Tesla Launches New Long Range RWD Model Y in U.S.: More Affordable and Longer Range

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Tesla has finally launched the refreshed Model Y Long Range Rear Wheel Drive (LR RWD) in the United States. While the refreshed Model Y RWD was available as a Launch-Series option in the Asia-Pacific and European markets, it wasn’t yet available at all in North America. Once the Launch Series stopped being offered, Tesla began shipping non-Launch Edition Model Y LR RWDs in Asia and Europe earlier this year, but didn’t bring it to the United States until now.

The LR RWD is one of Tesla’s most affordable vehicles, starting at $44,990 (or $37,490 after the Federal EV Rebate).

Model Y LR RWD

Spec-wise, the refreshed Model Y LR RWD is a compelling alternative to the AWD model. Tesla has kept the premium interior and audio options on the North American variant, so you get the full experience of the refreshed Model Y. You also get more range and faster charging than the AWD model. The only downside is that it’s two-wheel drive and slower acceleration. However, given the lower price and additional range, those may be worth the tradeoffs.

*Listed ranges are EPA Ranges.

Pricing

All in all, you get a fantastic deal, given the lower price tag. The refreshed Model Y LR RWD is priced $4,000 less than the AWD version while still offering many of its attractive features.

*Post-tariff pricing.

Availability

The Long Range RWD is expected to begin shipping immediately in the United States. Tesla has not made the vehicle available in Mexico or Canada yet, likely due to tariff complications. Once the tariff rates settle, Tesla will likely look to export the vehicles from the U.S. to the other two North American countries.

With the arrival of the Long Range RWD variant, the last version we’re waiting for is the refreshed Model Y Performance. That’s likely to be an exciting vehicle, and we’re hopeful it will be in customers’ garages before the end of 2025.

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Tesla Introduces New Dynamic Supercharger Pricing

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Tesla is adjusting its Supercharger prices based on current usage in a new pilot program. Tesla’s pricing structure has typically revolved around traditional time-based peak/off-peak schedules but is now migrating to a more dynamic model based on live Supercharger utilization.

This development, announced officially through the Tesla Charging X account, should make Supercharger pricing more accurately reflect the demand for the specific Supercharger site instead of basing pricing on past usage.

Live Utilization Pricing

The core of this new pilot will launch at just 10 Supercharger sites in North America. The particular sites in question have not been clarified, but one of the locations is the Supercharger located in Davis, California.

Tesla intends to expand the pilot based on feedback and the success of the initial rollout. We could be looking at the future of Supercharger pricing around the globe.

New Chart and Features

Today, Tesla typically offers two or three prices based on peak and off-peak demand, meaning that Supercharger prices are based on the hour of the day. The current Supercharger chart in the vehicle shows the hours and price on the X-axis, while the Y-axis is the typical demand (image below).

The current chart for Superchargers versus the new one at the top of the page

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However, with the new charts that will soon be added to vehicles, Tesla will display the time on the X-axis, and the Y-axis will show the historical demand and the current price (photo at the top of this page).

In theory, the Supercharger's historical demand and real-time usage should be pretty similar, but there will be exceptions, like holidays and other events. Unexpected high and low usage will play a role in the pricing, such as sporting events and natural disasters. If the Supercharger is busy, then pricing will be high; otherwise, it will be low.

This also introduces a new feature, since pricing is now based on actual demand, users could navigate to a Supercharger that is less busy and, therefore, cheaper. In the hero image, we can see that Tesla will add a new “Find Lower Price Charging” button in a future vehicle update. This will likely highlight other nearby Superchargers that are less busy and less expensive.

However, it seems like Tesla may also start charging more for Superchargers than they do today when they’re extremely busy. Judging by the screenshot Tesla shared, the estimated usage never passed the $0.45 per kWh at the Davis, CA Supercharger. However, it seems that there’s a new price of $0.54 per kWh when the Supercharger usage is at its peak.

The good news is that Tesla is being more transparent and indicating whether the price is low or high with new labels. This change will give users more choices in terms of charging prices. If you want to save a few bucks, you can drive to a less busy Supercharger. The price will also be based on actual usage, which seems like a fairer way to determine price.

While Tesla hasn’t updated vehicles yet to show these new charts, the latest version of the Tesla app already incorporates the changes.

What Tesla Says

Max de Zegher, Tesla’s Director of Charging, elaborated on the pilot program on X.

He points out that Tesla Charging’s rates have been consistent, and it has focused on improving the charging experience and availability. Off-peak and on-peak pricing will help to increase both of these.

Tesla has outlined exactly how this new live feedback loop will function. The more accurate real-time station demand can allow Tesla to adjust pricing if a station is experiencing congestion during traditionally “off-peak” hours. On the flipside, if a station is unusually empty, Tesla can reduce the pricing.

This easily incentivizes customers who are keeping an eye on charging costs, as changing your charging destination can be as simple as the tap of a button. Most interestingly, Tesla says that the average price paid by customers is expected to remain the same as with the previous time-based system, even with seasonal and real-time fluctuations.

Crucially, owners can always see the price per kWh on their vehicle’s primary display, as well as in the Tesla app before initiating a charging session. Additionally, Tesla will not change the pricing mid-charge, so there’s no need to worry about it fluctuating up or down while you’re charging.

When reading some of our old blog posts, you'll find that @TeslaCharging has been consistent in its pricing principles: improving the charging experience and Supercharger availability. True to those principles, we're now piloting live site utilization for off-peak and on-peak… https://t.co/rIqQzOZfcG

— Max (@MdeZegher) May 6, 2025

Supercharger Pricing History

This move to live-based pricing is being presented as Tesla’s latest step towards managing its vast charging network with a more customer-centric approach. Tesla has had some historical progression in its pricing strategy, so let’s take a look at where we were versus where we are going.

kWh-Based Billing: Tesla has long pushed for billing by the kilowatt-hour (kWh) as the fairest method for customers to pay for the exact energy consumed, avoiding session fees that can obscure actual energy costs. This is now standard in most regions, but it wasn’t too long ago that pricing was determined by the minute.

Idle Fees (2017): To address vehicles remaining plugged in after charging was complete at busy sites, idle fees were implemented to improve stall availability – a practice now common across the industry.

80% SoC Limiter (2019): At busy locations, Tesla introduced an automatic 80% state-of-charge (SoC) charging limit (which users can manually override) to encourage faster turnover, as the final 20% of charging is significantly slower.

Time-Based Peak/Off-Peak Pricing (2020): Pricing based on estimated busy times was rolled out to incentivize charging during less congested periods, helping to distribute demand and manage costs.

Congestion Fees (2023): At particularly busy sites, congestion fees were introduced. These combine the principles of idle fees with disincentivizing charging to a very high state of charge when a station is crowded, with the stated goal of improving availability, not generating profit.

Commitment to Affordability

Alongside these pricing changes, Tesla has reiterated its focus on keeping Supercharging affordable for all its users. Tesla points out that, on average, in North America and Europe, Tesla’s Superchargers are 30% cheaper than other fast-charging options while also being far more reliable.

Beyond that, 2025 is set to be Tesla’s largest year for expanding the Supercharger network while also replacing many older V2 charging sites with faster, more capable V4 Supercharger stations.

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Tesla Will Not Offer Auto Steer on Cybertruck; Compensates with One Year of FSD

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Tesla has started reaching out to Cybertruck owners with a clarification regarding its Autosteer feature, coupled with an FSD offer. In emails sent to owners of non-Foundation Series Cybertrucks or those who have not purchased FSD outright, Tesla is offering a free, one-year trial of FSD Supervised, which initially sounds like a great deal.

However, there’s a reason for that. Tesla is taking a departure from its traditional stance, and standard Autosteer — which is usually a free feature, will not be offered on the Cybertruck

For context, all other Tesla vehicles include Basic Autopilot, which includes both Traffic-Aware Cruise Control (TACC) and Autosteer, which provides automated steering to keep the vehicle in the lane but doesn’t perform lane changes, handle traffic signs, etc. FSD is, of course, the ultimate vision of these features, handling almost everything the roadways have to offer.

The Cybertruck never shipped with the Basic Autopilot package. Since launch, non-FSD-equipped Cybertrucks have not had Autosteer, only the option to subscribe to FSD or use TACC, leaving out a notable feature.

One-Year FSD Trial

The email being sent to eligible Cybertruck owners extends a complimentary 12-month trial of FSD (Supervised). This effectively replaces and extends the earlier, shorter free access period that was provided and helps compensate for the absence of all Basic Autopilot features.

Any Cybertruck owners who have not purchased FSD outright or are not Foundation-Series owners will be offered this trial by email. To claim the free one-year offer, owners must subscribe to FSD Supervised by June 6th, 2025. Owners can cancel the subscription anytime after and they’ll retain the full one-year trial period.

This is a great offer if you weren’t expecting Autosteer to be included, as it equates to approximately $1,188 USD (or CAD) plus tax when compared to the equivalent subscription cost. Notably, there’s no fine print suggesting that owners are forfeiting access to a potential future Autosteer feature under Basic Autopilot.

Why No Autosteer?

Tesla’s email provides its official reasoning as to why Autosteer will not be available:

As we improve our Autopilot technology, our feature sets will change. Accordingly, Autosteer will not be available for the Cybertruck outside of Full Self Driving (Supervised).

While Tesla didn’t explicitly state it - the likely reason is that the Autosteer stack is extremely old, and not designed to function on the Cybertruck, with its unique steering, camera placements, and size.

The Cybertruck’s FSD development is completely separate and as it stands today, can’t be used for Autosteer. Instead of adding support for the Cybertruck on the old Autosteer stack, Tesla wants to focus on its current technology, which powers FSD.

Autosteer in the Future?

While Autosteer and Autopilot are functionally subsets of FSD, they run on entirely separate software stacks. Tesla originally developed Autopilot using traditional code and later started from scratch with a new AI-driven architecture to build FSD. Today, FSD relies heavily on neural networks and machine learning, whereas Basic Autopilot still uses more conventional programming.

Eventually, we expect Tesla to migrate Basic Autopilot to the FSD tech stack, drastically improving its performance. At that point, Autosteer would effectively become a restricted version of FSD—capable of less, but built on the same foundation. When this transition occurs, it’s plausible that Autosteer could finally be added to the Cybertruck.

Lane Departure Avoidance Becomes Part of FSD

Cybertruck just recently received Lane Departure Avoidance and Lane Assist with the 2025 Spring Update, which previously relied on the Autopilot tech stack. Now, with these two features relying upon FSD rather than the old stack, they are available for the Cybertruck, and the feature has also been improved on other vehicles.

This is a pretty clear indication that Tesla is working to move away from the old Basic Autopilot stack and towards the FSD stack, which means we can maybe hope for a cut-down version of FSD becoming available as the future Basic Autopilot package.

Website Changes

Supporting this shift, Tesla's website has reportedly been updated in North America to list Autosteer as a feature only for Models S, 3, X, and Y, omitting Cybertruck. It remains unclear, however, if Tesla has amended the official purchase agreement language for new non-FSD Cybertrucks, which previously may have listed Basic Autopilot (implying Autosteer) as an included feature.

While the complimentary offer of FSD is generous, especially coming from Tesla, it is a divergence in how they’ve handled the availability of basic features on the vehicle fleet. Cybertruck already has a troubled history with FSD and Autopilot-related safety features not being on par with other vehicles in the lineup, but we hope this changes in the future.

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