Here's why Tesla didn't make Model S with 900km+ range last year

While Lucid Motors delivered the first series-produced electric car with an EPA-estimated range of around 500 miles or 800 kilometres, a Tesla enthusiast believes that Tesla "will be the first to mass-produce one". Currently, the longest-range Tesla Model S has an EPA combined range of 405 miles or 652 kilometres.

Replying to the comment posted on Twitter by Whole Mars Catalog, Tesla CEO Elon Musk said that his company could have made an electric vehicle with 600 miles of range 12 months ago but it didn't because that would have made the product worse. “99.9% of time you’d be carrying unneeded battery mass, which makes acceleration, handling & efficiency worse. Even our 400+ mile range car is more than almost anyone will use," Musk wrote in his reply.

Musk pointed out that a vehicle with such an enormous range would have meant that a higher battery capacity would be required, resulting in a bigger, heavier, and more expensive battery pack. The CEO explained that this battery would be "unneeded" on a daily basis, and that even the current 400+ mile range is more than enough. A bigger battery can substantially affect the handling and efficiency of an electric vehicle.

Since electric vehicles are already quite heavy and expensive, Tesla has introduced a structural battery pack so as to be on the right path in terms of range balance and weight-reduction. In a structural battery pack, the weight of the remaining structure of the car would be lowered. This is an important direction for the mainstream electric car market in terms of costs, performance, and also the environment.

Also with fast-charging networks growing rapidly across the world, need for increasing the range beyond a significant parameter is not the priority.

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