If you’ve wanted to get your hands on a Model S or Model X, but you couldn’t stomach the $90,000+ price points, Tesla has a new option for you.
When Tesla refreshed the Model S and Model X back in 2021 (remember the yoke steering wheel controversy), the company started offering only the Long Range and Plaid versions of the vehicles. Well, two years later, the company is finally bringing back the Standard Range option to both and, if you’re willing to sacrifice some range, save $10,000.
As reported by Electrek, the Standard Range has been added back as a configuration option for both the Model S and Model X for customers configuring their orders starting today. If you choose the restored Standard Range option, your Model S or X will be $10,000 cheaper than the more expensive Long Range option. However, picking the Standard Range does mean losing a chuck of range.
With the Model S, the Standard Range option will get you 320 miles of range compared to the 405 miles that the Long Range offers. That’s a loss of 85 miles or 21% compared to what you can get with the more expensive option. For the Model X, the Standard Range option will get you 269 miles of range compared to the Long Range’s 348 miles of range. This is a difference of 79 miles or about 23% lower compared to the more expensive option.
With the price cuts, the Model S now starts at $78,490, and the Model X base price is now $88,490.
That said, if you know that you won’t regularly need the additional range offered by the Long Range option, the Standard Range option could be a better buy for you. If you don’t need the range, why pay extra for it? Take the $10,000. It’ll pay for 2/3 of the company’s Full Self-Driving technology package! Granted, that is still under a recall right now, so you may have a little waiting to do before you’ll have full access to that.
Interestingly, Tesla is not building a separate battery pack for the new Standard Range option. Instead, the company is putting the same battery as the Long Range option into vehicles for customers who choose the Standard Range option. So, why do you end up with less range? Tesla has confirmed that it is locking your ability to access the rest of the battery pack through software. The report notes that the company has previously allowed customers to unlock the rest of the battery capacity in the future for a cost, but it’s not confirmed if Tesla will do that for these new Model S and Model X options.
It must be more cost-effective for the company to make one battery pack and shut off access to part of it than to make a pack with less capacity. Still, it always sucks to hear about car companies putting hardware in vehicles but shutting off access to those features through software. Of course, Tesla has been doing this for years with its self-driving technology package, so Tesla customers are quite used to this.
I can’t wait to see all of the YouTube Tesla channels try and hack that to unlock the rest of the range. Please, if you’re one of those people and make it happen, we want to hear from you.
