Tesla last week handed over the first Tesla Semi electric tractors for the launch customer, PepsiCo. Two years passed from the first to the pre-series prototype, and three more years from it to mass production. The Semi was Tesla’s first new product since early 2020, when the Model Y cars rolled off the company’s assembly line.
The Tesla founder personally brought one tractor to a presentation in Reno, Nevada, where the assembly plant is located. “We don’t make slow cars at Tesla,” he said. — [Без груза] it is an elephant with the grace of a panther.”
The Semi is three times as powerful as any existing diesel truck, uses one kilowatt-hour per kilometer, and can accelerate to 100 km/h in 20 seconds, Musk says. Running range without recharging the older version with a battery with an estimated capacity of 1000 kilowatt-hours – 800 km with a gross weight with a trailer of 37 tons. Full autopilot is not connected yet.
Charging up to 70% (but only through special stations) takes 30 minutes and costs 2.5 times cheaper than diesel fuel per kilometer. During the first three years of ownership, fuel savings should reach $200,000.
Neither the power nor the actual price of the tractor is known. However, the first customers, back in 2017, “frozen” $ 20,000 prepayment, can count on $ 180,000 for the older version. Subsequent deliveries promise to be noticeably more expensive.
Musk plans to reach the annual production of 50 thousand tractors per year by 2024. These plans do not look very feasible, but the very concept of a mainline electric tractor can finally be spoken of in a market sense – but only thanks to the energy crisis.
The Semi, like EVs in general, does not solve the problem of low energy density of modern batteries. Therefore, with a lower mileage at one “gas station”, the electric tractor is always forced to carry with it just the “weight of an adult elephant” – six tons of a battery instead of half a ton of diesel fuel, notices Bloomberg profile columnist. This means that long-distance electric traction should lose both in the mass of the transported cargo (taking into account the restriction on the total weight of the road train), and in the mileage, and in the duration of refueling.
But it looks like Musk will have the last laugh. The point is the price of fuel, which has doubled over the past five years, and this is what allowed Tesla Semi to find a small commercial niche – transporting bulky, light and cheap cargo over short distances, but at the lowest price per kilometer. Namely, packaged Frito-Lays chips from a plant in California. Naturally, the state grant of $15.4 million for the introduction of “clean” logistics did not interfere, nor the federal tax deduction of $40,000 for each truck.
“Musk may have succeeded in repeating the trick with the very first Roadster electric car,” writes Bloomberg. “While everyone else in the industry was trying to make a competitive electric car for the mass market, Tesla went into the free luxury segment, where price didn’t matter. Now, while the trucking industry is looking for a new workhorse, Tesla will bite off another segment and start reshaping the market.”