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Tesla Will Reveal Its Electric Semi Truck in September (techcrunch.com)
From a report: Elon Musk just let us know when we'll get a look at the electric semi truck that he's teased in the past: The Tesla transport vehicle will be revealed in September, the CEO said on Twitter on Thursday, noting that the team has "done an amazing job" and that the vehicle is "seriously next level." Plans at Tesla for an electric semi truck have been in the works for a while now: The vehicle was first mentioned back in July of 2016, when Musk revealed part 2 of his fabled "master plan" for his electric vehicle company. The Tesla Semi, as Musk called it, is designed to help reduce the cost of cargo transportation, and improve safety for drivers, according to the CEO at the time.
It has to have the capacity for a driverless upgrade out of the gate or it's going to be an expensive, outdated piece of awkward shit. That's where we are now: an electric lorry would be awesome, but we're seriously waiting for a driverless lorry in 2020. Promise an upgrade to driverless at significantly less than the full cost of the vehicle and close to the cost difference between it and a driverless model of equal specification when the tech becomes available and you're good to go; require replacing a probably 5,000,000 mile vehicle 500,000 miles into its lifespan to get the driverless tech (bigger than electric tech) and you're getting nothing.
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a huge proportion of the truck market is local travel and terminal movement tractors. An electric makes perfect sense for those roles. Not all trucking is long haul.
"So can one with a human driver. They do it every day all over the world with excellent results. Nothing wrong with letting the computer do it but let's not pretend humans can't handle the task."
But not 24/7 without any pay.
I get that this could be useful, but where if they can make a semi-truck it seems like they could make an electric pickup.
I think the problem there is that the typical buyer of a pickup is... ummm, rather conservative so it's a harder sell. It's a big market but the typical buyer tends to have some rather backwards notions about what makes for a drool-worthy vehicle. Go pick up a copy of Diesel Power magazine if you don't believe me. These are people who all too often think getting 12mpg while belching smog is just fine and think they "need" 800ft-lbs of torque even though they rarely haul anything. I think selling them on an EV pickup is going to be a tougher sell than a family sedan.
Don't get me wrong, I'd buy an EV pickup in a heartbeat. My daily driver is a pickup and I'd happily replace it with an EV if one was good enough. All sorts of advantages to electrification of a truck. Tons of torque, electric power on tap to run power tools, more cargo space, fuel efficiency, etc. What's not to love? Though I have to admit that in many cases a hybrid pickup might make more sense especially as a work truck.
Details, details! They'll fix that with the next software update!
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Who said it was a long haul truck?
It's implied by the descriptive term "semi truck".
"Nothing says long haul trucking like a vehicle with a 200 mile range and a 6 hour recharge time."
Nothing says long haul trucking.
Nothing says 200 mile range.
Nothing says 6 hour recharge.
Your argument aspires to strawman status.
Tesla quite literally can not build cars fast enough to meet demand.
The Model 3 is already the most successful consumer product launch of any kind in history (forget cars), and it won't even start shipping for months. It has years worth of pre-orders in the backlog.
Acquiring customers is far from their problems.
Formerly a professional semi driver, Currently a programmer.
It is only your implication it is not the implication by those that drive the semi's or manage the fleets.
I spent 10+ years behind the wheel of large vehilces and most semi's I knew of drove in a radius of less than 400 miles as the crow flies. Hell I know thousands of semis that drove in a radius of less than 100 miles on a general basis. If he has made a Semi capable of 200 miles and a six hour recharge than he has great market potential. Please note semi's are often sitting for 1+ hours to load/unload or wait to load/unload. If the warehouse they are siting at has recharge capabilities then partway through your day you are able recharge while sitting.
Semi does not mean long haul and a 400 mile radius is not long haul to a semi driver.
Overnight trips are not long haul at least not to the truckers I know.
* I still have the liscence and occasionally get behind the wheel to keep up the skills but i would not consider myself a professional truck driver anymore as I don't drive for a living.