Tesla Semi Delivery Event

Tesla drove its Semi truck with a 81,000 pound payload up a 6% incline. They drove 500 miles with a full load.

The Tesla Semi has a 1000 volt powertrain versus the 400 volt powertrain in other vehicles.

Tesla will use the 1000 volt powertrain in other vehicles.

They will have version 4 superchargers that can charge a cybertruck in about 6 minutes and a 1 MW Semi truck in about 30 minutes.

The cybertruck will likely have version with 1000 volt powertrain and use the version 4 superchargers.

32 thoughts on “Tesla Semi Delivery Event”

    • Concrete Jersey barriers weigh 4,000lbs each with 8 on the trailer that makes 32,000lbs load making the rest of the truck weigh 49,000lbs

    • How about just putting batteries in the trailers? And then reducing the size of the batteries in the trucks.

      • Would be interesting what is service&idle time for road tractors/trucks and trailers?
        US cargo is ~40% by road trucks, while in EU it’s up to ~3/4 or ~75%, for a cargo fleet of ~3.9M vehicles (lorries, semi-trucks, road tractors, &trailers, sum of vehicles is mostly not older than 5(~60%)-9yrs for ~3/4 of that fleet), average freight weight (dep. on type of delivery vehicle) 15-17t and average 29000km/a each.
        en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transportation_in_the_United_States#Cargo
        ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-explained/index.php?title=Road_freight_transport_by_vehicle_characteristics
        (Australia, South America, Africa, India, Asia – statistics, with being partly markets for semi-trucks?)

        • Tesla Semi markets?
          data.oecd.org/transport/freight-transport.htm
          (&greetings to all truck driving or FSD friends of the roads)

          • comparison to current tractor&trailor efficiencies (Diesel engine’s peak eff ~44%), what is probably still a Mercedes Actros (2008 data) on ~19.44l/100km (0.8l/100km each tonne, for ~24t payload), that’s ~191kWh/100km or 12.1mpg (US), compared to Tesla-Semi on ~125kWh/100km or ~2kWh/mile (none optimized heavier ~2.7-4.5t, if empty)
            best guess for efficiency on conventional systems is Hybrid solutions:
            theicct.org/sites/default/files/publications/Efficiency_standards_HDVs_EU_Briefing_051618.pdf#page=9

  1. I suspect that the timing was bad.
    We are entering a consumer and business-to-business near-recession, likely for a few quarters or less, but with effects lasting far more than a year.
    New business funding and financing is looking increasingly scarce and expensive.
    Rebates, tax incentives, and supportive legislation is looking questionable and low priority.
    Acquiring ‘new tech’ budgets, no matter how future-proof, earth-saving, or someday-profit-friendly appears to be one of the first things to go with larger businesses (after they cut their remote and hybrid-demanding staff (lo$ers)).
    As with other EVs, near-term plateauing and lack of customers resilient enough to want ‘new’ high-ish-end cars, is occuring in a widespread way in most G7 markets. Temporary saturation?
    We need to hear that Tesla has made ‘fleet deals’ with dedicated shippers, distribution-priority businesses, and inter-state cargo companies – including near-ready infrastructure support. Without these now for delivery/payment in next year, Semi will just become another one of Musk’s hyperloop, boring, and SolarCity ventures.

  2. Or at what voltage this “megawatt” charger is operating.
    I’m sure Tesla knows but at this point we have no idea where the “bottleneck” will be during this charging process.

    • I expect the bottleneck will be the local substation, and/or the lines leading from it to the charger. With the average house consuming about 1.2KW, we’re talking about a charger dishing out enough power to run a mid sized subdivision.

      • Sure that it will depends on that , I would say that we are not prepared at all , in Belgium by 2030 most of the cars need to be electric, by 2026 all company car need to be electric, and politics want to close nuclear plants

        • They want the electric vehicles, and they oppose the infrastructure needed to use them. Basically magical thinking. If they actually thought it would work.

          I think the truth is, they don’t. They’re trying to recreate serfdom, and part of that is making long distance travel unavailable to the peons.

          • Yes basically a recreation of serfdom. Most Europeans will avoid costly travel, warm baths, and eat bugs but Gaia will be happy. Europe’s only unchecked box on the todo list of medieval serfdom is hereditary rulers (note that plague has already been taken care of).

          • Tesla will build most of the infrastructure. Need 25 lathrop 40gwh energy storage plants and gigawatts if solar. For one charging station per 20 trucks. I have the spreadsheet on this. It is the opportunity for Tesla to convert terawatts of battery and solar to handle it. Cannot upgrade grid and power fast enough beyond about 2024-2025. Tesla must step in at scale with their own and batteries from CATL. I have a idea coming up that explains this.

            • The truck charging stations will be 10s of megawatts. Building them in cities would be impossible. Good thing nobody is dumb enough to try.

              Rural areas have no problem serving this kind of load. See data centers, oil and gas loads, and Bitcoin miners for recent reference. They’re all much larger loads. They came online with minimal fuss about power supply.

              People who live in cities don’t appreciate how business-friendly rural areas can be.

      • Pretty impressive since the NYC entire subway trains only run on 625 volts: https://www.nycsubway.org/wiki/Subway_FAQ:_Facts_and_Figures

        I do share the concerns of others here that few areas will have the grid to support such fast chargers, let alone enough of them to power a dozen Tesla Semis – @ 2 per truck – so truckers don’t have to wait for each other on top of 1 hour charge per truck to 80% capacity. Probably need Tesla Giga Trucks Stops too with food, showers, and stores.

        • The vehicle battery operating voltage is around 800 volts. The charger specifications state that it has 1000V operation.

  3. 1MW charger will not recharge Semi in 30 minutes.

    A 30 minutes 20-80% recharge requires a 2.5C peak power charge rate. 1 MW is 1C for a 1 MWh battery in the Semi.

    A 20-80% recharge will take about an hour in the Semi.

    Charge time for Cybertruck is unknown because we don’t know the battery size or it’s max C rate.

      • They aren’t even building semis ,these are just test articles to help with there final design, some time next year, always later ,with Tesla always more expensiveness capable.

        • The prototypes were built about 5 years ago. They have been testing and improving the design since then. The specs presented 5 years ago were 500milees on a charge 80% recharge in about 40minutes and able to pull full load mountain pass without slowing down. The presentation was just before the turned over the first production batch to the customer. The specs for the production version are basically the same as the prototypes built 5 years ago.

          • Yeah – if you caught it, when the new owners came on stage, they actually turned over a couple of small black boxes which I took to contain keys to a couple of trucks – which they were probably supposed to do in a bit more ceremonial fashion.

            • It was unfortunate that Musk and Priestley did not introduce the two men; they were Steven Williams the CEO of Frito-Lay, and Ramon Laguarta, the CEO of Pepsico, and yes, I believe those were the key cards for two of their new semi’s.

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