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The Tesla Model Y Rear-Wheel Drive is a new lower-priced alternative to the Model Y ‘Premium’, and it’s also the most efficient Model Y ever, achieving 4.59 miles per kWh, with a range of 314 miles.
The Tesla Model Y had a mid-life refresh in 2025. Now, in 2026, a new entry-level Model Y Rear-Wheel Drive has been introduced, with a lower price, and offering the best efficiency of any Model Y. Can this help Tesla compete against increasing numbers of more affordable rivals?
The Model Y Rear-Wheel Drive has a smaller 60 kWh Lithium Iron Phosphate (LFP) battery, compared to the 78 kWh Nickel Manganese Cobalt (NMC) battery in the Model Y Long Range Rear-Wheel Drive model.
In 2025 the Model Y’s mid-life update included lightbars which extended across the entire width of the front and rear of the car. These lightbars have now disappeared on the Model Y Rear-Wheel Drive, with just narrow front and rear lights retained, making it visually different from the other Model Y variants.
Our test car was in Stealth Grey, with dark grey 19-inch Crossflow wheels, and a black, minimalistic interior. If you’re looking for more joy and creativity in terms of interior ambience, you may have to look elsewhere.
A large storage compartment sits in the centre console between the front seats, spacious rear legroom is on offer, along with 854 litres of luggage capacity, or 2,138 litres with the rear seats folded. There’s a large compartment under the boot floor, and also a 117-litre front trunk (frunk) under the bonnet.
If you’re sat at a charger for a few minutes then the Model Y’s touchscreen has lots of entertainment for kids (and potentially adults) including Tesla Theatre, Arcade and Toybox, with Photobooth, Paint Shop, Tron, Santa, Rainbow Road, Light Show, Boombox, Sketchpad and more.
The Tesla Model Y Rear-Wheel Drive shares the benefits of other Model Y variants in terms of driving experience, including the normal EV refinement and responsiveness, as well as the lack of wheelspin and torque steer that can be a feature of front-wheel drive EVs. The Model Y has decent body control for an SUV but it doesn’t really deliver the rewarding handling that you would expect from a rear-wheel drive chassis. Performance has been dialled down, but with a 0-62 mph time of 7.2 seconds, it’s still perfectly sufficient.
There are virtually no physical controls in the cabin of the new Model Y Rear-Wheel Drive. Even the driver’s seat, which did have physical buttons, now has to be adjusted using the touchscreen, joining items such as the door mirrors. Both of these things aren’t ideal when you’re driving. Although the seat adjustment has moved to the screen, the adjustment for the steering wheel has moved back to a physical lever under the steering column – the only physical control in the cabin.
There’s no stalk to select gears, this has to be done on the touchscreen – you move the car graphic on the screen up to go forwards, and move it down for reverse. This isn’t as user-friendly or as quick to operate as a physical gear selector.
Unlike the brief experiment with the Model 3 when Tesla removed the indicator stalk, and replaced it with buttons on the steering wheel, the Model Y thankfully has retained a stalk for the indicators – although there’s no stalk to flash the headlights, and no stalk for the windscreen wipers – you have to press a button on the steering wheel to select the wipers, then adjust the speed on the touchscreen.
There’s no screen directly in front of the driver, and no head-up display. As well as all car controls, all information is on the touchscreen, which is in the centre of the car, so you constantly have to look away from the road, and even the shortcut buttons are small and sit at the bottom of the screen, which isn’t as user-friendly as many rivals. Driving controls are all hidden away in menus and sub-menus on the touchscreen.
You can’t project Apple Maps onto the screen – Tesla is pretty much the only manufacturer that doesn’t enable this – and trying to play a podcast from a phone didn’t work until the Grok AI voice assistant intervened and said that a system reboot was needed. The way that Grok speaks is best described as interesting, but at least the system reboot did solve the iPhone-Tesla communication glitch.
The Model Y constantly intervenes in the steering on roads such as motorways; you can switch off the lane departure warning system, but even if you do this, it still vibrates if you change lanes.
The Model Y is really designed to drive itself rather than let you do this; it comes with Autopilot and is hardware-ready for Full Self-Driving (Supervised), which Tesla says will be enabled remotely on applicable vehicles once approved by local regulators.
It will be interesting to see how Tesla responds to new Euro NCAP guidelines that require car manufacturers to use physical buttons, dials or stalks for key functions to get a top 5-star safety rating.
The efficiency of the Model Y Rear-Wheel Drive is impressive, at 4.59 miles per kWh) (21.8 kWh/100 miles). Despite its smaller battery, it still has an official WLTP combined range of 314 miles. After a week on test the real-world range was averaging 260 miles. Unlike some other brands, Tesla’s range prediction is typically very accurate.
All 2026 Tesla Model Y Rear-Wheel Drive (RWD) models come standard with a heat pump which aims to minimise loss to the battery’s range when heating the cabin in cold weather.
The Rear-Wheel Drive model has an excellent ultra-rapid charging speed of 250 kW, allowing a 10% to 80% charge in about 27 minutes, or 173 miles to be added in just 15 minutes.
The Model Y features a Trip Planner integrated into the vehicle’s navigation and the Tesla mobile app, allowing drivers to see charging availability and pricing in real time and to plan routes. At charging stops, the battery is already preconditioned for maximum speed, and plug-and-charge functionality makes the process effortless.
There are over 75,000 Superchargers globally and over 2,100 in the UK and Ireland. Tesla’s Supercharger network has 99.5% uptime time with 250kW charging speeds, and costs are typically below 50p per kWh – about 30-40% cheaper than chargers from competitors. You can expect to charge a Tesla for around £20-£30 for 300 miles of range which is much cheaper than petrol or diesel.
It’s even cheaper if you charge at home, with an EV electricity tariff such as Intelligent Octopus Go at 7p per kWh, an owner charging at home driving 10,000 miles per year would spend approximately £175 per year for the Model Y Long Range Rear-Wheel Drive. An equivalent petrol vehicle would cost around £1,800 in fuel each year. That equates to the EV having fuel costs that are about 10% of a petrol car.
If you’ve seen stories in the media about EV batteries degrading quickly, don’t believe them – Teslas have been proven to have excellent battery longevity.
Tesla Model Y Rear-Wheel Drive prices start at £41,990. This compares to £48,990 for the Premium Long-Range Rear-Wheel Drive, £51,990 for the Premium Long Range All-Wheel Drive, and £61,990 for Model Y Performance.
Stealth Grey is the no-cost paint option; other paint choices include Pearl White Multi-Coat, Diamond Black Metallic, Deep Blue/Marine Blue, Quicksilver, and Ultra Red, costing between £1,000 to £2,000 for metallic or premium colours.
A reduced top speed and acceleration results in the Model Y Rear-Wheel Drive having the lowest insurance group rating for Model Y to date.
The Tesla Model Y Rear-Wheel Drive offers impressive efficiency of 4.59 miles per kWh and a lower purchase price than other Model Y variants. It’s also very easy to charge a Tesla thanks to the Supercharger network. It offers lots of space, with a minimalistic cabin. The gear selector is on the touchscreen, the indicators have moved back to a physical stalk compared to the experiment of removing the stalk with the Model 3, the driver’s seat now has to be adjusted via the touchscreen, but the steering wheel adjustment has moved from the touchscreen back to a physical control on the steering column. Apart from this one lever, all car controls and vehicle information are on the central touchscreen, at a time when many other manufacturers are re-introducing buttons, something which is being encouraged by Euro NCAP guidelines. Other EVs with a mix of screens and buttons are available (as well as more creatively-designed cabins), but the Model Y was the world’s best-selling car in 2023 and in 2024, so lots of people are seemingly comfortable with Tesla’s approach of all controls being on a screen. The 2026 Tesla Model Y Rear-Wheel Drive is awarded a Green Car Guide rating of 9 out of 10.
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