Tesla CEO Elon Musk posted on Friday that the Standard Range rear-wheel drive Model Y the company has been building and selling “over the last several months” actually has more range than the 260 miles they were sold with. Pending “regulatory approval,” he wrote that the company will unlock another 40–60 miles of total range, depending on which battery Model Y owners have, “for $1,500 to $2,000.”
This isn’t the first time Tesla has software-locked its cars’ range. The company revealed back in 2016 that the 70kWh battery in the Model S 70 actually had 75kWh of capacity that customers could pay more than $3,000 to access. It’s possible that the current Model S and X cars, which weigh the same as their longer-range counterparts, have also been software-limited.
