaller cars like the Fiat 500, Toyota Yaris and Ford Focus remain ideal for those looking to be a little more economical. One clear trend emerging is the growing appeal of affordable EVs and hybrids. As the cost gap between traditional and greener cars narrows, more drivers are considering making the switch. However, buyers are urged to shop wisely, ensuring vehicles are thoroughly inspected and come with verified service histories. AA Cars recommends choosing dealers with AA Inspected accreditation or opting for independent inspections starting at £99 to ensure peace of mind. James Hosking, Director of AA Cars, said: 'With many three-year-old cars now up to 20% cheaper than they were this time last year, drivers in the market for a used vehicle are in a strong position to find real value. 'This sharp correction in prices, especially on popular models, means buyers can now access premium features and newer designs at far more affordable prices. 'We're seeing a particularly favourable landscape for those upgrading from smaller or older models. 'The combination of increased stock and softened demand is giving consumers far more choice and better negotiating power than they've had in years. 'There are also encouraging signs for those considering electric or hybrid options, with more used low-emission vehicles entering the market and bringing prices down. As the cost gap between traditional and greener cars narrows, making the switch is becoming a more realistic option for many. 'Still, it's important to be well-informed. Shoppers should take time to compare listings, check what a fair market price looks like for their preferred spec, and factor in how things like mileage and vehicle condition could affect value over time. 'That's why it's so important to buy from a trusted dealer who can offer reassurances like a detailed inspection, verified service history, and third-party approvals. These are the things that help motorists buy with confidence.'
Telegraph
15 hours ago
- Telegraph
China plots robotaxi invasion of Britain
The Chinese robotaxis are coming. After taking over the streets of Beijing, self-driving vehicles are now poised to pour on to Britain's roads as soon as next year. Leading the charge is Baidu, a tech giant known as ' China's Google '. In a direct challenge to Elon Musk's Tesla, which has already started testing its full self-driving technology in the UK, Baidu has vowed to roll out thousands of cars across Europe. To do so, Baidu has partnered its Apollo Go taxi business with Lyft – one of Uber's main rivals – which plans to launch a self-driving taxi service in the UK in 2026. The Beijing-based tech giant has set its sights on Britain after being effectively locked out of America, where Chinese driverless software is to be banned from 2027. As a result, the expected flood of Chinese robotaxis risks putting Britain on a fresh collision course with the White House, although the potential for a geopolitical spat has far from halted interest from the Far East. In China, robotaxis are no longer a high-tech novelty. Companies including Baidu, WeRide, AutoX and all now offer self-driving shuttles that ferry passengers around without a driver. Encouraged by their success at home, they are targeting expansion in Europe. which is valued at $5bn (£3.7bn), has said it will begin trialling its service in Luxembourg, while WeRide has tested driverless buses in France and Spain. The start-ups, both of which are based in Guangzhou, have joined their Chinese peers in racing to tighten their grip on the global robotaxi market as adoption stutters across America. After making initial headway in the self-driving market, momentum among Silicon Valley giants has since tailed off. Uber notably abandoned its first effort to build an autonomous taxi in 2020 after a fatal crash, while Musk's long-standing promise to unleash an army of self-driving Teslas has so far been limited to Texas. Cruise, one of the most established robotaxi ventures, was shut down last year by its parent company GM, after an accident involving a woman who was dragged under the car's wheels. China's industry, on the other hand, appears to have moved up a gear. 'China's top players are pushing hard into overseas markets, potentially gaining a foothold before US rivals can fully scale', says Murtuza Ali, a technology analyst at Counterpoint Research. While Waymo, the US market leader, is offering paid robotaxi rides in Phoenix, Arizona; San Francisco and Los Angeles in California; and in Austin, Texas, China is already operating robotaxis across 30 Chinese cities. Baidu's service is also live in 15 cities, while dozens more companies are launching pilot programmes. Stan Boland, former chief executive of UK autonomous driving business Five AI, says: 'There is a propensity in China to take more risks in terms of automated driving. 'There has been a much higher level of caution here in Europe when it comes to regulatory approvals.' In the UK, new rules brought in under Labour mean self-driving taxi and bus pilots could be live on UK roads from 2026. The first is expected to be Uber's trial with Wayve, a UK AI business that has raised more than $1bn. US-based Lyft is also preparing to test driverless cars across the UK following its deal with Baidu. Next up could be WeRide, which recently held talks with the UK's South China trade envoy, Trevor Lewis, about introducing autonomous vehicles in the UK. A WeRide spokesman says: 'The UK is set to be an important part of WeRide's international growth. WeRide looks forward to potential collaborations that support the UK's smart mobility ecosystem.' Concerns about expansion However, the rapid expansion of China's self-driving car industry will no doubt raise scrutiny regarding its safety record. Just last week, a vehicle operated by Baidu in the city of Chongqing fell into a roadside construction pit, flipping the vehicle on to its side. A woman escaped from the car unharmed. Elsewhere, a car developed by tech giant Xiaomi was also involved in a crash in March that killed three people. The vehicle smashed into a cement pole at 97mph while operating in a driver-assist mode, rather than driving entirely independently. The crash prompted Chinese officials to crack down on marketing claims about self-driving capabilities from the country's carmakers. As well as safety fears, the influx of Chinese robotaxis is also expected to trigger geopolitical scrutiny. The US department of commerce warned in January that China's self-driving cars left 'opportunities for data exfiltration and unauthorised vehicle manipulation ', backing up its decision to ban the technology. Similar concerns are now emerging in Britain. China hawks fear the arrival of self-driving vehicles from the Far East will create risks akin to Huawei, the telecoms company barred from UK networks over national security concerns. Sir Iain Duncan Smith, the former Conservative Party leader, warned China's vehicles 'will further enhance the control they have on the UK', adding they would be 'filled with internet of things' technology – sensors that can be used for surveillance. Luke de Pulford, director of the Inter-Parliamentary Alliance on China, adds: 'Unless the UK wakes up soon, it will find itself having to foot a huge bill for removing high-risk equipment, like they had to over Huawei.' Yet despite such concerns, it appears that China's robotaxi experiment in Britain is only picking up pace.
Daily Mail
21 hours ago
- Daily Mail
Food at the woke Tesla Diner? The paper boxes probably taste better than some of the contents, says Joel Stein
The world's first Tesla Diner opened in West Hollywood last month, on a Monday at 4.20pm. That is, according to stoners everywhere, the time of day at which one is supposed to smoke marijuana, which perhaps tells you all you need to know about how Elon Musk expects people to operate his self-driving Teslas. Four days after its opening, I'm driving to meet my 16-year-old son there. Despite all the Trump-heiling and USAID-cutting and subsequent Tesla car burnings, Elon Musk has built his first diner/recharging station in one of the most liberal corners of one of the most liberal cities in America. When we arrive at 9.30pm, it's mayhem. 'I think this is now the most dangerous neighbourhood in Los Angeles,' my son says about what is normally a pleasant stretch of the city. Teslas are queuing around two blocks. Over the blare of Tesla horns, Tesla owners scream out of their Tesla windows at each other, and especially at the staff trying to manage the parking-lot entrances. People weave through the crowd jammed into the lot, recording everything on their smartphones as if they were war reporters. Eventually we find my friend Igor, who lives a few blocks away, standing in a very long line. An Elon Musk fan (who has kept that fact quiet recently), he has been excited since the project was announced seven years ago and has watched the diner and its 80 charging stations slowly being built over the past 18 months, turning his neighbourhood into the world's premier Tesla tourist attraction. Now Igor surveys the Mad Max chaos around us and says, 'As a local resident, I'm horrified.' One of the challenges was finding a chef. Suzanne Goin, who runs all the food at the Hollywood Bowl, said no – and then exchanged her Tesla for an electric BMW. Wolfgang Puck, the famous Austrian chef, declined. When Walter Manzke, the Michelin-starred chef of LA restaurant République, told the New York Times that the diner sounded 'exciting', the online backlash was so furious, he quickly backtracked. When those queueing on the sidewalk are told there is a three-hour wait, most of them don't leave. Igor tells me that if you're driving a Tesla, which I am, you can park in a charging station and order food from the screen in your car. But those parking spots are all full, too. I've never seen anyone literally jump up and down with excitement until Igor spots a Tesla exiting the lot. I grab the lone empty Supercharger spot in the parking lot/drive-in movie theatre. We plug in the car and giddily order £95 worth of food from the dashboard screen (you can also order inside on screens that look just like Tesla dashboards). The charging is so fast that my car is filled in ten minutes. Half an hour later a guy approaches with two bags of food. He is not, as promised in Musk postings on X, a woman on roller-skates or a robot, which are the two main male-fantasy ways to have food delivered. But we do not want to eat in our car. We have come here to see the Tesla Diner. Luckily, the woman at the door lets us past the red velvet ropes keeping back the angry crowd. The reason, she explains, was that we were nice, as opposed to screaming at her. Inside, it's pretty cool. In 2023, Musk promised the diner would be 'Grease meets The Jetsons with Supercharging' and that's exactly how it looks. The circular chrome retro-futuristic structure was designed by Stantec, the Canadian architecture company that built the Kennedy Space Center Visitor Complex. It looks a bit like Pizza Planet from the Toy Story movies. The white spiral staircase is sort-of futuristic, though the much-hyped humanoid Optimus robot prototypes that Tesla is developing, displayed behind glass, feel a bit Hard Rock Cafe. The robot dishing out popcorn has finished up for the day, which is a surprise since I did not know robots had time off. But this is very much a union town. The upstairs closes at 11pm, which seems weak for a '24-hour diner' (especially since its wraparound deck offers a great view of LA). It transpires that service is 24 hours only for Tesla drivers who order on the app, from their cars. For everyone else doors open at 6am and close at midnight. But the most surprising aspect, considering Musk's rants against transgender rights (despite the fact that Vivian Jenna Wilson, one of his 14 known children, is trans) are the bathrooms. All of them are marked 'gender neutral'. This is a woke diner. The food is sourced from bakeries, dairies and farms that are within the charging range of a Tesla (about 350 miles). The chef who eventually took the job is someone I know called Eric Greenspan. He responded to my email a few weeks before the diner opened by writing the most ominous of messages: 'Hey, Joel. Good to hear from you. I've got no comment on that project currently, but it certainly seems like a cool place. Looking forward to checking it out when it opens.' His food, which I've enjoyed before in forms from grilled cheese to Peking duck delivery, is even more underwhelming. It comes in paper boxes that look like Tesla Cybertrucks and probably taste better than some of the contents. The tuna melt (£10.50) is great, the strawberry shake (£6) is nicely packed with real berries, the Tesla Burger (£10) is OK. The rest is awful. The Lime Rickey soda (£6) is flat. After one bite of the egg sandwich on a buttermilk waffle (£9), Igor declares: 'This should be sent to Mars.' Is the impossibly flavourless waffle raw? You would return it if you'd bought it at a corner shop while you were really stoned. Musk had demanded that all the dishes be 'epic', which these definitely are not. The 'Epic Bacon' is in fact simply 'bacon'. Most of our fries are left untouched, along with all of that Lime Rickey soda. But no one inside seems to care. Teens happily crayon their version of the future Tesla on their placemats. The nice couple sitting next to us, one of whom teaches special-needs kids, own two Teslas and buy up all the merch they can, including a wind-up Tesla destined to be played with in the classroom. The most surprising thing is the lack of protesters. A few had been there earlier, but they were overwhelmed by the Tesla lovers. Sure, Musk is feuding with Trump, but the enemy-of-my-enemy-is-my-friend theory falls apart when they're both cool with Nazis. The people enjoying their non-epic burgers and fries aren't excited about a diner. They are excited about optimism. For decades every sci-fi movie and TV show has been dystopian. Everyone I know in LA is sure they're leaving their kids a worse world. That's not what the Tesla Diner says. It says that drive-ins and burgers are the right direction. Clean energy. Huge metal trucks. Local ingredients. Robots making popcorn. Gender-neutral bathrooms. Driving home through West Hollywood, I pass a bunch of self-driving Waymo cars on the street, and food-delivery robots on the pavement. The future, for the first time in a while, felt like it might just be OK. Though I suspect a lot of what I am feeling comes from putting the Tesla Diner in my rear-view mirror.
