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Written by Becky Wells
Tesla"s next big reveal will be a fully electric and potentially autonomous heavy-duty haulage truck.Forget glamorous saloons and SUVs it"s time to go hard or go home. The aptly dubbed Tesla Semi comes as part of Master Plan Part Deux" the business model released in July 2016, ten years after the original company plan and promises another decade of game-changing products from the all-electric brand.As anticipation and Tesla CEO Elon Musk"s Twitter feed heats up, what do we know about the Semi so far?The official unveil will be on October 26 maybeTaking to Twitter, as all modern billionaires do, Musk announced the Tesla Semi was "tentatively scheduled" for unveil in late October at the SpaceX facility in Hawthorne, California. Musk also added it was "worth seeing this beast in person. It"s unreal." The reveal has already been pushed back from September, though.It"s only a semiThe upcoming unveiling will be for an all-electric semi-truck, or a typical articulated lorry. It"s unconfirmed if the Tesla Semi will be its final production name, although Musk hinted at this in a tweet back in April: "Tesla Semi truck unveil set for September. Team has done an amazing job. Seriously next level," he said.There"s already a working prototype Musk confirmed at Tesla"s 2017 Annual Shareholder Meeting that the Semi will be a functional prototype that has already been the talk of the town with potential customers."We have shown it to a number of people who buy heavy duty trucking and they all love it. They just want to know how many can they buy and how soon," said Musk.He added that clients have also been involved in the design process: "The biggest customers of the heavy-duty Tesla Semi are helping ensure that it is specified to their needs. It"s not a mystery. They already know that it is going to work because they"ve told us what those needs are." Full production capacity is to be expected within 18 to 24 months.It won"t overhaul the haulage gameIt"s reported that the Semi will have a range of 200-300 miles on a single charge. That quite easily rules it out of most trans-America expeditions, where diesel alternatives can cover 1,000 miles on a single tank, so instead of a long-haul trucker, it will likely focus on regional trips, making up 30 per cent of all trucking jobs in the States. That"s still a pretty big piece of a portage pie, though, especially on a plug-in basis.After a meeting with Tesla, Executive Scott Perry from Miami-based fleet operator Ryder System Inc told Reuters that the semi will also be a day cab, meaning it won"t have a sleeper berth."I"m not going to count them out for having a strategy for longer distances or ranges, but right out of the gate, I think that"s where they"ll start," Perry said.but it is heavy dutySpeaking to TED organiser Chris Anderson in April, Musk prophesised how the electric truck would overtake the rest of the segment. "It is a heavy-duty, long range semi-truck, so it has the highest weight capability for the range. Essentially it"s meant to alleviate the heavy-duty trucking loads. This is something which people do not, today, think is possible."They think the truck doesn"t have enough power, or it doesn"t have enough range. With the Tesla semi, we want to show that no, an electric truck actually can out-torque any diesel semi, and if you had a tug-of-war competition, our truck will tug the diesel semi uphill."
Date written: 26 Sep 2017
More of this article on the Top gear website
ID: 9320
Tesla"s next big reveal will be a fully electric and potentially autonomous heavy-duty haulage truck.Forget glamorous saloons and SUVs it"s time to go hard or go home. The aptly dubbed Tesla Semi comes as part of Master Plan Part Deux" the business model released in July 2016, ten years after the original company plan and promises another decade of game-changing products from the all-electric brand.As anticipation and Tesla CEO Elon Musk"s Twitter feed heats up, what do we know about the Semi so far?The official unveil will be on October 26 maybeTaking to Twitter, as all modern billionaires do, Musk announced the Tesla Semi was "tentatively scheduled" for unveil in late October at the SpaceX facility in Hawthorne, California. Musk also added it was "worth seeing this beast in person. It"s unreal." The reveal has already been pushed back from September, though.It"s only a semiThe upcoming unveiling will be for an all-electric semi-truck, or a typical articulated lorry. It"s unconfirmed if the Tesla Semi will be its final production name, although Musk hinted at this in a tweet back in April: "Tesla Semi truck unveil set for September. Team has done an amazing job. Seriously next level," he said.There"s already a working prototype Musk confirmed at Tesla"s 2017 Annual Shareholder Meeting that the Semi will be a functional prototype that has already been the talk of the town with potential customers."We have shown it to a number of people who buy heavy duty trucking and they all love it. They just want to know how many can they buy and how soon," said Musk.He added that clients have also been involved in the design process: "The biggest customers of the heavy-duty Tesla Semi are helping ensure that it is specified to their needs. It"s not a mystery. They already know that it is going to work because they"ve told us what those needs are." Full production capacity is to be expected within 18 to 24 months.It won"t overhaul the haulage gameIt"s reported that the Semi will have a range of 200-300 miles on a single charge. That quite easily rules it out of most trans-America expeditions, where diesel alternatives can cover 1,000 miles on a single tank, so instead of a long-haul trucker, it will likely focus on regional trips, making up 30 per cent of all trucking jobs in the States. That"s still a pretty big piece of a portage pie, though, especially on a plug-in basis.After a meeting with Tesla, Executive Scott Perry from Miami-based fleet operator Ryder System Inc told Reuters that the semi will also be a day cab, meaning it won"t have a sleeper berth."I"m not going to count them out for having a strategy for longer distances or ranges, but right out of the gate, I think that"s where they"ll start," Perry said.but it is heavy dutySpeaking to TED organiser Chris Anderson in April, Musk prophesised how the electric truck would overtake the rest of the segment. "It is a heavy-duty, long range semi-truck, so it has the highest weight capability for the range. Essentially it"s meant to alleviate the heavy-duty trucking loads. This is something which people do not, today, think is possible."They think the truck doesn"t have enough power, or it doesn"t have enough range. With the Tesla semi, we want to show that no, an electric truck actually can out-torque any diesel semi, and if you had a tug-of-war competition, our truck will tug the diesel semi uphill."
Date written: 26 Sep 2017
More of this article on the Top gear website
ID: 9320
