Tesla is raising the price of the Model Y, and it isn’t the first time. Tesla has been putting their cars on a roller coaster of price changes, and it’s getting hard to keep up. Let’s take a look at why Tesla has been adjusting their prices, and what this latest increase means for the Model Y.

The cost of the Tesla Model Y is up

Electrek reports that Tesla is raising the price of the Model Y by $500. This may not seem like a lot, but it isn’t the first increase on the Model Y in the last few months. While you could have bought a Tesla Model Y for a mere $50,000 a few months ago, now that same car will cost you $52,990. If you’ve been saving your pennies to own your own Tesla, that’s a lot of pennies.

To make things even more complicated for Tesla shoppers, the price changes have been happening in conjunction with a whole bunch of other Tesla news. They’ve released the Tesla Model S Plaid. They’ve decided not to release the Model S Plaid Plus. Their steering wheels are weird. They’ve built the longest Supercharger route in the world, spanning 3,100 miles across China. 

Am I forgetting anything? Oh yes: the newly revealed Tesla Supercomputer is the fifth most powerful computer in the world, and its purpose is to power the semi-autonomous driving system known as Autopilot. 

It’s dizzying, honestly. 

The cost of various Teslas has been going up…

…and then they’ve been coming back down. Oh, and then they’ve been going up again. Make up your mind, Elon Musk. 

Beginning in February, the Model 3 and Model Ys have gone through several price changes. Some of the cheaper models have increased $500 at a time. These have been done without much fanfare, and although the Tesla community is very vocal about the day-to-day dealings of Tesla, these changes didn’t elicit the same response as those to the Model S Plaid Plus. 

The price of the Tesla Model S Plaid Plus was raised $10,000, and there were a lot of questions about what the price hike was for. Ultimately, it didn’t matter, as Tesla suddenly pulled the literal plug on the Plaid Plus. 

Elon Musk has a perfectly reasonable explanation for why the Tesla Model Y is getting more expensive

Really, he does. Sure, it’s sort of vague, but it’s also justifiable. When someone on Twitter complained about the rising costs of Teslas, Elon Musk responded by saying, “Prices increasing due to major supply chain price pressure industry-wide. Raw materials especially.”

It’s not a super clear answer. Which raw materials? Will costs go back down when supply chain problems are worked out? Yet with car manufacturers raising prices, and even used cars costing as much as a first-born child, perhaps it isn’t surprising that Tesla is also passing these increasing costs onto its customers. 

If you’ve been procrastinating on buying a Model Y, you may want to do it before prices go up again. Or maybe you should wait until they lower prices again. It could be next week. Then again, they might go up again. Perhaps there’s no way to know when the perfect time to buy a Tesla is.