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

Tesla CEO Elon Musk posted on friday that the Standard Range rear-wheel-drive Model Y that the company has been building and selling “for the past few months” actually has more range than the 260 miles it was 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 is not the first time that Tesla has software blocked the autonomy of its cars. The company revealed in 2016 that the Model S 70’s 70 kWh battery actually had 75 kWh of capacity that customers could pay more than $3,000 to access. It’s possible that current Model S and X cars, which weigh the same as their longer-range counterparts, were also limited by software.