- Tesla has historically included two key cards with the purchase of new Model 3 and Model Y vehicles.
- The automaker recently removed references to the included cards in the owners manual of both vehicles, according to Not A Tesla App.
- This could be an indication that physical keys will no longer be included for free.
Tesla has made forgetting your keys a thing of the past for some time. Many Tesla owners, myself included, use their phone as their primary vehicle key. It’s convenient, it works (usually) and it’s something you pretty much always have on you. Which is why it makes sense that Tesla may soon no longer give out key cards with new cars.
According to the Tesla news blog Not A Tesla App, Tesla has quietly removed the mention of two key cards being included with new vehicles from the owners manuals for both the Model 3 and Model Y following the release of the stripped-out Standard trims of both cars.
Photo by: Tesla
If History Is Any Indication…
For those not familiar, Tesla has historically include two credit-card sized key cards with the Model 3 and Model Y since their launches. These cards are provided in place of a traditional metal key and use wireless RFID tech to authenticate the key holder with the vehicle.
The manual previously had a line that read “Tesla provides you with two Model 3/Y key cards, designed to fit in your wallet.” And while Tesla has other references in the manual to these key cards, this particular line is gone, which is what leads Not A Tesla App to call out the possible removal of these keys from at least the Standard trims of these cars.
We’re unable to verify this claim with Tesla directly, as the automaker dissolved its PR team back in 2019. However, the claim does at least come with a bit of merit to back it up.
Tesla has a track record of quietly removing words from owners manual when it’s getting ready to make changes to what is included with a vehicle. For example, when Tesla decided not to give the Cybertruck Autosteer without the purchase of Full Self-Driving (as it just did with the Model 3 and Model Y Standard), it removed the wording from the manual and made no public announcement and instead just gave owners a year of its FSD subscription at no extra cost. Tesla could be doing something similar here.
Tesla’s Tiny Cost Cutting Habit
At first glance, removing the keys from the mix seems kind of petty. I mean, what OEM doesn’t include keys with its brand new car? But for Tesla, it’s all about squeezing pennies and percentages.
If Tesla does remove the inclusion of the key card and you still want one, it’ll cost another $40 on top of the price of the car. That might not sound like much in the grand scheme of things, but it’s about 0.1% of the Model Y Standard trim’s $39,990 price tag. It not only is an additional purchase you might have to make, but it would save Tesla the few dollars that it would normally just eat so that every customer was provided with a key.
Even if the key cards only cost Tesla $2 per vehicle, that adds up with enough volume. Last quarter alone that would have represented a cost savings of nearly $1 million. And if Tesla managed to sell a set of keys to all of those customers? That’s an additional $19.3 million in revenue. And if Tesla managed to sell keys to all 1,789,226 cars delivered in 2024, that would be $71.6 million. Kind of insane to think about.
Eventually, though, if you start nickel-and-diming customers, they’re going to notice. Not including a key is a pretty big one, too, especially if you ever plan to have your car inspected by a third party shop or use a parking garage in a big city where you can’t park you own car. Or if you want to loan out your car to a friend.
The one positive, if Tesla truly does decide to remove the key, is that its phone key works fairly flawlessly. Unlike some automakers—Lucid and Fisker, for example—Tesla’s approach to unorthodox key solutions work fairly well. Its phone-as-a-key approach pretty much bulletproof, although you sometimes need to wake the phone before the car recognizes it.
The real problem is spelled out whenever somebody like a mechanic or valet needs a key to the car. You can give them a virtual key, sure, but many will likely still want some sort of physical key. It’s probably fair to assume that when making a $40,000-plus purchase, many people won’t think twice about dropping another $40, and maybe that’s the whole point.
