There has been official reporting that Tesla Semi is able drive over 420 miles on one charge with 80,000 pounds of total load (including the weight of the truck and trailer). This was a heavily disputed capability. The range was with driving speeds of 65 mph which has 15% less range than trucks driving at 52 mph. The Tesla Semis have been driving over 400 miles on a single charge with full loads and average speeds of 65 miles per hour. Tesla can do 70% charge in 60 minutes and 90% charge in 90 minutes. 15-30 minutes for 15-35% topoff charges. Pepsi has 750 kw chargers installed. Tesla Semi were charging during the day to get operated distance.
UPDATE: Tesla Pepsi Semi crushing all other electric trucks on endurance and distance over multiple days. Semi trucks need to operate long distances day after day. Tesla Semi outrange the competing electric Semi by three to six times multiple days.
OverDriveonline reports that North American Council for Freight Efficiency (NACFE)’s Mike Roeth has given a good summary of how Pepsi’s Tesla Semi trucks are being loaded for the Run on Less real world testing event:
“We’re tracking the beverage. It’s impressive, a fairly heavy haul at nearly 80,000 pounds. It goes to one location and drops off soda, but maybe picks up some waters, goes to another location to drop off waters but pick up Gatorade. We don’t really know the payload, [but] NACFE has verified that these are fairly fully loaded when they leave and stay fairly loaded. They’re not out there gaming Run on Less.” So these things are running heavy (no chips and rarely empty), all efficiency numbers should be understood in that light. Given that heavy load, the efficiency numbers that can be inferred from the data should be understood to be on the low end of the spectrum – same for the range on a single charge.
As for how much payload capacity the truck loses due to battery weight Mike says that “that run yesterday is with less beverages than if it was a diesel truck, but not much less” speculating here, but I’d personally guess that the lost payload is 1t-2t when including the extra 1t allowance that electrics get.
All in all, doing 806 miles a day in heavy load applications (like Tesla 3 did yesterday – probably the subject of another post) is a really impressive demonstration of this technology. If I told anyone 5 years ago that such a thing were possible I’d have been chased out of the room.
Brian Wang is a Futurist Thought Leader and a popular Science blogger with 1 million readers per month. His blog Nextbigfuture.com is ranked #1 Science News Blog. It covers many disruptive technology and trends including Space, Robotics, Artificial Intelligence, Medicine, Anti-aging Biotechnology, and Nanotechnology.
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Without the useful load data, no conclusion can be reached. Also Drivers get paid by the mile. Sitting for an hour at a charging station unpaid will piss off everyone. Thirdly it takes about ten minutes to fuel a diesel truck, has anyone considered that six times the number of charging stations-vs-fueling stations will be needed to maintain shipping throughput?
Diesel trucks can’t be fueled while they’re being loaded and unloaded though. So charging stations at the loading docks could make up for this difference in lost time. Depending how many stops you have to do to load and unload, it may even entirely negate it if you’re charging at every stop. With long haul trucking, you also have to think about mandatory downtime. You can’t drive more than 11 hours a day in a 14 hour period. That’s 3 hours of mandatory downtime for a trucker driving by themself. That’s plenty of time for 2 full charges, which likely wouldn’t be needed as you’re going less than 800 miles in that period if you’re following the speed limit. If you start the day fully charged because you can charge at the truck stop you sleep in, drive it until nearly dead, and then spend 90 mins charging up before driving until nearly dead again that’s only half of your mandatory downtime for the day.
Obviously for this ideal scenario to occur, being able to charge overnight at truck stops is necessary and fast charging stations need to be commonly available. But that’s not an unrealistic goal.
They do t have to be capable of going 800 miles in a day, it’s a solo truck, drivers can o ly do 11 hrs, running 65 won’t get you 700+ because of averages stopping and starting.
These trucks in a delivery situation need 4-500 miles, they’ll leave full (over 80k at times) and return mostly empty with a pallet jack and 20 empty pallets with 1 partial of defects and returns.
I think v1 just needs enough use cases. Longer and more rural routes will come over the next 5 years if tesla semi solidifies its nice in the market.
It’s funny, they worry about the truck, but not the plastic bottles they are hauling. If they actually wanted to change. Start with the plastic bottles…
Real world long hual just won’t happen. 2000 mile plus loads with team driving. That means each driver is pulling a 10 hour shift. The truck moves 24 hours. Only stopping for fuel. And dropping off trailer/unloading. Then the trip continues. Impossible with electric class 8.
Being able to handle half of the current situations and with lower cost operation means up to 200,000 sales per year in the USA and 1 million per year globally. Half of the 30 million global fleet of Semi and half of the 3 million sales per year.
The batteries and technology will get better. Another 10-15% more efficient on kwh per mile and batteries that have double or even triple the energy density.
420 miles is not long range. It is barely interstate for a large part of the country.
How long does it take to re-charge the batteries? Do it too fast and you ruin the batteries very quickly. That is wasteful. Do it too slow and… time is money.
Pixie dust will not cut through the hard constraints approaching at light speed.
Looking closely at the attached tables, I am left with this conclusion:
That e-Freighter trucks (not brand, but generically) are particularly VEXED by the weight of the batteries needed to give them the range NEEDED to accomplish a full day’s run of business under mean load. Period. It isn’t about the power of the motors (look at Tesla with its 1,000 HP, 4 motor rollout!) or performance (again, pulling 80,000 lbs up the Donner summit grade at full 60 MPH, which — having travelled this leg many times myself — which is truly amazing!).
Nope. Its about the aggregate battery mass for competent comporting of near-full loads long distances under demanding grade elevation changes and basically ‘power to the tires’ demands.
Tesla seems to have an advantage across the board in that they have been designing, testing, perfecting, redesigning, upgrading, and reworking their battery-pack tech over what now, the last 8 years? Producing 935 kWh of pack energy in a single e-Freighter with a sustained power of over 750 kW (to make those 1000 horses) is mighty impressive. And to have it all come in at 26,000 lbs then begs ‘yes, but that’s an awful lot’.
See? Its the mass of the batteries necessary to ‘do the full job’ and not half-âhss it. From what I can tell, if the 900 kWh Tesla e-Freighter delivers 450 real high-load miles per charge and over 530 miles (table) at the outside, while good, it still needs to be pivoted against your ‘average long hauler’ Diesel freighter, carrying tandem 125 gallon tanks (250 gal total), and with ‘modern’ fuel efficiency of 5 miles per gallon, then our comparison freight truck has a range of about 1,250 miles. Roughly 2.8x the highest capacity Tesla truck.
Now will that really make a difference for a trucking company?
WELL SURE … depending on the service(s) they provide. Companies that are centered on taking heavy containerized loads from shipping ports to the interior of the country (without benefit of hauling the majority of their load by train) have the hardest case. With paired up drivers, they easily can drive 16 hours a day or more. At 5 mpg, at 65 MPH they’re burning 13 gallons an hour. 13 gph × 16 hr = 208 gallons.
Well, that’s basically most of the fuel in the twin diesel tanks. The Tesla truck — if it were trying to make the same run — getting 450 miles a leg, needs to start with a FULL charge, and get FULL refilled once before mid-way, and HALF refilled near the end. The first fill-up one presumes is done overnight. Little human time cost. The mid-trip one though is kind of ugly. 2 hours or more, SUPPOSING that there is a conveniently positioned 350 kW to 500 kW super-duper charger station available when needed.
I say “2 hours or more” because unlike the glib statements of fast-fast recharge, I think the real-world plays out far less speedily. [1] Gotta queue up or a charging bay, with a possibly long-line of e-freighters waiting ahead of you. Supposing that it is a BIG facility (dozens of trucks simultaneously), then … charge-rate throttling is almost certainly going to happen. Economical optimizations will limit per-truck charge rate when the aggregate all-bay rate achieves the pad transformer(s) limitations. And heat. Hot days WILL charge slower. Less heat tolerance. Same could be said for the trucks’ battery packs themselves!!!
Anyway … while one can (and advertisers definitely do) argue that taking a 2 hour break is GOOD for traffic safety, the shipping companies are loathe to extend their shipping days profitlessly. So, the battery packs need to weigh a whole lot less per kilowatt-hour of stored energy, AND way more total kilowatt-hours need to be on board. Looks, by my calculations at ±1.7 kWh/mi that the same 1000 miles needs 2,000 kWh of battery pack.
And given the differential battery mass (from table, under Tesla’s listing) of 5,500 lbs for +400 kWh (obviously including not only the battery packs but also the fairly heavy road-certification worthy housings, cabling, electronics, active cooling), that getting to 2,000 kWh would take an additional (2000 – 900) • (5,500 ÷ 400) = 15,000 lbs. ADDITIONAL, which is to say, ‘subtracting from total legal payload’.
My case is thus made, numerically. The battery technology NEEDS to substantially improve. Not ‘just 2×’, but more like 4×, weight-per-kWh wise. This may be close, but I feel ‘in my bones’ that it is a pretty good stretch ahead, without some kinds of breakthroughs as yet unrealized. Because … in the end, competent LONG HAUL freight trucks need really big battery packs.
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ON the other hand, the Pepsi case may well be a perfect fit! Almost none of their product is hauled all that far by truck, per leg. The total daily load might total close to the 450 miles (some doubt: much of a big Pepsi truck’s day is spent loading/unloading and queuing up). Moreover, short-to-medium haul workloads are the backbone of many regional trucking companies. The real challenge for them would be to have super-duper overnight charging facilities at all their regional terminals. I have familiarity with this, having worked for a fairly representative mid-haul trucking company for a few years. 25 terminals, 3 big hubs, out in Ohio and the surrounds. 750 trucks. LTL (less than load) between all points.
Trucks were on the road 18 hours a day, with relief drivers taking over at the hubs. The mix was everything from Amazon delivery vans to full 18-wheelers, 50% at the Class 8 (82,000 lb gross) size. Almost no trucks were being driven more than 500 miles a day, so basically they might be a good fit for the Tesla presently-available case. Given the 3 massive central hubs, they also seem a good fit for ‘mid-journey recharging’. Especially if streamlined well.
So … while I have my ‘need lighter batteries’ complaint, I also acknowledge that there are PLENTY of use cases for e-trucks right now. Plenty of them. Hopefully the Grid will be capable enough to handle the new load peaking as all these trucks come on line.
⋅-⋅-⋅ Just saying, ⋅-⋅-⋅
⋅-=≡ GoatGuy ✓ ≡=-⋅
Hey man, I really appreciate your post. I really appreciate the time and the due diligence that you put into this and how you’re trying to educate people. We really need more people like you. Just thank you
Can’t forget the sheer amount of power they require to charge too, my understanding is that they even have their own power station because of the insane demands
It’ll come down to economics. Drivers don’t get paid much on net. Many drivers are independent operators. It sounds like a lot of money, but truck maintenance comes out of your pocket. The net pay is low.
If the electric option saves 20-50% on their fuel bill, and cuts down on maintenance costs, the drivers with electric trucks will undercut the diesel drivers.
Maybe the tradeoff is spending an extra hour at fueling stations. If that’s what it takes to keep their jobs, they’ll probably figure out how to deal with it.
Worth pointing out that the economics don’t work in California. Electricity is too expensive. EVs in CA are strictly a compliance play.
The economics work great in most non-coastal states – where long haul trucks do most of their miles.
The only maintenance cost it cuts down is oil changes. Meanwhile the cost of the battery to replace will kill them.
We’ve a truck in the shop that needs a relatively cheap $15,000 engine and boss is considering scrapping the truck. Imagine a hundred thousand dollar battery.
Also these are going to be fun when they catch fire in a tunnel.
You called it out perfectly. These trucks go out each day on a delivery route. They have ample down time to recharge before the next deliveries. I live in the area they are being used in and l have never seen or heard of one being stranded on the road. Local news interviews with the drivers have all been positive. Long haul road routes may never be a popular use but given how much freight moves across country by rail in containers they should be perfect for intermodal work. It is quickly becoming common in the San Francisco Bay area to see more new Teslas on the road than any other brands. I also do not see stranded Teslas on the side of the road.
Actually this doesn’t work at all. A conventional sleeper is 20klbs vs 31klbs Tesla, this means on 80klbs gross limitation, the Tesla would have to tell the shipper to take 10klbs of product off. That means the receiver would need to pay two separate Tesla trucks to receive the same amount of freight. And this is just general freight we’re talking about. And as stated before, charging time and availability is a huge issue. So right now Pepsi is toying with it because they could utilize these for local businesses delivery runs, again 10klbs less product then have to return to a distribution center for charging.
Well I don’t think these trucks work for my company. We run 90,000 and go 500-600 miles a day out in rural country where there no way to change the truck up. Eve if you wanted too.
Take in consideration that this Tesla semi truck is brand new to the market, and battery 🔋 technology is improving rapidly. Be patient and you will have yours in a couples of years.
There will be places to charge in the future. This is showcasing
Change it up? What would you want to “change” it to??