Elon Musk: Tesla could make a 600-mile-range electric car a year ago

Elon Musk said Tesla could make a Model S with a range of 600 miles a year ago, but the CEO says it would have made the electric car worse. It doesn’t look like Tesla has plans to make a car with more than 400 miles of range.

When Tesla first unveiled the new Model S last year, the company introduced a new Model S Plaid+, which replaced the previous Plaid as the new top performance variant. The Model S Plaid+ was advertised as having a range of over 520 miles on a single charge and 0–60 mph acceleration in less than 1.99 seconds.

For the Model S Plaid, it replaced the Model S performance, and Tesla said it would get a range of 390 miles in 1.99 seconds and a top speed of 0–60 mph.

However, Tesla canceled the Model S Plaid+ because Musk said people don’t really need a range greater than 400 miles.

This gave Lucid the opportunity to become the only automaker with an electric car with a range greater than 500 miles. While the Lucid is having problems mounting the Lucid Air, the company is delivering the vehicle with a range of over 500 miles.

This week, a Tesla superfan acknowledged that the Lucid was the first to market with a 500-mile EV, but added that Tesla “will be the first to mass-produce one.” But interestingly, CEO Elon Musk responded to the tweet, saying that Tesla doesn’t have plans to build a car with more than 400 miles of range, even though he said it could have been built a while ago:

We could have made a 600 mile Model S 12 months ago, but that would have ruined the product in my opinion, because 99.9% of the time you will be carrying unnecessary battery mass, which makes acceleration, handling and efficiency worse. Even our 400+ mile range car is more than a car used by almost anyone.

In a comment to Electrek last year, Musk clarified how Tesla is now looking at long-range electric cars:

What we’re seeing is that once you have a range above 400 miles, that much range doesn’t really matter. There are essentially zero trips above 400 miles where the driver is not required to stop for restrooms, food, coffee, etc.

The CEO never said how this would affect the new Roadster, which Tesla is advertising with a range of more than 600 miles.

You can see those results before with the Lucid Air vs. Model S Plaid. The Lucid has more horsepower but is slower down the line than the Plaid, due to the heavier battery pack and the car structure needed to hold them.

Tesla’s chief designer Franz von Holzhausen recently said that the production version of the new Roadster will be better than what Tesla originally unveiled, but he did not comment on the range that originally exceeded 600 miles.

With Musk’s recent rhetoric about long-range EVs, it looks like Tesla may be focusing on other aspects of the car rather than range.

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