Tesla Semi Ramping US, Europe and Asia
Tesla Semi Program Manager Dan Priestley gave a keynote address and Tesla Semi update at the IAA Transportation show in Hanover, Germany on Tuesday.
The Pepsi drivers who use the new electric Tesla Semi say that do not want to go back to driving diesel trucks.
Tesla has deployed megawatt charging that will charge the trucks in times similar to fueling a diesel truck.
Tesla’s pilot test fleet has already driven over 7.5 million kilometers (4.65 million miles), and that a single Tesla Semi has covered an impressive 400,000 kilometers (248,000 miles) over the past 18 months. Priestley clarified this was real world mileage, and not simulated, all while operating at the Semi’s maximum gross vehicle weight rating (GVWR).
Tesla Semi has eenergy consumption rate of approximately 100 kWh per 100 kilometers. This is about 1.61 kwh per mile. Tesla Semi is already proving more efficient than previously estimated, with further improvements expected as the fleet scales.
The new Tesla Semi factory in the US will finish next year and will scale to production of over 50,000 units per year.
After Tesla has US Semi trucks at scale in the US they will then turn to Europe. Tesla will also go to Asia. Asia has most (70-80%) of the heavy trucks in the world. China alone has about half.
Priestly indicated there were reliability issues with the early Tesla Semis. However, those issues have been solved. Tesla is making the economics of the Semi great and have proved the reliability with over 95% uptime.
A massive part of the ramp of Tesla Semi and electric semis is to get a large charging network. One Megawatt charging would only support a maximum of about 20 Semi trucks. It is likely that at least one megacharging port would be needed for every ten trucks. 50,000 trucks would need about 5,000 megacharging ports. Each megacharging port is like three supercharging ports. There are about 30,000 supercharging ports in North America. 50% more charging would be needed for the first full year of volume Semi truck production.
Electric trucks can charge at the same time as they are loading and unloading when the charging is built for the primary location where they are loading and unloading. A diesel truck cannot be fueled while it is being loaded and unloading.
I, Brian Wang at Nextbigfuture, have created a table comparing the specifications of electric trucks based upon company data.