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Tesla releases new Model S battery pack, makes massive price drop, kills base Model X pack

Along with all the new Model 3 options released yesterday, Tesla has also updated the Model S and Model X lineup with new options and pricing, most notably adding a Model S battery pack and removing one for the Model X.

Tesla is also introducing some massive price drops.

As we reported earlier this year, Tesla significantly updated the Model S and Model X options to harmonize them with the Model 3.

With that update, Tesla introduced a new software-locked battery pack for its two flagship vehicles after killing the 75 kWh battery pack a month prior.

New Tesla Model S Options

Now Tesla is removing this software-locked option just a month into starting to sell it and it is replacing it with “standard” battery pack on the Model S for 270 miles of range.

Again, part of the harmonization with the Model 3 strategy is to stop disclosing the energy capacity of the battery pack, but it is the same range that the Model S was getting back when Tesla was producing a 85 kWh version.

This new version of the Model S now starts at $79,000 before incentives:

Tesla has also made some other important price changes to the other versions of the car.

With the previous change, the Model S 100D became the ‘Model S Extended Range’ and started at $93,000.

Now it’s called Model S ‘Long Range’ and it starts at $83,000 – a $10,000 difference with seemingly no feature change.

The same thing happened to the Performance version of the Model S, which started $112,000 before the price changes yesterday.

Today, it starts at $99,000 and you can add the Ludicrous package for $15,000 and shave half a second off your 0 to 60 mph acceleration:

New Tesla Model X Options

As for Model X, it is also getting some updates.

Tesla is also killing the software-locked battery pack, but it is not releasing a smaller pack option like it did for Model S.

Now there’s just a ‘Long Range’ version, which has the same range as the ‘Extended Range’ version with a 100 kWh battery pack.

It is also getting an important price drop from $96,000 to $88,000:

The Performance version of the Model X is also seeing a price drop.

Tesla hasn’t explained the reason behind any of those price changes beyond saying that the new online-only sales strategy would result in cost reduction.

Electrek’s Take

To be honest, I can’t stand these constant price changes. It’s happening almost every month and it is getting so complicated to navigate.

I get when it’s about introducing new features or a less expensive version of the Model 3, like the new standard battery pack and interior, but other times, like this, it feels like Tesla is just throwing darts in the dark.

A good example: Tesla was selling the software-locked versions of the Model S and Model X for literally just a month. What was the logic there?

Now they are also decreasing the price of the Model 100D by $10,000 a month later. What happened during that month? They can’t tell us that they found $10,000 worth of production efficiencies on the 100 kWh pack.

Same thing for the performance versions of the car. That’s just crazy. $10,000+ difference with seemingly no performance changes.

Can’t all of that really be explained by taking the sales to online only? I’d like to know how many people were ordering those cars online already.

Hopefully, now that it seems to have been completely harmonized with Model 3, they will slow down those constant price changes and options bundling and debundling.

What do you think? Let us know in the comment section below.

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Avatar for Fred Lambert Fred Lambert

Fred is the Editor in Chief and Main Writer at Electrek.

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