What’s It Like to Live With?

What did we get?

We paid $61,380 out the door for our 2026 Tesla Model Y Launch Series. The Launch Series is currently the only trim available for the new Y, and it’s essentially a fully loaded Long Range model that includes Tesla’s Full Self-Driving (Supervised) hands-free driving assistant and all-wheel drive.

The new Model Y’s updates largely mirror those that the Model 3 received last year. The exterior styling is even more dramatically updated, with a Cybertruck-esque front light bar (fortunately the only bit of Cybertruck design language here) and a more angular look overall. Tesla also redesigned the taillights and incorporated something we’ve yet to see on another vehicle: A hidden LED element shines down on a silver panel across the trunk lid, resulting in a light bar-like effect without actually using, well, a light bar. The new exterior styling likely won’t be everyone’s cup of tea, but at least Tesla has more greatly differentiated the Y’s design from the 3’s.

The redesigned interior is just about identical to the Model 3’s, save for one crucial difference: There’s still a turn signal stalk. Whereas the Model 3 pivoted to unintuitive steering wheel-mounted turn signal buttons (which we really, really don’t like), the Model Y keeps a physical stalk. Unfortunately, Tesla’s annoying on-screen gear shift is present here, and in the limited driving we’ve done so far, we’ve already found ourselves in the wrong gear on multiple occasions despite using the system as designed.

Edmunds purchased this vehicle for the purpose of evaluation.

Instrumented testing results