Image: Riz Akhtar
For the past few years, the Tesla Model Y has been the best selling EV in Australia, and for much of the rest of the world, and the release of the refreshed Model Y, with major updates to its styling and what’s underneath, is one of the company’s most significant moves.
Last week, I got behind the wheel of this car in Victoria, and after spending a bit of time driving around the city streets, on highways and around sweeping Victorian country roads, I can safely say the best-selling EV in Australia just got incredibly better.
How? Well, Tesla has been listening to its customers and on top of retaining the things people that liked about the Model Y, while working on the bits that needed improvements, its engineers have managed to deliver a product that will attract millions more in years to come.
And the improvements are not in just one part of the car; they are significant in many areas, from upping the game in ride comfort, sharper handling, one-pedal drive mode, increased accuracy of steering response, infotainment system, autopilot capabilities, safety and most importantly, efficiency, to name a few.
We will get to all of these, so let’s get started with the variant I had, a 2025 build, dual-motor Long Range, which, according to Tesla’s configurator, starts at $68,900 before on-roads. Adding the Quicksilver paint, which looks great in person, is an additional $2,600.
This has a claimed range of 551 km on the WLTP cycle, thanks to the larger battery pack which is estimated to be around 80 kWh. That’s more than the approximate 60 kWh battery pack found in the entry-level RWD.
The Long Range variant’s powertrain allows it to accelerate from 0-100 km/h in just 4.8 seconds. This zippiness from this smooth drivetrain is definitely handy when overtaking cars on the freeway or around town. More on this later.
The first key change obvious to most on the road is the refreshed design, which features a lightbar inspired by the front of Tesla’s Cybertruck and, more recently, the company’s Robotaxi, the Cybercab.
This full-width light bar gives the new model more of a presence on the road and is a lot easier to spot.
There’s also a change in the rear with the red full-width lightbar presenting an afterburner effect when driving on the road. It’s stunning when seeing it on the road and even cooler to see when indicating at night.
This is seen clearly on the new hardware 4.0 side repeater cameras, which pick up the red glow on the road by displaying it on the screen’s blind spot monitor. It’s one of the nicest touches to a car’s rear-end design I’ve seen implemented in many years.
Staying on lights, the auto high beam feature in the new Model Y, which uses its matrix adaptive headlights that are located under the light bar, is by far the best implementation I’ve experienced.
On darker freeways between Melbourne and Sorrento, these made illuminating the highway a priority while on autopilot and simultaneously dimmed the highbeam light that would have blinded cars in front of it or those approaching it.
EVs that are much more expensive than this Model Y, which I have driven in recent months, or even those in the luxury categories, don’t have adaptive headlights working so well.
This is a credit to Tesla’s engineers, who have listened to customers on the lights found on the previous generation car. It makes driving at night a whole lot easier and safer, in my opinion.
Cabin noise is all relative and on freeway speeds, Tesla has really taken this seriously. According to the brand, the new Model Y is over 20% quieter than the previous generation and after spending quite a bit of time at highway speeds in it, they’ve really nailed it.
By adding acoustic glass in many more parts of the car, including its roof, driving it is much nicer for both drivers and any passengers that come for the ride. Even when parked, the noise isolation from the outside is quite noticeable.
To add to this, Tesla has even improved making calls in the car, thanks to new cabin microphones. Whether you are driving or parked, phone calls are much better in the new, quieter Model Y.
Speaking of sound, one area where Tesla has definitely taken things up a notch is in the audio system that its sound engineers have developed. Immersive is an understatement when explaining how good it actually is.
Listening to songs on Spotify, which don’t always tend to be the highest quality, still made it quite an enjoyable place to listen.
This is done with an array of speakers, some even invisible, according to Tesla, that turn the cabin into a near recording studio-like experience.
In the Long Range model, we had a total of 16 speakers and a subwoofer, which work together to deliver songs with high levels of clarity. It’s even better with music that has punchy bass elements to it.
Unlike many other car brands, which use external speaker brands to highlight how good a sound system in their cars really is, Tesla does it better without any brand promo.
They really should label theirs as “Tesla Acoustics” because the one in the new Model Y is certainly for music lovers.
Now, the previous Model Y drove like an engaging SUV should. Being high off the ground compared to the Model 3 sedan, it had its moments in corners, particularly on sweeping country roads.
The 2025 Tesla Model Y I drove has completely changed this, and I don’t even know how to best explain it. Simply, it’s an SUV that now has the driving dynamics of a sports sedan, especially on windey, high-speed roads.
On city streets, it feels like a normal Model Y, but as soon as you get it into the mountains where sportscars are happy, it comes into its own.
The upgraded suspension stays planted and provides a great feel through the steering wheel, which is weighted just right in standard mode.
This very suspension makes driving on bumpy roads a lot more comfortable than the previous car and when driving at speed, handles those situations just as well.
According to Tesla, this system absorbs bumps 51% better than the outgoing model and they are not wrong as it makes the car feel so much more composed in many driving situations I found myself testing in.
The Tesla suspension teams have been hard at work and appear to have struck a balance that’s very hard to achieve in a high-volume production car.
Let’s set some ground rules on what we have here. It’s a nearly two-tonne, long-range electric car with over 550 km of claimed range. The roughly 80 kWh Nickel-Manganese-Cobalt (NMC) battery pack feeds two electric motors, so it’s expected to be not as efficient as many more streamlined sedans on the market.
That’s where the new Model Y completely shakes things up. Even on my high-speed freeway runs with heated seats and steering wheel on cooler Melbourne mornings as we head into autumn, I was able to get a remarkable efficiency of 13.6 kWh/100 km.
For comparison, the dual-motor BYD Seal sedan’s energy consumption with a similarly sized battery on the highway last year was over 16.5 kWh/100 km.
It outperforms sleeker sedans on the efficiency front, and to put it simply, the new Model Y will need to be charged less, saving owners time and money when compared to nearly every other electric SUV and sedan on the market.
Now that’s saying something about this car’s design and enhancements in its aerodynamics, which now deliver a coefficient of drag of just 0.22 or 4% lower than the previous Model Y.
With these efficiency figures, it’s not hard to see why the new Tesla Model Y is the king of EV efficiency.
Tesla is known for its Autopilot system, which in the new Model Y has also seen improvements. It’s super easy to turn on, using just the right scroll wheel.
Once it’s on, it makes driving on freeways so much easier. Gone are the days of phantom braking or the system being unsure if it should drive past the truck in the lane next to the car.
It does all that in a very smooth way and doesn’t slow down even around bends and turns on highways. Many other systems that I have tested now slow down or are jittery on freeways with the steering wheel gently moving around to keep you in the centre.
None of that is true with Autopilot in the new Model Y. Even in misty conditions, the system handled freeway driving without a breeze and is miles ahead of where it had been back in 2020 when I first started driving with it.
The new hardware and software in the new car deliver a very smooth experience, paving the path for supervised self-driving locally in years to come.
Another key area in which the new Model Y outperforms many other SUVs is its one-pedal-driving. Yes, it’s available in all Teslas, but its adjustable levels make it easier for those who might not like the high regen.
During my time with the car, I kept it on high and unlike many other cars, it even works in reverse, so backing out of a steep driveway is a breeze as you don’t have to control the car with the brakes, instead with the accelerator.
That’s just a much safer option, in my opinion, and more EVs should adopt this one-pedal drive system.
One of the biggest advantages that Tesla drivers have is access to over 110 ultra-fast charging, super reliable sites with over 600 plugs across the country. In my test, that meant it was easy to find a charger to test the fast-charging speeds of the car with less than 1,000 km on the odometer.
Arriving at one of the smaller Tesla supercharger sites of 4 bays in Brighton, a suburb of Melbourne, with around 29% state of charge, I backed into the spot, got out, plugged it in and let the charger do its thing.
Within 3 seconds, the handshake was successful, and the car started to receive over 200 kW without any issues. I went from 29% to 80% in around 20 minutes before unplugging the car to hit the road again.
No need to download any additional apps, figure out if the charger will be working when I arrive there, deal with handshake issues or the wait time that comes with slower charging.
This seamless experience is another reason why Tesla still gives an EV ownership experience that is so much better than any other brand in the country.
One area Tesla has certainly made improvements in is the ride comfort in the rear. There is way more support, thanks to the extended rear seat bench. Along with that, there is also a new screen in the rear.
Like the Model 3, this screen can be used to watch YouTube, listen to music or adjust things in the car. Having friends with the Model 3 that have this screen makes it quite entertaining for kids on short drives or on longer road trips.
After spending quite a bit of time with the car, I can say that Tesla has definitely over-delivered on the new Model Y. With so many subtle changes in the way it looks, it feels like a completely new car under its skin.
Those wanting more from performance would just have to wait for the new Model Y Performance, which is also in the works for arrival later in 2025.
With competition only intensifying, the way this car drives and the improvements Tesla has made to a winning formula, including keeping its indicator stalk, I have no doubt that this Model Y will remain Australia’s best-selling EV in Australia.
I would go as far as saying that this new Model Y will once again help Tesla hold the crown for having the world’s best-selling car in 2025.
2025 Tesla Model Y Long Range specifications
Riz is the founder of carloop based in Melbourne, specialising in Australian EV data, insight reports and trends. He is a mechanical engineer who spent the first 7 years of his career building transport infrastructure before starting carloop. He has a passion for cars, particularly EVs and wants to help reduce transport emissions in Australia. He currently drives a red Tesla Model 3.
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