Tesla plans to charge some Model Y owners to unlock more range

Recent Model Ys have secret software-locked battery capacity.

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.”

Tesla replaced the Standard Range Model Y with a 320-mile range version for $2,000 more. The car now starts at $44,990, or about $37,490 if you qualify for the $7,500 federal EV tax credit.

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.

The auto industry, in general, has been trending toward controlling access to cars’ existing features with pay-to-remove software locks. Polestar started selling a $1,200 over-the-air update to boost the Polestar 2’s performance in 2022. Mercedes-Benz charged the same amount, but annually, to improve the horsepower and torque of the EQE and EQS. BMW once paywalled software-locked CarPlay and, later, heated seats (the company later dropped that plan). And of course, Tesla has proven itself willing to remotely disable paid-for features when one of its cars is resold.