It’s been a long time since Tesla sold the 60 kWH version of its Model S but that isn’t stopping it from ruffling feathers today. The owner of a used, but new-to-him Model S found out after the purchase that he’s carrying around the extra weight associated with his 90 kWh battery pack. And he’s not too keen on the fact that he can’t use that extra power without forking out $4,500.
Tesla got into the practice of selling a car with a software-limited battery pack more than half a decade ago. It would sell a 60 kWh battery pack in a car but limit it to just 40 kWh unless the buyer paid extra. In the case we’re discussing today, the Model S in question was originally equipped with a 60 kWh battery but now has a newer 90 kWh pack.
When he found out that it had extra capacity and that Tesla was only willing to unlock it for $4,500, he took to Reddit to complain. “I paid for 60kwh so I want a 60kwh battery so I don’t waste energy carrying the extra weight a bigger battery brings… If I’m carrying around a battery that weighs more I want to get something out of that extra weight,” they say.
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Tesla’s trying to charge me $4,500 (plus tax) to use the entire battery capacity of the battery in my car.
by u/1FrostySlime in RealTesla
Further down the line, the original poster seems to retreat a little and lays out the main point of the thread in their eyes: “Since I have free supercharging Tesla’s essentially the one paying for me to haul around the extra weight anyway. The point of the post wasn’t to complain about this. It was to point out the sheer stupidity of software locking a battery, to begin with.”
Whether software locking is acceptable or not, other posters brought out the positives in this situation. For instance, the battery is almost brand new which is a major benefit, some hackers can enable the rest of that range without charging so much, and the car still benefits from the same charging speed and acceleration potential of the normal 90 kWh battery pack version.
So which party is right here? Tesla certainly has the right, though perhaps not the moral high ground, to do whatever it would like. The buyer is also certainly at liberty to feel however they’d like to about the situation. Let us know who you’re siding with below.
