If you haven't noticed by now, Tesla is changing their prices quite a bit. They experiment and also change what they offer without any notice. They will just do it from time to time, and Today they had some very interesting one. The Tesla Model Y Standard Range is no longer available.
If you click on the Order button on the Model Y homepage, and take a look at the new pricing in the offerings, you can see that the Standard Range model is no longer available. It's not even an option anymore. It is not just the US site, there's no more Standard Range option for Tesla Model Y in any country.
In fact, an interesting point about this change is that just a few days ago Tesla already reduced the price for a few of their models including the Model Y and Model 3. They reduced the Standard Range Plus Model 3 by a thousand dollars to 36,990 USD, but while they did that, they increased the prices of both the Performance models on Model 3 and Model Y by a thousand dollars each.
They increased the price for Performance models, but they lower the price of the Standard Range models. Going back to the Model Y, we can see Tesla reduce the Long Range price by a thousand dollars so now it starts under forty nine thousand dollars for the Long Range Dual Motor All-Wheel Drive non-Performance Model Y, and in the Model 3 page we can see sort of the same thing. The Long Range Dual Motor All-Wheel Drive Model 3 has been reduced by a thousand dollars as well.
So both of the Long Range Dual Motor All-Wheel Drive non-Performance models of the Model3 and the ModelY just got a one thousand dollar price cut, while the Standard Range Model Y is no longer available.
Let's talk about some of the reasons why this happened. Could it be a website bug or glitch? Perhaps not. Because Model Y is a flagship product from Tesla. It was one of their latest products that they've offered. Tesla released Model Y about six weeks ago. But why would Tesla Model Y Standard Range just completely disappear from the entire website, for all countries just from a website glitch? That's very unlikely to be a website glitch or a bug.
Another possible reason is that Tesla expects that the tax credit is coming back. Maybe they don't know it for sure, but they expect it and so they don't want to suffer from the Osborne Effect which basically means customers are waiting out to get something better (or waiting for that tax credit to come) so customers aren't ordering as many Tesla Standard Range model cars for that matter. In order to combat this effect, Tesla cloud be trying to incentivize people to go ahead and order right now, instead of waiting for the potential tax credit that may come sooner or later this year.
Yet another possible reason could be that there were a ton of pre-orders for the Standard Range Model Y and they just couldn't keep up. Although it might be very odd if this is the case. Because instead of such action, Tesla could just continue to accept pre-orders for the Standard Range Model Y, (even though they are backlogged,) and just update the delivery-time to show the accurate delivery times further along down the road with longer wait than the usual.
Could it be the case that Tesla have had the opposite effect as there was not enough demand for the Standard Range Model Y, so Tesla decided to kill it completely? That would be very interesting. Because it would just not align with the Model 3. The Model 3 Standard Range Plus is still here which is the Rear-wheel drive of the Model 3 single-motor. It would also be kind of weird that Tesla would kill off a car that they just released six weeks ago.
The other possible reason is that they want to simplify the production line of the Model Y. It is possible that they want to have only Dual-Motor with the same size kilowatt hour battery pack, just to simplify the production and assembly line. When the Tesla Model Y was initially announced they were going to design, assemble, and produce it completely at Tesla Giga Nevada (or Gigafactory 1). They could have moved the final assembly to Tesla's Fremont Factory. They may want to just get rid of the Standard Range Model Y altogether because of the lack of demand and to simplify the production.
Anyway, there is going to be just a few thousand Standard Range Model Y Tesla cars out there. They will be like the unicorn Model Y as there is no longer a very affordable Model Y at under forty thousand dollars.
