Pepsi Tesla Semi Truck Drives 1076 Mile in One Day to Show Off

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One of the Pepsi Tesla Semi Trucks was driven for 1076 Miles in one day. This was on the 17th day when the three trucks had over 2600 miles of combined driving in one day. This shows that Tesla Semis can have multiple fast chargings in one day to give 240% of the trucks range when using more than one driver.

The number of 600-1076 mile range days from multiple trucks driving at about the 80,000 lb combined weight of truck, trailer and payload can perform regional truck delivery duties. 15-30% of the use cases for US Semi trucks can be handled. Electric truck depots able to handle up to 50 Semi regional trucks can be supported. Electric Semi trucks can replace 15-30% of Semi trucks with substantially lower fuel costs that are equivalent to $1.70 per gallon fuel prices. The daily range would be 60-120 gallons of fuel per day for 8-10 mpg trucks. The fuel savings would be $180-500 per day.

18 thoughts on “Pepsi Tesla Semi Truck Drives 1076 Mile in One Day to Show Off”

  1. Get the government money out of the electric vehicles. Then we can see the true cost. As long as the government is giving tax money all this stuff is bs. I remember when fuel got real expensive the government told trucking companies if they couldn’t afford fuel to get out. Now they pass tax money for these companies.

    • all of the governments are involved in all energy production. International Energy Agency, fossil fuel direct subsidies hit a global high of $1 trillion in 2022 – the same year Big Oil pulled in a record $4 trillion of income. There is also $5 trillion per year of subsidies as the oil, gas and coal to not pay for environmental damage. Air pollution from transportation kills about 1.6 million people per year. Total air pollution deaths globally are about 7 million but there is also cooking and heating in poor countries. There are also millions of hospitalizations each year. There is about $800 billion of healthcare costs from soot air pollution in the US alone.

  2. I call BS unless it was more than 1 driver…

    In a DOT maximum 11 hour drive day, in a truck that is not governed to a maximum speed; an average pace of 80mph, with nothing more than a meal break and bathroom breaks, and nothing going wrong….. the maximum miles is 880… on ANY TRUCK!!!

    • I agree with you on that. There is no way it could travel that far with stops for 3 charging cycles. On a good day, driving at night with less traffic and few construction zones I can average 590 miles with few bathroom breaks in 11 hours of driving if I’m lucky traveling 65mph. I call BS on 1,076 miles!

  3. Well 6 ev truck drivers can do in a day what 3 can do in half a day with a diesel powered truck without all the power loss in the grid that ev users will have since its gonna take til the year 2050 to get the power grid up enough to be able to supply the power grid with enough to just supply the ev trucks don’t make any sense to waste that much energy unless big companies aren’t flipping the bill it gets pushed down to the taxpayers to pay the bill

    • No idea why you believe we need 27 years to upgrade the grid. We DOUBLED grid capacity every decade from 1950 to 2000.

      At $1.70 per gallon of diesel equivalent electric energy compared to $4 for actual diesel, I strongly suspect a financial case can be made for “wasting” electricity on semi trucks! 😀

      Battery life under heavy daily use definitely must be part of that equation, of course, among numerous other factors. We’ll know the final results when we see which “fuel” trucking companies adopt long-term.

  4. Great to hear about Telsa. an additional topic suggestion. Would be nice to hear of some articles about Arpa-e and research. They seem to drop off the radar of late.

  5. How long is the battery life? How many recharges before it needs to be replaced.
    My guess is a commercial vehicle will see much greater day to day use than a personal vehicle. How many years will the batteries last under that demanding scenario?

    • The Tesla car batteries are warranted for 1,500 charge cycles, which they figure is 20-30 years for the average driver. Personal vehicles spend most of their time just sitting around, and will usually go a week or more per charge.

      At 2 charges a day for a truck operating long shifts, that’s about a 2 year battery life. So you’d be getting many battery replacements over the working life of a truck.

      In theory, of course, if you carried extra batteries, and managed the system to only use the optimal portion of the charging range, (1,500 assumes full charge/discharge cycles, but Lion batteries last longer if you avoid full charges and discharges.) you could probably push that up to every 5-6 years, at some cost to the vehicle cargo capacity.

      This really doesn’t effect the per mile cost, you’re just racking up the miles in a shorter time.

      • 2 years is pessimistic. Charge cycles usually quoted as the equivalent of a full discharge and charge. Say range is 400 miles real world (discounting tesla claim of max 500) x 1500 = 600,000 miles. Googling says average semi covers 100,000 miles per year , so 6 years. At that point the battery will not be dead but maybe degraded to 70%. Still, for these commercial vehicles battery replacements will be an issue at some point.

        If they move to Iron phosphate they could increase that by 50% or more, but I don’t know if the energy density would be good enough for semi.

      • you’re missing a data point, which is tesla’s newer batteries are claimed to have a better than 2x increase in cycles, or as they like to call it, a million mile battery.

    • Does it matter? Battery costs are plunging. There are currently over two dozen battery plants under construction the US (thank you IRA Act), and they won’t be the last. Couple that with continued battery tech evolution, making batteries better and better. A future battery replacement will be preferred cost-wise to replacing an engine or transmission. And yes, recycling services are coming into place.

    • The high energy density NCM battery chemistry in the 500 mile version is rated for about 3000 cycles. At 500 miles per cycle, that is 1.5M miles. The lower range 300mi Tesla Semi model will use LFP chemistry rated for 10,000 cycles plus, which is 3M miles. These distances are more than the typical lifespan of diesel powered tractors. The outfit I work for has trucks that average 100k miles per year. That would imply 15 year lifespan on the battery at least. If anything, it is likely that the battery will outlast the tractor, and when the tractor is retired it will have a second life application.

      • If a Tesla Semi battery USD~125, what’s a value for secondary storage usage for grid or (charger located) Megapack enhancement on a $/kWh base.
        If it’s ~900kWh for an average ~425mi (500mi*0.85) range for 1000000mi (~2350 full charge/discharge cycles, 0-100% relative capacity available) until a batteries capacity is degraded to ~70% from initial range, that’s a 0.11ct/mi (or for a total of 1.7GWh) on battery cost. Depending on how much capacity is left from 70% to meaningful usable for secondary tasks with grid support (local charging or with state wide grid stabilization), guess maybe topping towards a 50% from 1.7GWh, being (low guess) ~0.5GWh(on another 1500 cycles?)*(5-15ct) to local grid or electricity re-dispatch (with e.g. low cost direct solar $50/MWh or electricity on dynamic rating markets), a replacement battery pack (getting cheaper?) cost could be reduced by a maybe USD~25-75k (?)

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