Last month, I took a trip to the Gold Coast with my parents, and having booked flights and accommodation, it was time to consider transport. Having considered the standard hire car companies, I considered alternative options, ultimately settling on renting a car using the car sharing platform Evee for the first time.

The process was pretty straight forward, just enter your location (in this case, the Gold Coast), select the date range (and time), then browse the available vehicles. One of the options that got my attention was a Model Y (juniper refresh). Being a Tesla owner, this was particularly inviting. Having driven the Model Y a lot before, it’s incredibly familiar, and having recently reviewed the Model Y L, this was another great chance to get behind the wheel.

My parents are getting on in life, and while they both still drive, driving in the city is a very different challenge; this meant I was playing Uber driver/chauffeur. Despite not being familiar with the local roads, I knew that having Autopilot and the Tesla navigation, this was going to be pretty simple.

Having booked the car about a week out from the travel date, I made the payment on 3/4/26 to secure the car. The Evee platform takes care of vehicle discovery, payments, reviews and more. There’s also messaging on the platform, connecting the renter with the host and having booked the car, I sent a message to Adam, who was ultra-responsive and fantastic throughout the whole experience.

After a quick intro, we got down to logistics, and a few messages later, we had the plan. The day prior to our trip, we messaged a couple of times, then on the day, we confirmed the pickup location. The whole process went very smoothly.

Pick Up

Having flown from Albury to Sydney, then Sydney to Gold Coast Airport, it was time to collect the car. I met Adam in person at the arrivals bay, who provided 2x Tesla key cards, took a photo of my license, and suggested I should take photos of the car, and indicated he’d done the same. While the sun was setting, and I really wanted to jump in and go, this was a smart thing to do, just in case there was any debate about the condition of the vehicle when I picked it up compared to when I dropped it back, an insurance policy, if you like.

Speaking of insurance, I noted that the excess was quite expensive, as much as $5,000, so as much as I didn’t want to spend more, it made sense to spend $87 for Evee Protect, which brought this to $0 excess. There was also a $100 refundable deposit on top of the rental fee, but on the upside, I also received a 3-day discount of $57 and scored a $50 discount for my first time using the platform.

With the suitcases carefully placed in the boot, the passengers in, it was time to set off and enjoy the car, with the first drive from the airport to the hotel about 45 minutes away.

Full Self Driving (Supervised)

What I quickly realised is that this wasn’t just any Model Y, it was a Launch Edition, one of the very first batch in 2025 post-refresh. The car also had Full Self Driving (Supervised) v13.2.9 (software version 2026.2.6.5), which I was very excited by. As the owner of a HW3 vehicle from 2019, it was great to have some more time with FSDs, and while our family moved around the Gold Coast for the best part of 4 days, I barely drove.

Tesla’s FSD, particularly in a location you’re not familiar with, is a complete life-changing experience. Just plug in the destination, tap start, and the car does all the work. At this stage, you do still have to monitor and take over if necessary (I probably did this 3 times to avoid other drivers driving badly).

This is perhaps one of the biggest differences in the car rental experience, you just can’t get this from a Mazda, Toyota, Mitsubishi or any car from Budget, Avis, Sixt rental services. At this point, I was very happy with my decision to go for a Model Y on Evee, even if not the cheapest solution to transport, the experience was worth paying up for.

I could focus on the conversations in the car, rather than stress about which lane I needed to be in or which exit to take; the car just took care of it for me. When I looked back on the site, FSD was listed, I just missed it. Despite this, it was still the cheapest Model Y available during the dates we needed it, so this worked out really well.

Charging

With this model being a Long Range variant, the car had plenty of range to cater for our needs, requiring charging just once during the 4 days.. I picked it up with 361km range remaining, and 407km when I dropped it off.

On the Gold Coast, there are actually multiple charging options. I went with the easiest, a Tesla Supercharger, which offered V3 charging speeds and took around 30 minutes. I spent just $30.17 to charge the car, considerably less than the equivalent distance would have cost if we were to rent an ICE vehicle.

Drop off

Having enjoyed the car, it was time to drop it back; our time on the GC was done. Having parked in the drop-off area at the Gold Coast Airport, I sent a photo through the Evee chat to let Adam know where I parked. I again took another series of photos to show the condition at dropoff, and soon after, I was handing back the keys, and the rental experience was complete.

The payment for recharging isn’t done automatically; the owner adds a charge to the Evee platform, and making that payment was quick and easy, noting that while I didn’t get any, tolls can also be resolved in the same way.

If you’re heading to the Gold Coast and are looking for a car to get around in, I can now confirm that my experience with Evee was a very good one. This may be down to the owner; in my instance, Adam was fantastic to deal with. If you want to rent his Model Y Launch Edition, then check it out at https://www.evee.com.au/vehicles/Wt7Tbm2YH