Thunderfoot, Phil Mason, is a popular youtuber despite putting out wrong information. He likes to try to “bust” Elon Musk for Tesla, Boring Company and SpaceX. This is obviously because Elon Musk is the most successful businessman in the world who has the largest following on Twitter. Attack videos against Elon Musk can get 250,000 to 1 million views.
In the latest Thunderfoot says that the Tesla Semi delivery event showed the Semi weighing 82,000 lbs with truck, trailer and cargo. Thunderfoot is saying that Tesla lied about the payload weight. This is absolutely absurd that Tesla with over $80 billion in revenue would lie about the weight of payload. These trucks are being delivered to Pepsi and more trucks to Walmart and others. Being unable to move the full weight claimed would result in massive lawsuits. The 10 Foot Jersey barriers are not 1000 lbs or 2000 lbs as claimed by Thunderfoot. They are 4000 lbs and there are 11 of them. This is clearly 44,000 pounds.
One of the other attacks are that it took 5 years to deliver the first Semi after the 2017 event. Tesla had to fully develop game-changing technology and the world was battery constrained. Tesla made more money making Model 3 and Model Y. There is now an abundance of batteries.
Another attack is that Tesla did not include Autopilot with the Tesla Semi. Yes, Tesla Autopilot was not active. Autopilot has not been certified for use while towing. The Tesla Semi autopilot needs to be fully validated while towing the trailer. The main competitors like Freightliner and Daimler also do not have trucking driver assist to the level of Autopilot. I fully expect Tesla will activate Autopilot in the Semi within 6 months.
The main points not addressed are the Tesla Semi electricity costs are $15000 to 20000 versus $60,000 to $100,000 for diesel for 60,000 to 100,000 miles per year driving.
Thunderfoot is lying about needing 2-4 Semi to move the same payload. This was the concrete barrier mass lie.
The Tesla Semi is faster and more efficient especially climbing or descending hills. 80% of the uphill energy is recovered on the downslope. The regenerative braking saves $2000-5000 for brake pad replacement in a year. If the Tesla Semi can make a 500-mile drive at speed up and down all hills, then this can save all of the 30 minute charging time. If the Tesla Semi can efficiently travel at 65 mph while the diesel Semi must go 55 mph to conserve fuel efficiency then Tesla can save over 75 minutes in travel time. A diesel semi going up or down a 5 degree grade will slow to 45 mph. 10 miles on a 5 degree grade would lose over 4 minutes.
Thunderfoot also was busted about the SpaceX Falcon 9 booster reuse. SpaceX has landed over 150 boosters and reflown over 100 times.
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.
Known for identifying cutting edge technologies, he is currently a Co-Founder of a startup and fundraiser for high potential early-stage companies. He is the Head of Research for Allocations for deep technology investments and an Angel Investor at Space Angels.
A frequent speaker at corporations, he has been a TEDx speaker, a Singularity University speaker and guest at numerous interviews for radio and podcasts. He is open to public speaking and advising engagements.
OK let’s set the Tesla was fully load at 82,000 pounds (a diesel semi is limited to 80,000 pounds) now using YOUR numbers that the cargo weighed 44,000 pounds, meaning the tractor trailer together weighed 38,000 pounds the 53-foot trailer weighs about 10,000 pounds so 28,000 pounds for the tractor. Now a semi can weigh in at between between 10,000 and 25,000 pounds. Now notice that the Tesla has no sleeper, and a sleeper can weigh in at 3200 lbs with AC and a generator. So call it 22,000 pounds for the semi. Meaning that the total weigh of the diesel semi with trailer will be right around 32,000 pound, which means they can carry 48,000 pounds of cargo or 4,000 pounds more than a Tesla, despite the fact the Tesla can weigh 2,000 pound more. If we go with the lightest semi you could carry 60,000 pounds of cargo which would be 16,000 pound more than the tesla.
And that’s just the start of their problems.
there are more holes inthe Tesla semi then a block of swiss cheese
the battery charge time is the first skew…
three DC battery to Inverter/vfd to three phase motor mechanically torqued twice TO REPLACE a diesel engine is the second.
the load is the third….
Not sure why Google suggested this to me but, but I’m not sure you know what a lie is.
This was painful to read, he addressed it in another video which you fail to reference.
You won’t get fair attacking people with credibility and good intentions.
Or you might… Trump and all that…
Good luck
Rob
Meanwhile in the real world…. those jersey barriers were NOT hauled 500 miles. Pepsi doesn’t make barriers. They hauled chips…frito lays. Maybe 13 or 14 pallets if you look at the time-lapse. Something along the lines of 1 – 3 tonnes.
Perhaps you missed it, but Pepsi’s Mike O’Connell’s even stated that heavier loads will be limited to 100 miles initially.
So what do we know?
The 500 miles was done “fully laden” but the chips are light….mmmm. heavy loads limited to 100 miles….mmmmm.
Maybe there were extra batteries in the trailer for the 500 mile range?
Pepsi can choose to test heavier loads with shorter ranges. Tesla ran a fully loaded truck for 500 miles for 93% charge. Cold weather can reduce range about 17%.
We need to approach energy efficiency with caution, so we dont overinflat our dollar. We need to also have diversity in our energy usage so, we dont overwhelm any one resource. Transparency is also important at the point we are at, so we dont waste investments on something that is economically disastrous.
I see lots of people stating the weight capacity, the charging rates, payload, acceleration, and such. Nobody has mentioned grid capacity. We don’t currently have the grid capacity to charge millions of vehicles. I don’t even have to do the math, anecdotal evidence is fine. Last summer, as record heat covered the globe, UK asked people to stop charging their cars because they didn’t have the capacity. Electric trains and buses stopped running due to electrical shortages. Brownouts in California due to lack of electrical capacity, and how would we supply Ukraine with weapons when most of their electrical infrastructure is destroyed. Indeed, the power grid is an Achilles heel. Because of it’s centralized nature it would be easy to shut down an entire region or county that relies on electric vehicles.
It’s not just that we need to build more substations, at a cost of billions (who pays for that). We will need to build more power plants at a cost of tens of billions (who pays for that).
Anyone who mentions solar or wind power is clueless as well. I have solar panels installed on my roof, I live in a very sunny place. The install payments cost as much as my electric bill did and after 20 years, when it’s paid off, the panels will have degraded and need to be replaced. There is no free ride.
The best manufacturers use extensive product testing. I worked for Boeing and we always did extensive testing with actual pilots to determine the best configuration of the cockpit, likewise for many truck makers. Looking at the layout of the interior, with an emphasis on the location of USB charging ports, it’s obvious that this truck interior was designed be want Elon wanted, not what’s practical.
Tesla is late to the game anyway, as there are already electric trucks on the road.
In my videos and articles, I describe the grid problems and weaknesses as opportunity for Tesla to fix with solar and megapacks. The existing electric trucks have less than half of the range and tiny production volumes.
“ nobody has mention grid capacity”?? Everybody has mentioned grid capacity, keep up. It already has been studied and being handled by legislators and power companies. You can sleep now.
No matter what criticism A you make, millions love Tesla!!!
No offense dude but did you guys realized how pathetic this whole busting of a buster of dusted company is. All of you clearly have a complex of God knows what.
Musk: “I know more than anyone about manufacturing”…
Thundef00t: “I’m a scientist and have worked with whatever”…
This musk fan boy: “I have stock, what do you have?”
Gee what a cringed trash… happy for you bro just keep this garbage from appearing in my feed cause I wanna vomit from all this “I know everything”…
P.S. great logic to invest in something meaningless especially now that Elon has practically killed all of his own wealth (and others). Can I buy you a “Good job!” badge?
No matter what you do in life people always is going to criticizeyou. Elon doesn’t smoke crack marihuana and is not a homogeneous!!He’s a hetero. People are always going to find ways to destroy you. Perfection is not an accident! @Napolandia.
What were you trying to say? It sounds like you had some sort of episode when you started typing and ended up with a letter salad.
Doesn’t change it’s moving half as many. Also are they 10′? Are they full concrete and steel barriers or are they glassfiber reenforced? Hit a weigh station and weigh the trailer. Show actual payload capacity. This is all any freight runner cares about. Most drivers aren’t stopping and going constantly so 0-60 is irrelevant.
B-b-but EDGELORD ELON THE NEVERWRONG has HEREBY DECLARIES
I’m going to give you one simple reason the Tesla semi is an ABJECT FAILURE. Did you look at where the driver sits, yeah that’s not great for the open road (no matter the mirrors or the cameras… cameras which WILL break… needed for changing lanes) but for yards.
No. Has any member of the design team spent as little as 20 minutes with a driver? I asked a trucking company owner and he scoffed. His drivers would have to stand up to go to the window or talk to the gate guard to get cleared for entry. Clearance which usually takes a bit to receive. Oh, and the same thing to get cleared to leave the yard. That’s before you trashed it as an OTR with that stupid entryway.
He said it would be fine if they can charge it from 10% to 95% in 20 minutes AND they COMPLETELY REDESIGN THE ENTIRE CAB STRUCTURE. That cab is worse than useless, it’s a disaster. An example of a product designed by people who KNOW NOTHING and paid ZERO ATTENTION to how the product is used. They should assign a dozen of the engineers designing the cab to live in a truck with an OTR driver – on the road – for 6 months. That cab would look COMPLETELY different.
As an aside, Freightliner, and other truck companies, do have people go with truckers (and talk with truckers) to get the realities of the road from the mouths of people who live the life.
Technology is rapidly advancing and will take care of these “temporary” problems. Walmart is the biggest retailer in the world. They didn’t get that way by standing on the sidelines. “Progress is our most important product”–Ronald Reagan.
You are right. Ni one is perfect. Perfe tion is not an accident! Elon is a genius! People don’t want to hear it. Millions support Elin Musk. I’m sure is he smore marihuana, crack then they will be happy! The man is hetero is not a homo! Leave the man aline!!!
Right now there is an industry that uses electric motors and have done so for over 70 years and yet they haven’t moved to battery operated vehicles. Why?
Their vehicles are a captured vehicle and only operate on a fixed roadway. They could easily install ground mounted recharging stations, but have decided that it is inefficient and far too costly.
In a few areas some of their vehicles are all electric, but connect directly to the grid and do not haul heavy loads.
Can anyone guess what industry I’m talking about?
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Heavy haul railroads. I guarantee you if it made sense to use a battery to power a vehicle they’d of adopted it before now.
The all electric railroads are passenger lines in metropolitan areas. Hell, California pissed away a billion dollars trying to build an electric railroads.
Maybe you’re a genius and know the future, but at 65 and having spent 40 of those dealing with electronics, I’d bet that 10 years from now, if we honestly look back, the soothsayers would be wrong 90 percent of the time.
Technology is evolving every day. To think that we’d know what things will be even a year from now is hubris.
Dear sir,
If you think big oil, and big rail want Mr. Musk to succeed you are a very uninformed person. Trains use massive amounts of diesel fuel everything they’re fueled up. One double lightening bolt marked CSX Train engine can hold 6,000 gallons of fuel. One large fully loaded train has two or three of these giants in the front. Although they are hauling multi-million pound loads. They still use thousands of gallons of fuel. Compared to a Tesla Semi, they’re gas hogs. Now my good sir, when in the eventual time these future semis become ore abundant on the road, those diesel engines wil go away like the old gas trucks of the 20s and 30s.
Tesla has not announced the weight of the semi, or the cost. Elon musk has a long history of over promising and under delivering. You seem to believe everything Tesla says and nothing Thunderfoot says. The truth is likely somewhere in the middle.
Evidently he has never driven a good semi truck. I had some peterbilts with a big cat engine that would run over 130 mph loaded. I bet that the Tesla won’t come close to that speed.
Tony they are not trying to break the law they are simply saying the electric can do a better job of maintaining a constant speed. Like it or not electric is the future and nothing you can say or do is going to change that. Once there are enough truck cabs they can switch the cab instead of charging. Electric motors are almost 60% more efficient than your carbon burning peterbuilt. It is also easier to reduce global warming things in a power plant than in 100,000,000 individual vehicles. So just sit back and relax.
(What’s the result, if, on the cost of fuel(?) efficiency, a 100M vehicles fleet improves on (temporarily) capturing CO2 from air?
Technologies utilizing molecular sieves/membranes might get below a USD100 (from USD200-600) for a next decade, compared to cost for reforesting on a <USD50. Loss in power efficiency for power supply generation with carbon capturing gets to ~10-40%, with ~15% increase in (fossil) fuel consumption for CCU (vs. CCS). If carbon gets a valued product (carbon fiber, graphenes, fuel cell) at least cost get integrated.
aside transportation vehicle stock and cost of transition/conversion/adjustment, "rapid expansion of scalable renewable electricity and storage would be preferable over fossil-fuel with CCS" )
‘below a USD100 (from USD200-600) for a next decade’
for 1t of CO2
What do you mean?when are people going to wake up. cobalt is dug up from the earth and so is other components to make lithium. do you not know what that will do to the environment 🤔
Pondering possible reasons because of extraction of battery’s materials and influence of further (non decreasing) usage of fossil fuels and how all countries on the planet can approach to measures is just out of my possibilities (variety, unknowns, timescale, …).
At least for batteries (being a production summary for materials being several years (~7-15yrs?) on vehicles, grid backup, etc. ) there’s a lot of common expertise and mining might improve to ‘all’ expectations? (Yes and no, more and less)
Tony,
A little simple math says you are full of crap. A diesel engine generaly maxs around 2100 rpm, transmissions sometimes have overdrive maybe of 1.10 and a very high speed rear axle to be an outlandish, non-existant 3.00, you are still way below 100mph. Now say you are a mechanical genius diesel engine turns 3000 rpm, you have a special overdrive transmission of 1.15 and a rear axle of 3.00 (that you would need a big push to get started) and going down a big, long hill, you still barely get past 100 mph.
New replacement technolgy pisses some people off in the beginning. But we eventually embrace it and move on. It’s called change.
Yet people hate change when it comes to the climate.
Seriously, what is this article?
How’s that elon promise that the cybertruck will also be a boat?
Or the free speech absolutist stuff?
He didn’t say the Cybertruck is also a boat. He said it has the ability to cross a stretch of calm water. There’s even been model 3s that are quite water tight, just not recommended with either vehicle imo… but I’m sure he knows more then us about it. Definitely you.
Question for you. Have you ever built a car? If so did you mass-produce is? Have you ever built a space craft and reused the main parts. Have you ever owned a billion dollar business
If not the shut up!!!!!!
Elon Musk has a history of promoting freedom of speech unless of course it’s about him.
He’s not capable of running a company without his ego getting in the way of reality. He’s possibly the most untrustworthy person in business. Despite becoming one of the world’s richest men he’s loosing it in a spectacular fashion.
Elon is self made and has very little taste for the super rich. His appeal is drowning amongst his followers who are now being prevented from using his so called freedom of speech. He wouldn’t last five minutes in any debate with Richard Branson as he lacks both experience and knowledge. He abuses the most talented people he can employ and as soon as the discovery is made he sacks them and makes sure they are unemployable within the industry.
If you haven’t already guessed I’m no fan of Elon Musk as he sets about destroying Twitter for his own personal satisfaction. He’s a ghastly excuse of a human. Give him five years and he’ll be broke and bankrupt blaming everyone but himself.
Also worth pointing out his claims on requiring 3+ substations to power a mega charger. This is ridiculous. A ground mounted transformer that can provide a gigawatt of power is about the size of a flatbed pickup and first search on Google says $20k to purchase.
The trucking industry was modified during the last democratic presidency and war on diesel. They have moved towards regional work and supplemented with intermodal. Its a usable product. The problem is that the guys out here like their toys. This is a game to them. Many people have chosen to make these vehicles their homes. So there’s only one way to win the war on diesel and that’s to end capitalism.
No war needed. Just keep science, engineering, progress and free thought ongoing in the design. The rest will take care of itself.
So what you’re saying is that Tesla, Walmart and Coca-Cola are not based on capitalism. Right.
I guess that’s why so many Communist Countries are beacons of technology and their citizens are so happy. Because communist countries are leaders in the fight to end GLOBAL WARMING.
What is it professional drivers don’t like on Tesla-Semi (if the Tesla truck is suitable for the purpose of aimed delivery tasks)?
Well, me knowing how it feels starting a Diesel engine, vibration, real acoustics from combustion power, being visible with custom shaped upgrades and knowing it’s a free choice with risks (but limited to self-employed truck drivers, Canada ~year2000, 1/5 on heavy freight, ~2018 ~1/3 (gov statistics on truck transportation), US ~9%_2022(~6% female), primarily class 8 (>=33kpounds), avg ~$50000 for ~101000mi, ~$0.5/mi, ~1800-2500hrs/yr on interstates, low “40 crashes per 100 million vehicle miles traveled”==once in 25yrs, Mexico 1.14M trucking class drivers (~1.4% female), informal employment ~30-50%, $7k MX ~USD350, ~48.8hr/week)?
Couriosity while researching statistics, probably no FSD then:
“An interesting note.
In 1896 there were only four cars registered in all the United States. Two of them collided with each other in St. Louis.”
( might explain some of this extraordinary improbability event
“These national patterns [living, shopping, traveling habits changed dramatically, formation of modern suburbs within cities, roadside architecture] were reflected in the City of St. Louis, which was an early center of automobile manufacture, sales, service, and marketing.” )
Every truck driver I know is totally anal about keeping their truck clean. Have you seen the cabin? The driver enters the cabin from the back and walks up to the cockpit. That’s 4 or 5 feet of the driver dragging mud “into their home”.
I try to understand Your concerns about cab design and maybe this gets a solution with variable seat positions for driving?
Brian,
Others have mentioned it, and I would also like to suggest that it would be a good idea to add the note at the end of any write up about something you have a financial stake thst you have a financial stake in it.
I take no stance on your views, or if you are or are not biased by your financial stake. That’s not my point. My point is that it not mentioning it but then having it brought up in comments certainly makes it appear as though you are bias and actively hiding it. It takes very little effort to defuse that particular line of criticism which can also lead to more productive and constructive conversation in the comments section.
I clicked on the about tab since this is the first time I’ve wandered onto your site and you actually list the number of times you have been mention on wiki. (Which good for you, your about page is full of things to be proud of) but if you’re able to go to that length than it’s simply inconceivable that a 1 sentence blurb that gets auto filled at the bottom of the article is too much work.
Seriously dude?
Fine, I have added the disclaimer note at the end of the About. I state many times in many but not all of my youtubes that I own Tesla stock. 80% of my videos are about Tesla and are all pro-Tesla. There is a whole community of Tesla stock owners. I am clearly a Tesla bull. Who would be an investor and a Tesla bull and not be a Tesla shareowner.
I am saying it is going to 50X 150 GWh this year to 8 TWh/year because of the Semi and Megapacks and utter truck domination.
I am more bullish in this statement than Emmett Peppers (who made about $100 million on Tesla stock and out of the money options mainly in 2019.) I was interviewed by Emmett Peppers and his fund partner Matt Smith. I was interviewed several times by Warren Redlich, Tesla hyperbull.
I have contributed chapters to the Elon Musk Mission book co written with Randy Kirk (who I have several videos with), Tesla youtuber Best in Tesla (Lars Strandridder), Tesla youtuber Dr Know It All John Gibb.
I just posted the Twitter Space with Yaman (value Analyst) best known for his Tesla will Triple in 2022.
In that Twitter Space, Tesla Battery Expert Jordan (the Limiting Factor youtuber) agreed with my thesis about Semi and Megapack.
Some people are flaming homosexuals… I am a flaming Tesla hyperbull, SpaceX bull and an Elon Musk believer. I am not in the closet about how positive I am about Tesla.
No one “caught” me with being pro-Tesla, pro-Space, pro-capitalism, pro-nanotech, pro-quantum computer, pro-AI, pro-technology, pro-antiaging, pro-aging reversal etc….. I want to be polite about this but WTF. Who else is saying Teslabot will succeed and Gigafactories will become self replicating and self replicating factories will colonize the solar system and expand human economy by 1 million times. Is some non-Tesla bull saying this?
However, I analyze the hell out of the supply chain and all the technology. I break it down. I analyze by the kWh, megawatt hour. I look at the 55,000 substations in the USA. I have dozens of spreadsheets. I make the economic case for the superiority of the Tesla Semi.
What I do though is I check any bias in my analysis. I am ranked 56th on the future prediction site Metaculus. https://www.metaculus.com/rankings/
I do not get an 80% prediction accuracy by not trying to keep bias in check. Do I make mistakes? Sure. I thought tripling the net income from last year would have enabled the stock price to increase but it went down instead. Elon selling $39 billion was more than I expected. However, when net income triples again, then it goes from $12 billion this year to $30+ billion in 2023, then it will be at nearly half of the net income of Google and Microsoft who are each at about $70 billion. The strength of the money printer should suppport the stock. A 100-200% year over year profit growth should justify a higher PE ratio. Trailing PE now down to about 50. Trailing 50 PE in Jan 2024 should indicate a $1.5T value (not financial advice). But in an insane bear market maybe PE gets compressed more. I am expecting more PE compression in Q1 despite increased profit in Q4.
I know the battery suppliers, supply growth, Auto chip companies. I see the other Semi competitors (electric and diesel). I worked out the comparative economics and delivery times and speed.
I am writing a new book with Randy Kirk – the Elon Musk Magic about the economic abundance and transformation that Tesla and SpaceX will create.
SpaceX will get 20% of global communications with Starlink Gen2 and Gen 2 orbit to ground cell service (voice and text). I know the Mbps and satellite positions and density and again the existing satellite communication players.
I am accurate, I am thorough, I am not sloppy, I have a 18+ year public history of accurate predictions.
Too much information…write a book amigo.
100 pages written already. New book targeting March, April 2023.
I’m just putting this out there, charge a Telsa Semi in a truckstop and it’ll cost 2×3x their estimated charging cost because truck stops mark everything WAY up. So the whole diesel vs electric argument is a shame when put into real world use.
The Tesla semi will initially be used for delivery routes originating and returning to the same depot and between depots. There will be no reason to charge anywhere else. As they become more common for long haul applications, I am sure Tesla will build infrastructure for trucks just as they have built infrastructure for passenger vehicles. It remains a lot cheaper per mile to charge at a Tesla charger than to fill up with gas or diesel.
Maybe, but Musk is trying really hard to market it as a long-haul truck
Long haul trucks capture people’s imagination… playing into the diesel cowboy theme.
But they are a small percentage of trucks sold amd a small percentage of miles hauled.
The Tesla semi will initially be used for delivery routes originating and returning to the same depot and between depots. There will be no reason to charge anywhere else.
Right now they dont. Charge at truck stops they charge at the company that owns them
Start a solar panel charging station / parking and shower business sponsored a la tesla man.
If the truck stops start gouging the electric vehicle’s I can guarantee the government will step in since they are backing electric,
Before writing about the freight industry, work in it. Go ride with a driver and get their view. From what I am hearing within the industry, those drivers who have driven one don’t particularly like the Tesla semi. Honestly, perhaps Tesla should have their engineers go out and ride with some professional drivers and see what the drivers really need.
I have been an owner/operator since 1971. I believe that my 2021 Volvo pollutes less than the tesla tractor. Unless they charge it from a known wind tubine, the energy comes from a coal or gas fired plant. The batteries are made from materials that require diesel machines to mine the ingredients. At the end of the batteries life they are so toxic that they will probably have to be disposed of in a manner similar to spent nuclear products. The seating position in the truck makes it impossible for a driver to hand paperwork out the window at a guard shack. Since the doors are in the back where is the sleeper going to be? I may be old fashioned but you couldn’t give me a tesla car or truck.
Your beliefs are wrong unless you have verifiable evidence.
That is not so clear-cut.
Regarding the percentage of electricity coming from fossil fuels, I have two conflicting pieces of information (both coming from 2021).
The Center for Sustainable Systems declares that 79% of US energy comes from fossil. The EIA declares that 61% of US energy comes from fossil fuels. Even if the EIA estimate seems optimistic, I will go with this one.
So if your truck needs 100 units of energy (kilowatt equivalent) to move its payload:
In the case of a diesel truck, since a diesel engine has an approximate efficiency of 30% (older models) up to 35% (newer engines with higher compression ratio), you need between 333.33 and 285.7 kW equivalent units (from here onwards abbreviated to kWeu) of fuel to output 100 kWeu.
In the case of an electric truck that requires 100 kWeu, we first need to figure out how many kWeu of electricity we need to charge a 100 kWeu battery. If a modern battery is charged slowly, it has 95-99% efficiency; supercharging a battery drops the efficiency to 85% due to heating. As we know that these batteries will be supercharged (because trucks will not stay for days at the refueling stations), we use the 85% figure. This value is for the current superchargers, mega chargers might be better, but given the amount of current they have to handle in a short time, I doubt it (indeed, Tesla decided to split the load between two chargers).
As electric motors are not physics-defying machines, they have inherent inefficiencies in converting electric energy into mechanical like diesel engines. As we said, diesel engines have an overall efficiency of 30-35%, while electric motors have an efficiency of 85%. The rest is lost as heat. So instead of 117.6 kWeu to have an engine with an output of 100 kWeu, we need to start with 117.6/0.85=138.4 kWeu to move our payload.
Of these 138.4 kWeu 40% = 55.3 kWeu will come directly from renewables. 83.1 kWeu come from fossil fuels, and we need to see the conversion efficiency from fossil fuel to electricity to understand how much fossil fuel we need.
Thermoelectric power plants have efficiencies in a broad range from the 20% of old plants to 46% of state-of-the-art power plants running at full regimen. Obviously, the state-of-the-art plans tend to run at full regimen, while more inefficient solutions tend to pop online to cover peaks of requests.
to generate 83.1 kWeu of electricity
With 20% efficiency, we need to burn 415.2 kWeu of fuel.
With 35% efficiency, we need to burn 237.2 kWeu of fuel.
With 46% efficiency, we need to burn 180.5 kWeu of fuel.
As you can see, the fossil fuel consumption of an electric truck is not that far off from the 285-333 kWeu of a diesel truck.
In optimal conditions, it is way better to use an electric truck, but in the worst-case scenario, it is way more polluting.
All these calculations are based on the assumption that the electric and the diesel truck have the same payload capacity.
If the electric truck has only 80% capacity, it will consume: 519.0, 296.5, and 225.6, so even in a normal mid-efficiency scenario, it consumes more fossil fuel than a good diesel truck.
In countries that rely more on fossil fuels to generate their power, electric truck energy needs will almost always result in higher fossil fuel consumption. Globally only 10-12% of the electricity is produced by nonfossil sources. If we use this value, the fossil fuel consumption of an electric truck varies between 598.9 and 260.3 kWeu, and if the electric truck payload is just 90% of a diesel truck, the consumption to move the same amount of payload varies between 665 and 289.3 kWeu. So using the average global energy mix and a 90% payload capacity, to date, an electric truck never uses a lower amount of fossil fuels than a diesel.
Obivously Tesla is focused on countries with a more evolved power grid, but assuming that electrifying the trucks will always be a greener choice, to date, is a mistake.
And if they get plasma power plants up and running all your talk becomes history. By 2050 I think it will happen.
Sure, but you should not invest your today’s real money and make business plan based on a technology that does not exist, and it might be ready in 30 years
some of this is exaggerated claims (batteries materials are worth being upcycled and iteratively integrated into battery supply), but You’re true, it’s necessary making the most use out of nowadays fossil fuels consumption, what’s support for electrified transportation (e.g.) and maybe on the long run increase for synthetic fuels (and enhanced filtering technology for combustion engines, another underestimated (?) challenge for highly advanced and already high-grade engineered chemical-kinetic energy converter from fuel to traction, independently from that for ‘all’ vehicles will be tires and rolling resistance and tyre wear particles)
Handling for papers might get some wireless component with (ai powered) OCR/scan/photographing capabilities and instant chat contact over Tesla-Semi onboard displays and no need *not* stepping out of the truck for personal contact either (just not to forget that humane component either, what’s “Over the top”).
greetings to West Coast
“dynamic”/situational rolling resistance (think of weather conditions changing on >500mile distance)?
Yeah the cab layout has gotten negative reviews. As far as efficiency you can give up that thought right now… electric is way, way more efficient than internal combustion. This is coming from a fan of diesel engines. I dont care how “dirty” the source is, an electric vehicle is a lot more efficient and “green” than internal combustion. I’m not saying I want to drive this truck, just trying to steer you towards the physical reality of how crazy efficient electric is. As for the used batteries, they can easily be used for decades after they’re pulled from the truck.
People like you bring the country’s average IQ down.
Battery fields are being installed to hold excess power that power plants just wasted in the past. The batteries will hold power that will allow the plants to operate less and burn less fuel. Who did that first (in Australia)? Oh yeah, Elon. What is being done to help semis and automobiles burn less fuel?.. Oh yeah, Elon.
Some quack scientists and economists, that were paid by the oil industry to write bogus numbers, did what they were paid to do and convinced gasaholics that electric charging uses up more energy than fuel burning vehicles and the processing of oil to produce that fuel and bla bla bla….all the gas lovers bought it high dollar. Don’t get me wrong, I make money from the oil industry, but I make money from the electric powered industry too. Either way, I’m not going to wear blinders just because it could affect my pockets.
Seems so many truck drivers are rocket scientists that just missed their calling.
So Tesla is allowed 82,000 lbs. gross vehicle weight?
All other class 8 combination vehicles are 80,000 lbs gross vehicle weight.
This can be increased but only by buying overweight permits.
Jersey barriers come in a number of different sizes. What is your source on the size of these barriers? Why doesn’t Tesla just say what the payload capacity is so we don’t have to guess?
Tesla is not selling it you. They are selling it to Pepsi, UPS, Walmart, Fedex, US Army etc… They will give them the Specs and payload capacity proof.
Just like when I was ordering my solar and power walls, I got diagrams and wiring and other details and 20 page guides for me and for my contractors and coordination with city and county and utility.
Anyone can get the diagrams and installation paperwork from Solar City, you don’t need to buy anything from them for it.
Not once has anyone mentioned the ridiculous layout? The door and cabin features?how the driver postion makes it nearly impossible to actually drive the truck.the blindspots it creates. No space for a sleeper for cross country work. No way to reach a toll booth or hand paperwork to a security gaurd at a booth.cnt even clean the drivers side mireor without getting out of the truck. Has a single engineer of this ever once driven across the US with an actual truck driver while he works and delivers his load?it’s obvious the answer is no. Oh and don’t forget zero infrastructure to charge them. The hours it takes to recharge to 100% charge.instead of 20 minutes to fuel with diesel. And don’t get me started on the impossibility of safely disposing of the dead cells. The fires are at least fun to watch. But take 4 days to burn out. Ask people who actually have to deal with the mess these vehicles leave behind when they are no longer working or they burn up.
Obviously, I have the completely opposite view. You are saying that a driver would be unwilling to use the center seat arrangement so that they could save $50,000 per year for electricity instead of diesel. 6mpg for loaded semi. 90,000+ miles per year. 15,000 gallons of diesel. $75000 at $5 per gallon, $60,000 at $4 per gallon. $2000-5000 for brakepads. Putting Semi in park to step up and hand documents out the window, not worth it. Apparently, the driver is trapped in the seat and cannot stand when it is parked. The need for infrastructure (aka megapacks and solar) those are added sales. Tesla was reported 30 minute charge times. Two separate megawatt water-cooled cables to charge 70% of a 900 kwh pack. Need the Megapack to draw grid 300kw and solar supplement. This would charge 6 semi per day.
Pepsi, Walmart and the others have tested the ten+ Semis that Tesla has been testing for the past 3 years. They paid a total of $1.8 million for each of the ten first deliveries. Pepsi ordered 100 about an $18 million order. Tesla would spend 5 years working towards fulfilling $50-100 million in orders but it is obvious to you that they would do zero customer validation. A company with over $80+ billion in revenue and as of last quarter the most profitable car company in the world would do no design testing and validation.
I give your claims and assertions all of the value that they have.
Like light commuter aircraft, EV heavy trucks should be targeted for use around populated urban areas. NOT over the road. Within 200 miles of their home base. 18 wheeler EV eill NOT work on coast to coast long hauls. To go 450 to 500 miles reliably, and their battery weight is approaching 2,500 pounds. To give them the 1500 mile range that a long haul dual driver 18 wheeler has, the battery weight would need to increase to over 7,000 pounds. This cuts into the frieght load. Again, 18 wheeler EVs have a place for busy metro areas. It will help cut smogg in these areas. Long haul, these EV heavy trucks are not as well optimized for longer distances. They are ideal for big city areas.
So I’ll say this. As an engineer is not a problem with the great products his engineering team delivers within state of the arts . The issue is what is promised and how it is delivered.
Original Semi statement: “everything will just be there working from the day it is delivered in 2019 to you (Full fsd and convoy mode included) “
Clearly that is not YET possible.
The unstated payload wouldn’t be concerning as long as elon didn’t have another transportation company that relies on payload volume and weight. BUT he does and spaceX advertises it payload capacity all the time because ITS IMPORTANT FOR LOGISTICS.
Finally the claim to beat rail in economics doesn’t hold water (apples to oranges). Per DOT rail accounts for 2% of all transportation pollution, rail is efficient and accommodate LARGE loads over LONG distance. Semis thrive in time-sensitive medium distance shipments to regions rail can logistically reach. Unless TELSA broke physics with new battery tech worth a Nobel price their presentation is unimpressive (not that it is useless). We all know last time Elon made a grand “breakthrough” in battery tech he announced it and made the patent public soft the benefit of mankind. Either way all eyes on TESLA they have great talent and a lot of capital , they might pull something out
Nobody is forcing you to buy it…
Please elaborate why you feel otherwise.
Thuderf00ts SpaceX vids are atrocious. Messing up price vs cost, using the avg Soyuz cost, etc
You are only allowed 80,000lbs gross weight then you have the bridge law in the state of California I believe that someone is shooting a line of BS just to sell a lie and yes it would be nice but don’t lie about how great it is and don’t lie about the weight
In 2019, the U.S. Congress passed the Consolidated Appropriations Act. The legislation allowed electric-powered commercial vehicles to operate at 82,000 pounds. This increased the weight allowance permitted without additional permits.
The Semi isn’t the solution for all trucking needs, but it doesn’t have to be. All it has to do is save money for certain trucking needs and people will buy it.
As the old saying goes “What is the use of a newborn child?”
This is one case where a truck is an easier sell than a car.
A lot of customers will buy a truck for a certain job, or a certain small set of jobs. If it is good for taking my widgets from the widget factory to the gadget warehouse, and then taking a load of gadgets back to the factory, then I don’t care how well it parks in the city or works in a suburb or whatever. I’ll get the best truck for the job, and only the job.
Whereas a car, almost any car, has to be at least somewhat flexible.
Sure there are many trucks that also need to be flexible, but if you’re targeting the other section of the market then it doesn’t matter.
Well, that is true only for certain kinds of companies and businesses. Obviously, some companies like Pepsi maintain their own fleets, and their trucks must perform only a very specific task, while other companies rely on freight carriers (JB Hunt, Knight-Swift, and Schneider, to name a few) that need to maintain a more versatile fleet.
For now. Evolving tech is exponential not linear. While this is going on, scientists just had a breakthrough on fusion tech, a baby step making nuclear and fossil fuel obsolete in most cases. The older we get, the faster this stuff is expressed in reality.
Brian,
Just consider the source,
Thunderfoot? Really?
It’s like watching CNN & Fox.
Twisted, turned, perverted bits and pieces and parts of cherry picked data to fit a political ideology.
Tesla is a monster business and it will become a bigger monster.
Accept it, embrace it, invest in it
Thunderfoot is surely annoying, and I do not like his personality and attitude. But I must admit I do like how he uses math to disprove things, and math does not lie. Indeed 99% of his calculations are spot-on and very easy to follow. He debunked (irrefutably) several scammers, bogus Kickstarter projects, pseudoscientific and Ufo experts and so on.
And he is right in pointing out that some of the specs of the tesla semi are absolutely irrelevant (0-60 acceleration…) while the company did not disclose the most important piece of information, which is the payload capacity.
0 to 60 time is very relevant! Have you ever seen a semi dealing with traffic, trying to accelerate off of a red light? Every time a diesel takes off from a light, traffic is moving around him, pushing him farther and farther back at the next light, increasing his chances of being stopped twice by the same light. I know of several expressway interchanges where vehicles have to slow down to 40 mph, or less, then accelerate hard to merge with traffic on the new expressway. Diesel vehicles have a terrible time getting in, whereas a vehicle with something resembles acceleration will be able to do it much easier, and therefore safer.
0 to 60 time might be relevant if you are trying to develop a truck to cover the last-mile delivery market, where most of the time, you will be in urban areas with a lot of stops, traffic lights, and so on. Musk is pushing the Tesla semi as a long-haul truck, so no, acceleration time is not particularly relevant, because the general idea is to maintain a stable cruise speed and Musk knows that because in the past, he promoted the convoy idea with multiple trucks traveling in a coordinated uniform way, unfortunately, that thing was not delivered.
Furthermore, high accelerations might be problematic in terms of cargo stability.
Contrary to your thoughts trucks aren’t usually slow they are unable to stop as quickly or maneuver as quickly due to their overall size this won’t change with the Tesla semi and neither will the driving habits of the motorists around them who are completely oblivious to the challenges of driving a large vehicle.
Tesla Semi has faster acceleration with nearly triple the equivalent horse power. Regen braking lets them go downhill more safely at higher speed. the video of the 500 mile shows a faster acceleration uphill to easily pass a slower diesel semi. It goes 0-60 mph (0-96 km/h) acceleration in 5 seconds when unloaded, or in 20 seconds when fully loaded.
Acting as if Thunderf00t has a hugely biased reason to attack Elon for the benefit of a few measly dollars in YT ad revenue when the articles on this site are written by a clear as day Tesla stock investor is nothing short of laughably disingenuous hypocrisy.
I used to love coming to this site for reading the latest sci tech news sans the sea of information on PhysOrg or New Scientist.
Unfortunately over the last few years it has devolved into a glorified and rather dated looking Tesla/Musk cheerleading platform.
You might as well just give up and rename the site Next Big Tesla Stock Fluff Piece, because that seems to be the only consistent interest in the content creation.
You can choose to believe Thunderfoot is unbiased but his attacks are just wrong as I stated. The 10-foot jersey barriers are 4000 lbs each.
Yes, I am a Tesla stock investor and a SpaceX investor… so what?
Are his claims about SpaceX booster reuse correct?
I will make you a bet. Tesla will sell over $5 billion/year worth of Semi during 2024 and over 2000 megapacks per quarter by 2024.
I would like to believe him, but the fact he did not reveal any data on this car is just odd. Why? If it is such a killer product? What is he scared of? He scammed people so many times, that I’m more likely to believe he just used fake weights at this point.
How did he scam people?
The top three that immediately come to mind are:
-Tesla solar city and solar tiles roof: falsely advertising the tiles and the roofs in the demonstration as working products while they were not.
-Las vegas hyperloop, where the municipality of Las Vegas decided to invest in a public mobility project and received a narrow tunnel with slow-moving cars and an abysmal count of passengers/hour
-Anybody that bought a tesla because they believed what Musk said when in 2019 he declared that “It’s financially insane to buy anything other than a Tesla” and that in the car with FSD would have generated thousands of dollars in taxi fees for their owners.
Tesla has every other legacy automaker chasing its tail, I wonder why, Oh it is themost profitable automaker out there ,with margins THEY can only dream of as said by Autolinedaily host John McElroy. Go check him out in Youtube
“Las vegas hyperloop, where the municipality of Las Vegas decided to invest in a public mobility project and received a narrow tunnel with slow-moving cars and an abysmal count of passengers/hour”
What was the count exactly?
800-1200 of the initial 4000/hour promised. Please note that even the 4000 passengers/hour is an abysmal number as a single London underground train carries 1100 passengers. (i chose the London tube because it runs in narrow tunnels compared to more modern subways that have more capacity but need bigger tunnels).
So 3 cases where the publicity and vague public statements made far in advance didn’t match reality. And I’ll agree that Musk is prone to letting his distant plans and his immediate capabilities getting confused when he opens his mouth in public. Not to mention measuring timelines in Mars years.
But it’s not a scam unless someone was actually given false information before making a payment. You can’t just say something’s a scam if nobody got scammed.
Any evidence that Las Vegas was handing over money without having on paper a clear and legally binding contract detailing what they were going to get?
Any cases of people paying money for Tesla solar city and solar tiles roof only to find they didn’t work?
Tesla FSD? OK, here there are real people who paid real money. I’ll grant that this is “scam-like”, if only because they keep using the words “self driving” instead of “advanced cruise control”.
Just to clarify a couple of points:
-if Musk just said “buy tesla because they are cool” I would have no problem with that. If someone tells you: “invest into this because it will make you rich,” that is problematic. Obviously, there is a matter of personal gullibility, but the other party making wild claims might be held accountable.
I find Musk behaviour in the SolarCity matter quite emblematic:
– Already in September 2017 SolarCity Corporation has agreed to pay $29.5 million to resolve allegations that it violated the False Claim Act.
In 2018 judge Slights ruling (denying solar city motion to dismiss) underlined many Musk’s deceptions both in his public statements and, more relevant, in investor communications about Solar City in the previous years
It has been demonstrated that in 2015 SolarCity was insolvent, and Elon Musk knew it, but to save the company (which was founded by him and his two cousins) he used SpaceX money to buy 200MUSD in solar city bonds (in 2015) to keep SolarCity afloat until Tesla could intervene to save it for good (tesla bought solar city for 2BnUSD in August 2016).
It is documented that if SolarCity had failed at this point since it did not have huge assets, the recovery value in bankruptcy would have been minimal and would have likely brought SpaceX and Musk to bankruptcy.
To calm creditors and nervous Tesla shareholders not that happy that the money they invested into Tesla was ending up in Solar City instead, Musk pulled the fake solar shingle reveal in October 2016. But it was later confirmed that the demoed products were fake.
Ultimately, all the members of Tesla’s board of directors of except Elon Musk settled the derivative lawsuit in Delaware for a payment of $60 million since their conflict of interest and how they managed tesla was not in the best interest of Tesla’s shareholders. Musk did not settle and the matter is still pending as it has been delayed multiple times.
So it is up to the jury to determine if Musk scammed his investors, but the other members of the board, less involved than him in the matter and with way smaller conflicts of interest decided to settle…
It a scam because people invested on these false claims.
An extra 2,000 lbs isn’t much at all.
Also Elon has been sued in the past for misleading investors.
The fact Elon said this is going to be more efficient than rail is going to come back and bite him in the ass.
This is why people use the word “scam”.
I can’t wait until these semis get 200-300 miles of range in the winter. Only able to haul 40,000 to 50,000lbs for 250 miles lmfao.
Mark my words, this is going to be a giant flop.
Imagine making a new semi truck and claim it’s going to be more efficient than rail but you are cagey about the towing capacity LMFAO.
Your words are marked. We can check back in 2 years, 5 years and 10 years to see how Tesla Semi did.
No need to wait 2 years. You will have deleted this article in 6 months to 1 year when independent testers get their hands on this tractor and prove its capabilities (and thus your blind faith in Musk wrong). Instead of issuing a correction or apology you will just delete the article and pretend you never wrote it.
This article and its style SCREAMS fan boy, not objective journalist. Electric trucks aren’t capable of towing as much as diesel trucks, but you somehow believe an electric semi will out tow a diesel tractor?
Come on dude. You probably actually believed Musk when he said the roadster mk II will fly and hover with space x package boosters.
I have over 30,000 articles. I have no time to go back deleting stuff. I write 2000 or so every year.
Why? You would just like and say Elon did an amazing job and pretend your financial interest is no incentive to lie, while saying YouTube advertising money is reason enough for Phil to lie. Talk about being a biased hypocrite!
LMAO 😂 You have no time to be an “ethical journalist”?!?! WOW!
You probably should lead with your financial stake for transparency.
I love how naive you are when you note a large company like Tesla wouldn’t lie. Large companies lie all the time. Did they lie here? I don’t know. I do know your assertion that they wouldn’t is not a rebuttal.
He clearly did lie about the original release date and the features.
In 6 months are you going to write a piece critical of Musk and how he over promises and under delivers
How’s that Hyperloop coming? It went from a vacuum chamber and pods traveling at extremely fast speeds to a tunnel you drive your Tesla in. I am not a huge fan of thunderf00t, but he called that out as BS.
You probably should lead with your financial stake for transparency.
I love how naive you are when you note a large company like Tesla wouldn’t lie. Large companies lie all the time. Did they lie here? I don’t know. I do know your assertion that they wouldn’t is not a rebuttal.
He clearly did lie about the original release date and the features.
In 6 months are you going to write a piece critical of Musk and how he over promises and under delivers
How’s that Hyperloop coming? It went from a vacuum chamber and pods traveling at extremely fast speeds to a tunnel you drive your Tesla in. I am not a huge fan of thunderf00t, but he called that out as BS.
Yes, I own Tesla and SpaceX shares. What is your ownership in competing or adversarial companies? Oil and energy, regular car companies. Indexes or funds with those companies?
NOTE: Projections of Semi or Energy success does NOT move the stock. The quarterly earnings per share has tripled since last year and the stock has fallen by over half to an over 2 year low. Tesla will likely add $1 billion in deferred net income in Q4 from FSD coming off beta and that will not be a big catalyst. The bear market and analysts are ignoring it. Trailing 12 month earnings are about $3.6 EPS. The trailing PE is about 50. The next quarter will replace 2022 Q4 with about $1 more EPS. $4.6 EPS 12 month trailing once Jan 21, 2023 earnings call. 50 PE would then by $230 but instead it will like compress to 35-40PE. Trailing PE for a growth company that is adding 45% unit volume year over year and net income more than doubling.
Hyperloop and Boring tunnel loop are different. I am fully aware of the issues with Hyperloop. So What? It fell below the top twenty list of most important things for Elon. Five things with Tesla and Five things with SpaceX are the most critical. Boring Company has only made a few tens of millions of dollar and only has a $6 billion valuation.
So far the new promise is 2024 50,000 Semi. I can look back in late 2024 or Jan 2025 on that.
The most important promises were 50% year-over-year growth for Tesla. Deliveries growth might only be 45% with a 10% hit because of Covid zero shutdown in mid-year in Shanghai. Scaling Austin and Berlin were disappointing and so was 4680. Quarterly profits only grew from about $1 billion per quarrter in 2021 to $2-4 billion per quarter in 2022. I am expecting $5 billion for Q4.
It took three-four years longer for Semi but now it will crush the competition. It took Daimler-Freightliner 5 years to make eCascadia.
It took three-four years longer for FSD but Tesla has had fully implemented Autopilot and enhanced autopilot for over $4 billion in revenue and now will fulfill the 300,000+ orders for FSD. Where is the at scale self driving system from competitors? Waymo and Cruise only let you take rides in their 2000 or less vehicles and only in parts of Phoenix and parts of cities in California. Waymo’s CEO (the old one who quit-fired) talked about bigger scaling.
In May 2016, Google and Stellantis announced an order of 100 Chrysler Pacifica hybrid minivans to test the self-driving technology. Waymo ordered an additional 500 Pacifica hybrids in 2017, and in late May 2018, Alphabet announced plans to add up to 62,000 Pacifica Hybrid minivans to the fleet. In March 2018, Jaguar Land Rover announced that Waymo had ordered up to 20,000 of its planned electric I-Pace cars at an estimated cost of more than $1 billion. Jaguar is to deliver the first I-Pace prototype later in the year, and the cars are to become part of Waymo’s ride-hailing service in 2020. It is 2022 and Waymo has about 2000 vehicles deployed and drives about 1 million miles per quarter.
GM Supercruise is failing.
Are you high? FSD is NOWHERE near functional!
Are you joking? Phil’s pennies in YouTube revenue is reason enough to lie about anything, but YOUR pennies are NOTHING?!?! Why would you EVER lie to make money, that’s absurd?!?! Phil though, he will lie to make money! The cognitive dissonance is truly terrifying…
I don’t say he is lying for the money. I am just say he is absurdly wrong. He is claiming the concrete barriers are not 4000 lbs when 10 foot New Jersey barriers are 4000 lbs. He is claiming that Pepsi will take 100 trucks ($20 Million) that do not carry the weight needed.
So basically, you’re a biased lobbyist pushing lies on behalf of Elon. Just so your stock doesn’t go down. You presented zero evidence to refute Phil and present no evidence he lied. This is closer to defamation than journalism!
The evidence is the link to the mass (4000 lbs) for each of the barriers. Plus the insanity that Tesla does get away with a grossly fraudulent claim when they have already given 36 trucks to Pepsi. Phil is claiming fraud for SP500 company selling to several other large companies for $20 million and more worth of product. There is no stock price movement for the Semi delivery. The share has been going down for 45 days and no one cares about the Semi. No one cares about Phil for their stock trading and no ones cares about me for their stock trading. I am just putting it out their publicly so in two to three years I will be able to say. See I told you so.
Thunderf00t’s videos, esp on SpaceX, are beyond atrocious. Mixing up cost and price, using the *average* cost of a Soyuz seat vs the cost for seats on a F9 Dragon (the cost of seats on a Soyuz almost doubled in the time since NASA was using them.
I just feel as far as semis go we should go with a hybrid until we can get the the power stations up to speed we our supply chain is very sensitive and some of these scammer trying to be the first or make quick money. That video where the truck kept going left just think if that was in the middle of Rush hour traffic in Atlanta or a major city the real money that’s being lost are the brokers are just taking to big of a middle man cut
I just feel as far as semis go we should go with a hybrid until we can get the the power stations up to speed we our supply chain is very sensitive and some of these idiots trying to be the first or make quick money. That video where the truck kept going left just think if that was in the middle of Rush hour traffic in Atlanta or a major city the real money that’s being lost are the brokers are just taking to big of a middle man cut
Hi Brian,
Three things are the main factors in moving freights:
-The payload capacity of the carrier.
-The uptime (moving time) fraction vs. downtime fraction (loading+unloading+refueling+maintenance…) for the such carrier.
-The operating costs.
At the reveal event, Tesla failed to mention the payload capacity openly. It is not something you forget. This suggests that thunderfoot is right and the payload capacity for the tesla semi is low. So low that other advantages as the money spared on regenerative breaking and other stuff, do not compensate for it.
Jersey barriers exist in many flavors there are the completely filled ones (that are the most durable ones) and the hollowed-out ones that are less durable but are way lighter. Tesla could have simply declared the specs of what they used. They did not.
While electricity costs less than fuel, 61% of the electricity in US is generated by fossil fuels, and producing more electricity to move more electric trucks is going to impact the electricity cost.
But all these aspects are irrelevant compared to the infrastructure requirements to have the semi up and running with minimal charging downtimes.
The Semi superchargers will need dedicated power grid substations! This is not something that can be built overnight and wherever you like.
-They take up space, and both logistic hubs and refueling stations will have to repurpose a lot of space or buy new land.
-They need to be directly connected to the main lines of the power grid, so not only the semi owners will need to find the space for the substation, but they will need to get permits to build their powerline trusses to connect the substation to the main line.
-Compared to underground fuel tanks that require little maintenance, substations are the most critical part of any electrical supply grid (and you know it because you discussed the California fires here on NBF). They need regular maintenance (they should be inspected every two weeks) and might fail spectacularly if mismanaged.
-Obviously, fleet owners can plan to open a new hub in an optimal place with plenty of space close to the main power line, but the savings promoted by renovating your fleet will have to take into account also the costs of building a new facility (and possibly keeping two open while transitioning from fuel to EV). The same might be true for refueling stations, but they are limited in their location as they have to be reasonably close to the highways.
-If the route is lacking even one supercharger (or if a substation fails/is under maintenance), that will result in a significant bottleneck with hours of downtime.
-But even considering that the route is completely covered with many redundant semi superchargers it will still take multiple supercharges totaling hours of downtime to cover that same distance covered with a fuel tank that can get filled in 15-20 mins. This is a cost. Probably the fleet owner could negotiate with the drivers to use that time to rest/eat and so on, but bear in mind that in many cases, the uptime is so important that freight companies prefer to pay a 2 men crew with one driving and the other sleeping, rather than have the truck stop.
So yeah, you might not like thunderfoot, but he raised reasonable objections, and more often than not, he has been proven right (ufo duck video, anybody?).
Regards
This is getting too in the weeds for my taste. Tesla isn’t Nikola. It’s not scamming early investors with sham demos like faking a Semi that’s a working prototype by showing it rolling down a gentle slope. As Brian noted, the Semi is going into production and being delivered to customers. Tesla is openly saying it completed a 500 mile run at 81,000 lbs as well as showing video.
What conceivable purpose would easily caught deception serve?
As to the problems with setting up Megachargers there is clearly a large enough market just with large users that do daily milk runs from central hubs to absorb Tesla’s semi production for a long time. It doesn’t need to make sense for every possible user right away.
I think a lot of this makes sense regarding infrastructure. I drive though the Ozark mountains in the U.S. and I’ve driven some of the truck routes. I don’t drive truck, but I could see how getting charging infrastructure to some of those remote areas could possibly be an issue. It seems to me that all those fuel stations would need chargers added. Now, perhaps not, if the semi’s range is long enough.
Still, I can’t imagine NOT adding that infrastructure. How to go about it, though?
Tesla said that the weight of the whole truck was 81000 lbs. They left out the key information about the payload capacity. That is fishy. Is not that they forgot in the excitement of the moment (because they could have twitted the info later). Tesla left that information out on purpose.
Regarding the megachargers there is no market yet as there are no semi in circulation, and as I tried to explain (but I was confusing in my statement), if you need new substations, you need to redesign and develop new lines of the power grid. These kinds of things take several years to do.
And if you manage to have high-voltage power lines following the highway with evenly distributed substations, then you do not need batteries at all! you can just electrify one line of the highway and use trucks with pantographs as the trolleybusses do. They might not look cool, but usually, freight companies do not value a lot the cool factor.
Tesla might or might not be scamming investors. That is debatable: Musk stated that autopilot could do 5 years ago things that clearly can’t do now. The cybertruk delivery date has been postponed, an so on…
Musk has the tendency to overpromise and underdeliver and/or deliver with many years of delay.
I think we can all agree that musk is good at PR and if the relevant specs for the tesla semi were good, he would have clearly stated so.
“They left out the key information about the payload capacity.”
but, this is information we will learn from companies experiencing Tesla-Semi.
Difficult routes considering charger infrastructure could be served with enhanced battery Tesla-Semis (meanwhile) and charger failing/being on maintenance/exceptional demand (on a freight route) might be compensated with temporarily added Mega-Packs from Tesla distress response unit for energy supply (maybe even by air?)
What might be a problem, on the long run, if only one company (Tesla) will have a monopoly on technological progress and innovation, because this might depend on that companies directorate for what’s the outcome towards a whole society, on that important branches for supply and social compensation (education, work, income, sustenance, safety &wise)?
The price for a Tesla-Semi (considering fuel cost world wide, on average) is pretty attempting (with a prospect to improved range with cheaper battery production on next generations of batteries, containing lower environmentally and energetically (fossil fuels) burdened, upcycled materials), even more with rising CO2 fees/penalties and increasing fuel cost (with overall lowering reserves/resources)?
You bring up several valid points regarding infrastructure. My husband drives for a Walmart contracted company. Basically, he takes the loads that Walmart cannot make with their own company drivers. Currently, Walmart drivers are out 5-6 days at a time. They travel from distribution centers to the stores. The FMCA regulations only allow 11-14 hours of service per driver daily. Typically a Walmart driver shuts down for the day at the nearest Walmart store. Depending on how rural the store location is, depends on how many Walmart trucks you will see shut down nightly. I live in a rural area and it’s not unusual to see 5 or more Walmart trucks shut down on the parking lot. According to information provided in previous comments, it will take the equivalent of 3 substations to charge 6 semis to keep them rolling. That would lead me to believe that Walmart would need to provide it’s fleet with that amount of room & capacity not only at their distribution centers, but also the rural store parking lots??? Let me just say Walmart is not well received by drivers at the end of the year when they put extra cargo containers in the back where the docks are just to store the layaway and such because the stores don’t have enough room. And remember the same muckety mucks that spent billions on all the self checkout registers that they are now complaining about theft as a result of that are the same muckety mucks that made the decision to spend billions on these trucks alone, without considering the cost of charging stations. It will end up being an industry game changer or death of the most wealthy retailer in the US…only time will tell.
We need to approach energy efficiency with caution, so we dont overinflat our dollar. We need to also have diversity in our energy usage so, we dont overwhelm any one resource. Transparency is also important at the point we are at, so we dont waste investments on something that is economically disastrous.