Tesla wasn’t completely accurate when it stated it would begin charging for some in-car data on July 1st of 2018, but it seems like the owners have finally been asked to payout.
Tesla is notifying customers who ordered on or after July 1, 2018, that it’s switching them to 30-day trials of Premium Connectivity and that they will need to subscribe for $10 per month to keep using the functionality. Anyone who ordered before July 1, 2018, still has access to all functions without any cost.
It might not be as bad as it sounds. The only features you will never have access to in the basic tier (Standard Connectivity) include satellite maps and live traffic visualizations. Media streaming, web browsing, and Caraoke are still available for which you will have to be connected to WiFi to use them. This suggests that you could reclaim the majority of the functionality by using your phone’s data.
The automaker sent word of the tier changes in June 2018, and it started displaying its own data caps in September. The company is apparently concerned about mounting data costs, and it wants the car owners to pay some of the costs. This isn’t the same for many of Tesla’s customers. If you purchased a luxury EV, you can probably spare $120 per year to have music and satellite data during your commute. Nonetheless, this could be rough for some consumers. No-charge access to data features has been a mainstay of the automaker for years, and now buyers will have to accept that some advantages will sit behind a paywall.
