The new Tesla Model Y is about to land in the U.S. And when it does, it comes with more range—and a bigger price tag, at least at first.
Tesla updated its U.S. website on Thursday with the refreshed Model Y that recently went on sale in China. There’s only one trim listed on the website currently, the Long Range all-wheel drive christened as the “Launch Series.”
The automaker said deliveries of the U.S.-spec version would begin in March at $59,990 before factoring in destination, taxes and incentives. That makes this trim about $12,000 more expensive than the equivalent trim of the current generation Model Y.
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It gets a small range boost, 320 miles compared to the 311 miles on the current Long Range AWD version. It can apparently add 154 miles of range in 15 minutes of DC fast charging. On the performance front, it appears to be considerably quicker. Its 0-60 miles per hour time is 4.1 seconds, compared to 4.8 seconds before.
That said, the Launch Series appears to follow a similar philosophy as the Foundation Series Cybertruck. It’s fully kitted out with Full-Self Driving (Supervised) as standard, a vegan suede interior and Launch Series badging all around.
We expect Tesla to release other trims sometime down the line. And they will all have plenty of things in common. That includes the most notable visual upgrades that we saw on the China-spec version earlier this month. The design is now sleeker and draws inspiration from the Robotaxi and the Cybertruck. It sports a sleek, full-width light bar up front and a chunky one at the rear.
The cabin is now claimed to be quieter thanks to upgraded suspension, acoustic glass and redesigned body castings, which Tesla says contribute to a “whisper-quiet” ride. There’s an additional 8-inch touchscreen at the back and the second-row seats, which previously had manual fold, are now powered. The front seats now get ventilation—they already had heating and power adjustability before. Tesla has also dialed down the hyper minimalism a bit by installing a turn signal stalk.
The Model Y has been Tesla’s best-seller and also the best-selling car in the world in 2023 of all categories. Tesla will hope to drive significant volumes of this updated version, given that its lineup has been aging, its sales dropped for the first time in a decade last year and rivals are quickly catching up.
The Model Y Launch Series seems rather expensive, but we’re expecting more affordable versions eventually. We’ll see how much they can help revitalize Tesla’s sales this year.
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