diesel engine mechanic here. ive been following the tesla "truck" thing for about a year now and it seems pretty miserable. i dont have the sources, but from several blogs and trade rags (trucking news, professional driver, etc..) ive read the situation seems like it wasnt very well thought out.
- first callout was OTR longhauls. Musk clearly didnt want his trucks stuck as lot-tenders where they would work brilliantly, he wanted publicity on the road.
- longhauls cancelled because obvious infrastructure limitations. batteries and motors failing more frequently due to the load and the range. reports of using tesla consumer vehicle components in the drivetrain. switch to regional routes
- regional routes failing between AZ/CA due to thermal and performance issues. range issues.
- professional drivers hate these trucks. worse than international (truck brand). center-seating makes visibility, toll booths and logbook checks a chore. side mirrors are static and too high.
Musk needs to come back to earth. OTR (over the road, long hauls of 1800 miles) is a non-starter and will never work with current technology. professional drivers can not lose 30 minutes every 400 miles on these routes to charge, they will miss all their drop times.
make the tesla semi truck a lot tender. massive power to realign and arrange heavy trailers all day long in a parking lot or warehouse lot. bonus points: make the tesla semi truck a driverless lot tender since lot-tenders dont need a CDL.
EDIT: If you want to see something I think the actual trucking industry is getting excited about, check out Edison motors. They're running a hybrid diesel/electric design that would work wonderfully for things like clean-air city driving where the batteries are getting topped up at every stop and speeds are under 50mph, and a small diesel generator when the batteries need a charge. this is similar to how Great Western Rail in the UK runs their trains (just with batteries) and still supports a traditional truck drivetrain. Its designed to be punished from what i can see...the primary application is as a logging rig.
Presumably the same reason all Teslas have weird door handles: "Oooh, different!" Despite the fact that they're kind of miserable to use and less reliable than a standard handle.
I've read this trope many times but honestly I don't buy it. At highway speeds conventional door handles, which are absolutely tiny in frontal area and have fairly low drag shape to begin with, are behind the side mirror turbulence anyway. I wish some high budget Youtuber would test this in a wind tunnel so we can put it to rest.
From what I've read, since door handles generally are placed in the path of turbulent air that has beed disturbed by the mirrors, it doesn't really make much of a difference.
Most door handles are considerably lower than the mirrors. Door handles are normally several inches down from the window line while mirrors are usually at or above that line.
The Mach E's front door handle things are practically at the window line to take advantage of being in the mirror turbulence area, a handle several inches down probably wouldn't be in it very much.
The Mach E has buttons to open the doors. The Lightning has regular door handles.
The Hyundai Ioniq 5/6 have recessed door handles.
The Mercedes EQS has recessed door handles.
The Polestar 1 and 3 have recessed, but the Polestar 2 does not.
The Volvo XC40 has recessed handles. The XC30 and XC90 have regular handles.
VW's EVs tend to have regular door handles.
Seeing as how Teslas make up the majority of EVs on the roads in the US, and they all have recessed handles, by definition in the US the majority of EVs have recessed handles. By number of models, its kind of mixed but it seems there are more models with recessed handles than regular handles.
His all time favorite car (except teslas now i guess) was the MacLaren F1, which also has center-seating. Not saying this is the actual reason, but knowing him it doesn't seem far fetched.
coming from industry, ive really wondered the same thing. Eagle tugs (the little trucks that push your airplane at the airport) zamboni machines, you name it...anything industrial designed to move a load or require a professional driver just doesnt do this. the only stuff that seems content with center seating is some models of steam roller and front-end loaders. mining trucks are all offset seating, and garbage trucks have offset seating on both the left and right side (or as a slidable steering wheel pedal combo.) F1 racecars have a center seat, because its the only passenger.
center seat tesla trucks mean i cannot take an apprentice. Center seat tesla trucks also mean i cant test in a tesla truck for my license or any inspections. it means the entire truck has to be tested on a closed track to get your license, just like construction equipment.
His all time favorite car (except teslas now i guess) was the MacLaren F1, which also has center-seating. Not saying this is the actual reason, but i thought i'd mention the coincidence.
> If you want to see something I think the actual trucking industry is getting excited about, check out Edison motors. They're running a hybrid diesel/electric design that would work wonderfully for things like clean-air city driving
Serial hybrid seems like a great solution for trucking, since you don't need to oversize the engine in order to cover high torque needs (the electric motors would handle that), and during flat highway drives the generator could top off the battery using a narrower RPM range.
Long distance trucking is also a place where I think green hydrogen fed fuel cell trucks could work, since range would a non-issue, and also the hinterlands, which long distance trucks travel through, is where most of the renewables are.
If the renewables can be fed to an electrolyzer nearby, which supplies a hydrogen fueling station nearby, then you don't need to build much transmission/transportation to get the hydrogen to the trucks.
This requires electrolyzer cost to drop a lot (and FC Semis to be available), but all the technology components of the system exist in some form.
Paywalled? Apologies. I wouldn't have posted it if it was paywalled for me. I'm not a subscriber.
Here is one (I hope) that isn't paywalled: https://reneweconomy.com.au/fortescue-starts-work-on-world-f... Failing that try googling "infinity train battery". It was a popular story at the time. As the story says, at least two companies are doing it in Australia.
Some 3rd electric rail based transit systems have regenerative braking that feeds power back into the electric rail [1], which is used by other trains that are drawing power at that moment. I don't know if they use batteries to store excess, however.
If you want electric trucks it seems like the no-brainer is (in addition to lot tenders) local delivery vans. I already see electric Amazon vans everywhere. You go out, make the day's deliveries, then come back and charge while docked. It's an obvious fit.
Long haul trucking is the worst fit for today's EV tech.
Building more freight rail and electrifying it is another option for (some) long haul transport that isn't discussed enough.
> Building more freight rail and electrifying it is another option for (some) long haul transport that isn't discussed enough.
Most are, it's just that the electric part is generated by a diesel engine. That being said, they're already several times more efficient per ton than a semi is.
Yes, around the world electric freight locomotives are powered by overhead lines, and more occasionally by a third rail. It is a mature technology and the US is an exception among industrialized countries (China, all of Europe, Russia, Australia, Japan, etc) in that they use only diesel for freight.
>professional drivers can not lose 30 minutes every 400 miles on these routes to charge, they will miss all their drop times.
Except, that isn't how it would have to work. It would make sense for the company to pay the driver for charging time. In BC a 400 mile drive would cost C$514 in diesel ($2/l, 40l/100km), or $112 in electricity (at 1.25kwhr/km and $0.14/kwhr), so presumably the driver could be paid $100 for the 30 min charging stop, and the company will still save $300 for each 400 mile leg.
10h on, 8h off. A 400 mile trip does not require off-time or stops unless somehow you get so snarled in traffic that you're averaging less than 40mph. Drivers are really good at avoiding needing to stop the rig for bathroom stops.
It's not about pay, it's about delivery windows. The driver gets paid nothing relative to the cost of late delivery. Companies also aren't going to hire the trucker that quotes an extra day because of charging.
What I'm saying is that it can be factored in. In this particular instance (PepsiCo and the other companies mentioned) we're not talking about truckers buying electric trucks or quoting for jobs. We're talking about companies like PepsiCo buying electric trucks and hiring drivers to drive them.
And 30 mins of charging every 8 hours is unlikely to significantly change the delivery time anyway.
About 50% of truckers in the US are owner operators, meaning about half of all truckers on the road own their truck and as such buy (electric) trucks and quote for jobs.
Companies are in the business of making money, if a private contractor is cheaper (and faster) than their in-house logistics who do you think is going to be axed?
I'm not sure OTR long haul was really ever part of Tesla's plan at least for this generation of trucks. The trucks are not designed as sleeper cabs, so regional was the only reasonable target.
The only solution to the charging time lag is swappable batteries: truck pulls in, drained battery lifted out with automated crane, charged battery swapped in. It would take some logistics and coordination, as well as a universal standard for heavy truck batteries, but that's what's making it work in China, although also as you note, long-haul trucking is the hardest sector.
> "The second storyline is that battery swapping is also helping electrifying China truck sales. BNEF analyst Siyi Mi recently compiled data on all the battery-swappable vehicles sold in the country and found that while swapping remains a niche technology for passenger vehicles, almost half of all heavy battery electric trucks sold last year in China had swappable batteries. That’s up from 34% in 2021. Many of these trucks are operating in industrial sites, port warehouses, mines and steelmaking factories. Lighter commercial vehicles with swappable batteries also are being used in urban deliveries, an area where BNEF expects to see more growth as better economics and tightened emission requirements draw more attention to electric models. Long-haul trucking will be the last, and most difficult, segment to tackle."
The benefit to swappable batteries in a commercial fleet is that you own all of them.
For private use, it is far more difficult. The battery is the single most expensive part of the car- who wants to drive off the lot, then two hours later trade that expensive part for one that is heavily used?
Unless the dealer or manufacturer runs all of the swapping stations, and the purchase of the car doesn't include the battery, the economics are terrible.
OTOH, if the consumer isn't paying the full price to own the battery, then the economics of swapping goes way down unless the consumer pays a hefty deposit on the battery.
Then, private sales become harder as you probably want to be able to authenticate that battery is what it is supposed to be, and not some third party knockoff.
But if you can't swap to a third party battery, the vehicle becomes worthless once those batteries are phased out.
Swapping vehicle batteries has been tried before and abandoned (I think in Israel maybe? I forget) because unless you are operating a commercial fleet where you are willing to invest in buying the extra batteries and owning them yourself (or signing a big fat contact with a manufacturer) it just doesn't make sense.
I think the swapping model is working for taxi drivers in China, but it's a model where the vehicle owner doesn't own the battery, it's more like a lease model. Thus if you do accidentally get a bad battery in a swap, you don't take any loss (other than inconvenience), you just go back and get another one. Matching demand and supply might be a bit tricky, but it's a steadily growning industry in China:
I know it is a bit of a trope at this point, but another solution is of course just not to do long-haul trucking. Use trains to get to distribution hubs and then have lot tenders and local delivery that just travels less than one battery worth per day.
We already do that where it makes sense. Maybe we could expand the rail network somewhat but at some point things get too fragmented, there aren't enough rail cars going to one place, and the economics break down.
Who owns these batteries? Who owns these trucks? Who eats the cost on battery/truck degradation?
If I pull in with a battery that has 70% of it's original max capacity and get a brand new battery with 99% of it's capacity how do you fairly assess that value add to the truck?
Not seriously suggesting it, but what if the cab was easily swappable & the underlying truck was semi-standard? Still similar issues of ownership but at least truckers can bring their home with them, which seems to be important.
Silly yes. The 90's vision of the skateboard platform has stuck with me a lot. I'd imagined rolling lounges & other passenger vehicles cabins being a way to start decoupling the car, reducing the number of batteries motors and wheels that a town or city had to own in net. The usage cycle of trucks is a lot higher, and the swappability just for sale of switching batteries seems silly, but I couldn't help but see at least one of the core problems of swappability being solved by disaggregation the compartment from the rest here.
Edison is just as much vaporware as any other of the small EV manufacturers. They built a single prototype. They haven't even begun to really deal with supply chain, labor, or service yet.
I think EV's (or similar, maybe hydrogen fuel cell, or carbon neutral methane/lpg; direct or used to charge a battery drive train) will eventually make sense for long haul trucking. In the worst case, route times will adjust, and 5 hour routes will turn into 5:30 routes.
However, they really should look for low hanging fruit and then try to expand out from there. Trucks that are stuck in stop-and-go traffic all the time are an obvious candidate (low MPG / high pollution per mile with diesel engines, and those applications have low aerodynamic drag and are a huge opportunity for regenerative braking).
I think commuter / local event busses are another obvious fit. I've started to see these around:
Even though these are replacing rear-engine diesels, some of the components will be common with semis. It'll help bootstrap the large vehicle battery + motor supply chain and fleet management logistics at the very least.
One thing to note is that they're using standard form factors. There's no reason to couple the vehicle layout to changes in the power train.
My guess is that Tesla's trying to replay the luxury -> midrange -> economy playbook that they used to bootstrap the EV supply chain. I don't see how that strategy will work a second time, since the supply chain has already been bootstrapped.
Pretty sure this just means moving around trailers on a parking lot / loading lot etc. Because you don't have to warm up the engine, and you aren't far from a plug, you could use these to just reposition the trailers. Also, you are working in close proximity with humans so being zero-emission is more pleasant environment and better for long-term health too.
They are often built with a single-person cab with windows on all sides and in some of them the seat, pedals, and steering column can pivot around so you can drive backwards without looking over your shoulder.
> Musk needs to come back to earth. OTR (over the road, long hauls of 1800 miles) is a non-starter and will never work with current technology. professional drivers can not lose 30 minutes every 400 miles on these routes to charge, they will miss all their drop times.
Would it help if instead of charging, do what you do with a toy car - replace the batteries?
They could then charge and be ready for the next truck.
That'd work, but then the question is who owns and operates the switch out operation?
Tesla won't want to because they won't want to deal with dead batteries. The trucking companies won't want to because they don't want to deal with dead batteries and the cost to own/operate such specific infra for just their trucks.
Weigh stations might work. Trucks increasingly roll through on scales that can weigh in motion, but there is a spot to pull off for inspections. This could be a service offered to trucking companies to help make up for loss of fuel taxes.
There's also the concern of who owns the batteries and who's responsible for their maintenance. There are lots of states of battery between "good for 100% of rated range" and "dead, doesn't work at all"
A trucking company presumably would not be happy if they stopped at a swap spot and got a battery that's only good for the next 200 mi because of normal battery degradation.
There's also now the problem of who owns the batteries that come off a truck - if the battery swap station is a generic service provider, that suggests that some battery network actually owns the packs themselves - does that mean that the swap station needs to keep that battery around until another participating truck company contracted with the owner of the pack comes around?
That seems very complicated.
Or maybe the swap station is the owner of the packs (think gas station chains) - in which case they can put the battery on any truck that comes next... but that means duplicative swap stations for every battery chain out there. There's only so much land accessible to highways... so even more complicated that way.
The "pull the battery out and charge it" part of the idea is oddly enough the simplest. The logistics and chain of responsibility is far more difficult.
I think the "swap station" idea is pretty close to what we have now and would transition easiest. Fuel deliveries are typically dispatched on a route that will service more than one ___location (unless it's an emergency drop), so there's already a distributed refueling system in place to be updated.
You're right that it would take multiple swap stations on nearly any given route that doesn't go too far out of an interstate or frequently traveled highway. So smaller towns or out-of-the-way towns will likely be forced to pay higher costs to get the deliveries using a regular fuel-driven truck, at least until they can solve the EV drive distance issue(s).
I think the biggest point of contention over this will be when Mom-n-Pop stores start going under fast due to the barriers of entry to afford so many expensive, large, and very heavy batteries. That's not even considering possible requirements to use specific machines for safety reasons, which I imagine will also jump when Mom-n-Pop try to wing it.
Especially since batteries don't (typically) just end up damaged but rather degrade over time. One day the battery can hold 96% of it's original capacity, the next 90%. It's a natural and uneven process for batteries.
A battery that is unusable for trucking could still have a lot of value in a context where the energy density is less important. Infrastructure, for example. But making sure the incentives and ownership are calibrated correctly to make sure they get put into hands where they are useful might be a big problem.
That event was over a decade ago. Those were not production cars, and production at Tesla has moved away from this model and into "structural packs" where the battery pack is major structural component of the frame.
Also, that demo was pretty much there to get some tax subsidies or something. They built the system to comply with the minimum to qualify, and once they got the money they didn't do anything else with it. Those cars weren't really production at all.
I mean, technically you could swap out the entire cab every time it needed to be charged. The goal is to get the trailer to the destination, not the cab.
There are several problems with that, you end up with a lot more idle equipment than just the battery pack, you've got to either be constantly switching drivers or drivers have to be constantly switching cabs, you need facilities to swap trailers and charge cabs, etc etc etc.
But tractor trailers already have a convenient modularity built in, is all I'm saying.
Tesla-semi-as-pony-express would be interesting, but isn't really compatible with _selling_ the actual truck as a product; no one wants to swap _their_ truck with someone else's, except the guys with above-average wear on their truck.
Some regional routes could work. So long as they are short and involve charging while loading/unloading.
But yeah, long haul was a stupid plan that would have never worked. Not without some massive batteries to kick the range way up to something like 800 miles and infrastructure to allow these trucks to charge overnight.
I just don't think the power density is there currently for trucks.
was not aware of existence of "Lot-tenders". I played many hours of euro track simulator so i am pretty legit.
"Lot-tenders" generally refers to services that involve the management and coordination of truck movements within a large parking lot or a distribution center.
"But in June 2023, Musk said at an energy conference that "there just weren't enough batteries" for Tesla to reach "volume production" of the truck."
It looks like battery production is the major constraint on Teslas endeavours. Someone at Tesla clearly did the math on ROI-per-cell and decided that Semis just don't pay as well as Cybertrucks or Powerwalls. That's why they're starving the Semi operation until they can spin up more battery production.
I expect this news to have a positive effect. I wonder if an individual might own so much stock that they can overwhelm the short market for small durations. The price jump yesterday made no sense to me.
Vendors missing deadlines on contracts is a valid reason for contracts being terminated, renewals being cancelled, and even litigation over breach of contract or even misrepresentation (depending on how angry the customer is).
There's a reason why PepsiCo partners are moving to Daimler now.
The argument that it's just "missing deadlines" which as true as it is, is also a strawman.
Musk hasn't just "missed deadlines". He's outright lied.
For example, in 2016 he claimed Tesla already had self driving capabilities it hasn't shown today, 8 years later.
He lied about bulletproof windows on the CyberTruck. His own demo disproved this.
He lied about the solar roofs. The entire demo was false and staged and the tiles on the roofs were not solar tiles as the demo strongly implied. And testimony showed that he personally knew that it was a lie.
Musk doesn't just miss deadlines. He blatantly lies. And that raises the legitimate concern that a lot of "missed deadlines" weren't just deadlines that were missed, but deadlines that were never feasible and he just lied about.
I do think it's amusing what the other guy says. Forums like this will be full of "Why software estimates are so hard and we shouldn't be forced to stick to deadlines" and the explanation will be "because each React form is like brand new R&D - more akin to Marie Curie's discoveries than a surgeon's work" and then suddenly a brand new kind of vehicle that has never been mass produced before has to hit deadlines or it's sign of obvious incompetence.
I think this is a pretty clear misrepresentation. The entire point of those forum posts is that software engineers are angry at managers promising timelines that aren't connected to reality: they want the unpredictability of the task to be transparent. That is actually entirely consistent, and arguably the exact same frustration, that they have with Musk -- a manager-type promising outrageous deadlines, repeatedly, with apparently zero ability to learn from past misses. The anger is with continuing to promise these outrageous deadlines, and furthermore the frustration of being called out if you are skeptical of them, not with the fact that he misses them. It's a one-to-one, 100%, absolutely identical complaint.
Software estimates also need to be hit, but Sales, Product, and Engineering leadership will fight to prevent the brunt of that from hitting ICs, but at some point if a large contract does churn, plenty of IC engineers will have their head on the chopping board.
I've been on both sides so I get it, and the only solution is to have blunt and honest communication from all sides - Field Facing teams need to not overcommit, and Internal teams actually need to execute and COMMUNICATE why they cannot.
As an employee, we are all working to make the company more money. That's the only goal.
That doesn't absolve them of the fact that they underdelivered on a 8-9 figure deal by 66% over 7 years.
The fact that PepsiCo leaked this to Reuters itself means they are on the warpath right now (eg. probably trying to strong-arm a significant refund and cost reduction, or setting up the paper trail needed to begin litigation over breach of contract).
> doesn't absolve them of the fact that they underdelivered on a 8-9 figure deal by 66% over 7 years
I mean, it almost might. The problem isn't the underdelivery. It's Musk's loss of credibility. When he says it's about battery production, it might be about battery production, or it might be that he randomly changed the design at the last minute.
That's a good point, but leaking this tidbit to Reuters seems like a nuclear option (like Tesla's customer retention program failed and PepsiCo is trying to break out of the contract now).
Like I've had customers pissed off about missed deadlines, but they didn't leak or churn because we tried to keep them happy.
As is usually the case with these things, I think the key to reading them is buried at the end of the article:
> PepsiCo investor Green Century Capital Management has reservations about the company's time table for rolling out the Semis.
>
> "The fact they're running behind schedule is concerning," said Andrea Ranger, a shareholder advocate at Green Century. The investment firm has followed PepsiCo's use of electric vehicles and is pushing the company to consider its impacts on biodiversity at its annual meeting in May.
Green Century (as its name implies) has a "three-pronged approach combines a fossil fuel free sustainable investing strategy with award-winning shareholder advocacy and support of environmental nonprofits to deliver impact in a way other mutual fund families can't" (quote is from their homepage). My guess is that Green Century are the ones feeling the heat here -- they need to have their fund's emmission figures come out right yesterday, and Pepsi can't make them right unless they get their EV fleet, whether via Tesla or someone else.
If you read between the lines, you'll notice that no one at PepsiCo says anything bad about Tesla per se, only that they're committed to deploying more EVs and a bunch of other green systems. The rest of the article is other supply & logistics companies pointing out that they're having good results with trucks from other manufacturers and/or that they're also unhappy with Tesla's timeline, then someone from GC saying they don't think Tesla can hit their schedule. With the review coming up in May ("the investment firm has followed PepsiCo's use of electric vehicles and is pushing the company to consider its impacts on biodiversity at its annual meeting in May.") this is probably GC trying to convince Pepsi to stop waiting for the bloody Teslas and just get whatever EVs will get their fleet going this year.
> I keep hearing about competitors, but I never see any of their EVs, new or used. I see Teslas everywhere.
Around these parts, we see a lot of non-Tesla electrics. Many of them are not obvious at all, until you realize that an SUV has a Clean Pass sticker, and no tailpipes.
But there are also many 3s and Ys. I think, for a time, Tesla was the biggest-selling brand in the US.
Ford lost money because they went all in too fast for how late they were to the game.
And frankly it seems to be greed. They have proven hybrid and PHEV tech yet deny the US market the hybrid ranger, 'because US buyers can get the maverick'.
> I wonder how many deadlines that people miss here, and that's usually just pure software
That's not the flex you think it is. Software is pretty unique in delivering products that the companies don't want to stand behind--think of every software license that basically says "if this software doesn't work, it's YOUR FAULT".
In most industries, missing deadlines is generally grounds for your customers to get very cross with you, especially when your customers are businesses and not consumers.
> Man the critics here about deadlines is astounding.
> I wonder how many deadlines that people miss here, and that's usually just pure software, no materials.
Look... I'm an investor in the Tesla IPO ($4k -> $200k+). I own a Tesla vehicle.
Current Elon has run off the deep end into conspiracy theories and utter nonsense. Buying Twitter because he was butt-hurt over some of his tweets being punished is just asinine. It is also a massive distraction on something utterly trivial.
There was absolutely a massive whisper campaign to say that EVs would never work. Elon did a lot of great things in the beginning. Some of those things include making lofty promises even though delivering on those promises took a lot longer than he thought. The most important thing in the beginning was proving EVs could work to the early adopters, ensuring Tesla could survive long enough to reach volume ramp-up. Volume means parts suppliers start returning your calls and economies of scale improve everything. Doing things differently got them noticed. Making cars fun was a brilliant marketing strategy... does anyone really need the Toy Box stuff Teslas can do? No... but it makes a lot of people (me included) smile. (My kids think Emissions mode is hilarious on our drive to school drop-off and now consider all other cars to be inferior because those cars can't make fart sounds. That's mind share you can't fucking buy even with unlimited money.)
Passing into the volume phase has killed a lot of companies. There are many more opportunities for things to go wrong and mistakes cost you a lot more. Your company also transitions from "we need exposure at any cost" to "we are a brand leader who has set expectations".
During this critical time Elon has failed to change his messaging. He is still in "we need exposure" mode, making outlandish promises and starting too many projects at once. In the end it is all a self-own. There was no need to get into semi-trucks. They have enough trouble scaling up Model Y and even shipping the Cyber Truck. They still haven't really delivered on FSD, despite charging for it and continuously increasing the price. It was 100% unnecessary. Focus on execution, leave the semi-truck idea for a few years down the road. You have enough irons in the fire. Your #1 focus should be a Model Y refresh since it is by far your top seller and is what is generating all that cash making Tesla an ongoing concern.
tl;dr: Tesla is no longer in survival mode but it is in a critical phase of its growth. Elon should have stopped making outlandish promises some time ago and focused on execution. His thin-skin about Twitter, resulting in trying to get a board seat, on a whim turning into buying the company has been a massive distraction that hurts Tesla at a time when it needs strong leadership and the traditional automakers are still fumbling on EVs.
The craziest thing is, regardless how people feel about politics, Musk has achieved a lot for technology yet people in technology forums disparage him. I guess politics trumps technology.
I wouldn't call it crazy to point to someone with a documented history of lying and say that their word can't be trusted. Rather, that's called basic pattern recognition.
He successfully marketed and monetized an industry that already existed and would continue to exist without him, then reinvested in that industry to make himself more money. The way you and some others talk about him you would think he invented batteries and was the first one to discover you can use electricity to make a car move.
The parroted introduction has me reading this comment in bad faith, but I'll bite anyway. What are some of his personal tech achievements? Emphasis on personal.
both are true. he's achieved amazing things, seriously pushing technology forwards
he also makes outlandish public claims which are ridiculous at the time and get worse with age. you can appreciate what he's done while simultaneously believing 0% of what leaves his mouth
He has a notorious habit of overpromising and underdelivering. I thought that habit of his was well established even before he became so vocally political.
You have to wonder if working for four or five different companies while, allegedly, being on _all the drugs_ has an impact on his performance.
If Musk ran Apple we'd still be waiting on the iPhone XS, though he'd insist it'll be ready by "end of year", a phone that launched around the time Musk was crowing about these trucks.
It was, but it was the politics that swung the opinion pendulum from pathological "admire wins, ignore losses" to pathological "ignore wins, disparage losses."
But Musk himself has said that American EV makers can't compete against Chinese EVs without trade barriers. Barriers that western governments have been more than happy to establish.
> "If there are no trade barriers established, they will pretty much demolish most other car companies in the world," he said. "They're extremely good."
Or maybe, just maybe, it’s that the dude spews whatever out of his mouth and the broader public and media take him at his word when time again its been seen that his word doesn’t mean shit.
As a counterpoint, we tried to get a tesla roof. Their repeated broken promises meant that we went with competitors (you can only delay installing a roof for so long...), and we simply don't trust Tesla to do anything at this point.
Most people I know are buying LG (small system) or Enphase (large system) batteries instead, or going with other competitors (Anker announced something that looks pretty sweet).
Also, Powerwalls are notoriously unreliable compared to those other brands; our local Tesla installer said they refuse to install them except when they are acting as a Tesla subcontractor, and pushed us to enphase or generac.
For semis, they took deposits then didn't deliver, so marquee customers are complaining publicly and buying semis from competitors.
For solar roofs, we talked to their competitors, and they were all backlogged because they were absorbing cancelled tesla contracts.
Tesla is great at marketing and making the sale, but then letting their competitors close out the deal.
Yes and: Perhaps the Semi uses cells which are supply constrained. The Limiting Factor does updates on which models use which cells, where those cells are made, their current chemistry, and how cell supply might impact vehicle production numbers. Analysis based on data gleaned from public data, so uncertainty is stated as needed.
What batteries are in the semi-trucks? I would assume it isn't even Tesla's battery but the LFP batteries from BYD and CATL for faster charging, and longevity. Powerwalls are LFP batteries.
Tesla fans are like horses with blinders. In this submission alone you have multiple people acting like commercial-sized electric vehicles are something the world has never seen, let alone mass produced, so we need to cut Tesla and Musk some slack (some even feel free to throw in a puerile, childish, "feel free to do better yourself or show us what you've done").
It was fun when I pumped my portfolio with a quick $10K (0dte TSLA put options) when the ceo would say some controversial shit on Twitter (before the leveraged buyout) or smoke weed during after hours with some random podcaster.
But the entertainment is over and the constant news coverage is just spam and reiteration over what we know about this company and its products: very shiny things, but like the CEO’s ego, they are very fragile and have a tendency to be unreliable; or just not live up to the hype.
That's just a strawman. These are complex issues with complex problems. He's doing fine with the resources he has. Unfortunately, resources are naturally constrained.
> He's doing fine … Unfortunately, resources are naturally constrained
His entire job is understanding those constraints and ensuring they don’t get in the way of creating an actual shipping product. When they do, he is not fine, he’s failing.
I was going to say. Back when he was sleeping on the factory floor to get production issues sorted he was doing good stuff for Tesla. Not so much since Twitter/X.
I do not think the time is right for electric semis. We need a few battery breakthroughs before it becomes reasonable.
Right now they have to carry around far too much weight and bulk in batteries, and take far too long to charge, and the batteries don't have a long enough lifespan.
Right now this whole effort feels performative. Its greenwashing.
Some day it will likely become very practical, but that day is not today.
The time is right if you properly price the cost of diesel truck emissions. Certainly, you can always kick the can into the future if you're not willing to pay true costs and dump the externalities on everyone else. Current cost of CO2 is ~$185/ton emitted.
> The social cost of carbon dioxide (SC-CO2) measures the monetized value of the damages to society caused by an incremental metric tonne of CO2 emissions and is a key metric informing climate policy. Used by governments and other decision-makers in benefit–cost analysis for over a decade, SC-CO2 estimates draw on climate science, economics, demography and other disciplines. However, a 2017 report by the US National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine1 (NASEM) highlighted that current SC-CO2 estimates no longer reflect the latest research. The report provided a series of recommendations for improving the scientific basis, transparency and uncertainty characterization of SC-CO2 estimates. Here we show that improved probabilistic socioeconomic projections, climate models, damage functions, and discounting methods that collectively reflect theoretically consistent valuation of risk, substantially increase estimates of the SC-CO2. Our preferred mean SC-CO2 estimate is $185 per tonne of CO2 ($44–$413 per tCO2: 5%–95% range, 2020 US dollars) at a near-term risk-free discount rate of 2%, a value 3.6 times higher than the US government’s current value of $51 per tCO2. Our estimates incorporate updated scientific understanding throughout all components of SC-CO2 estimation in the new open-source Greenhouse Gas Impact Value Estimator (GIVE) model, in a manner fully responsive to the near-term NASEM recommendations. Our higher SC-CO2 values, compared with estimates currently used in policy evaluation, substantially increase the estimated benefits of greenhouse gas mitigation and thereby increase the expected net benefits of more stringent climate policies.
Wow. Back of the envelope math suggests that driving a typical passenger car 1000 miles should carry a tax of ~$75, which would be no small burden. At 40 mpg, gasoline cost for such a trip is less than $200 in most of the U.S. right now.
Edit: actually if you assume 40 mpg the social cost of emissions is closer to $40.
(Of course in practice you'd want to handle this as a tax on gasoline purchases, but that would need to be implemented federally to be effective, probably.)
In most European countries gasoline is taxed at more than 100% (or 50% of the price), so it seems that at least for passenger cars, the externalities are mostly mitigated.
Kind off. You don't need to spend the tax money helping the environment, you just need to restitute whatever utility those affected by the negative externality have lost. For example, people may be willing to accept an increase in CO2 in exchange of a direct transfer of $100 per ton emitted.
Assuming that tax money is being used effectively (lol), the negative externality could completely disappear with the right tax level. You could even turn driving into a positive externality if the tax is high enough, while still polluting.
I tried to emulate the math you showed, my Chevrolet Bolt EV emits 96g CO2 per mile when considering upstream emissions on the New Jersey electrical grid, my carbon tax on 96kg emissions per 1000 miles would be $17.76.
Seems about right. The EPA uses a conversion factor of 8887 g CO2 emitted per gallon of gasoline consumed. [1] Assuming 40 miles per gallon, as above, that's ~222 grams per mile for the theoretical ICE car, a little over 2x the emissions of your electric vehicle.
Incidentally, 2023 Bolt specs [2] indicate an efficiency of about 4 miles per kWh, and the EPA reference above states a typical US grid efficiency of 4.17 × 10^-4 metric tons CO2/kWh. This gives us 15.38 km per kg CO2. So ~105 kg of CO2 would be released by driving a Bolt for 1000 miles on typical grid sources. [3]
I'm surprised to learn the US grid is this inefficient. In theory, an ICE car with an efficiency of 85 mpg would emit less CO2 than an electric car. Obviously that's not reachable at this point, but a hybrid like a Prius that can hit 57 mpg cuts it a lot closer than I would've thought.
$185/ton of CO2 emitted is what the study estimates to be the actual economic impact of emitting a ton of CO2, right? The current price of carbon futures is $68.80 [0].
Edit to add: That $185 is in 2020 USD, which is $223.26 in current USD. [1]
There may be niches where it makes sense already (short haul, long/frequent stops) i.e. city delivery, city buses and similar. But more importantly, whether its greenwashing today doesn't matter. Once it's demonstrably possible to do something, cities will include trucks their ICE exclusion zones, where today all ICE cars or some times only diesel cars are banned but trucks/ambulances. At that point it doesn't matter whether its twice as expensive - you either drive an electric truck or the goods can't be delivered. "Practical" doesn't just mean "reasonably cost effective compared to diesel". The possibility to run diesels in many cities will disappear before the alternatives are cost effective. That's going to drive the alternatives even faster, but it's also going to cost in the short term.
This is where it gets crazy though -- officially CA is requiring something like that starting in 2034, which would mean that the Port of LA/Long Beach would require like a second CA worth of electricity to charge trucks for the amount of traffic coming in and out. Everything I read about it basically claims that CA cannot actually function with this requirement, but I don't see the evidence of a future walkback...
This [1] says there were 340,386 truck movements from the Port of LA. Assume all 340,386 trucks need a full charge for each delivery, and have the battery of a Tesla Semi (900kWh). That's 306347400kWh = 306GWh.
Spread over the month, that's 9.87GWh per day, or 411MW. California produces around 500GWh each day, so we need a 2% increase. (Or, equivalently, a 2% decrease elsewhere.)
I think I mostly agree that, given current trends in generation and grid investment, it is pretty unlikely that CA can meet the goals. But also, I am pretty confident that CA _won't_ just let everything completely collapse into anarchy. One of a few things will happen:
1. Trends in generation/grid investment will change such that the EV transition _can_ happen.
2. The EV mandate will get walked back before much of anything changes.
3. The EV mandate will _start_ to get implemented, slowly, begin making things terrible proportionally to how far it has progressed, then, when things reach some (pre-total collapse) level of badness, get reversed, and things will go back to normal-ish after having wasted a bunch of money and having made some things somewhat worse.
4. And, I suppose for completeness, I should include the possibility of: nothing changes, nothing gets rolled back, and the grid utterly collapses under the overwhelming burden and the CA economy goes up in smoke and fire.
I do not think that last one has a significant chance of occurring. I think the most likely options are 3 and 2, followed somewhat distantly by 1, and much, _much_ more distantly by 4. If trend lines seem to point towards utter calamity, and any of the trend lines are under human control, the safe assumption is that something will change before total calamity.
The problem isn't macroeconomic. The problem is that Tesla Semi is not a fully baked product. It was rushed into "production" if you can call it that so that a "customer" can literally haul potato chips with it. Probably in order to meet some contractual deadline.
It is also hard to buy the argument that there is a shortage of batteries when there are other Tesla vehicles sitting unpurchased. Why miss a Semi sale when there is slack demand for Model 3/Y? Probably because actually delivering more of them is just a future liability.
Given their focus on streamlining manufacturing with automation, I'd be surprised if they have the staff to go around and rip batteries out of cars. But I could be wrong.
It's practical today with overhead power cables - these have already been trialled on major highways in Germany and Sweden. Although one of the test lines in Baden-Württemberg is going to be taken down, the test results from the Hessen test line on the A5 show that on an efficiency basis, the greenhouse gas emissions are reduced by 16%-21% compared to diesel trucks. In parallel to these tests, there are also discussion in progress for a Europe-wide voltage standard to avoid the kind of problems that have stymied cross-border rail travel.
There are many people who say that the technology is not appropriate, and these are mainly based on two claims: firstly, that electric propulsion will not be more environmentally friendly whilst the electricity is still produced from fossil fuels, and secondly that existing electric trucks are less reliable than their diesel counterparts. Neither of these are reasons to abandon overhead lines on an efficiency basis, though - the concept is sound.
It's a little hard to compare countries when measurement techniques differ, but my rough layman's interpretation puts the proportion of renewable energy as a part of Germany's total electricity generation at around 40%. For the USA, this is just above 20%, and for the UK it's somewhere around 60%. And in Norway, well, that rounds up to 100% :)
That only takes into account electricity production, though - these countries might still import large amounts of oil and gas for burning, such as Germany, or simply buy their electricity from other countries.
> Right now they have to carry around far too much weight and bulk in batteries, and take far too long to charge, and the batteries don't have a long enough lifespan
That's why electric Semis are heavily subsidized by the IRA - in order to incentivize the economies of scale needed to spur innovation in the space.
It's a similar move to the PEV industry and Obama's, California's, and Texas' subsidies for it in the 2008-12 period establishing that market in North America.
To me this feels a bit backwards. The issue is not the semi part. It's nothing unique to semis. It's just that the scale of semis makes the flaws of current battery technology significantly more of an issue.
Really, the funding should go more directly to general battery RnD - not eSemis specifically.
"The iPhone is too slow for the web, the screen is too small, and it's too expensive. This is a waste of time" (About the iPhone 1).
"This Gemini program is a silly waste of time, and will never get to the moon".
"The MacBook Air is really underperformant and too expensive" (The first one).
and so on.
Things improve over time, but only when someone is willing to actually make them. Try stuff. Learn lessons. Improve the technology, drive the price down and make iterative improvements.
We need electric semis. Are the version 1.0 ones being made now fantastic in every way? no. Will they get better over time, of course.
In 20 years we'll look back and say damn I'm glad companies were willing to try new stuff and advance technology so that things could actually get better.
Sure, but you bring up all those examples specifically because they're exceptional. A lot of products that seem dumb do end up staying dumb.
I really do want electric vehicles to get better, but that doesn't change the fact that they objectively do suck right now.
And to be clear, they objectively suck, by nearly any measure, for a consumer. They break down more often [1], cost more to fix, they have shitty range, they take forever to charge, they're more expensive. Yes, you get to have a smug feeling of superiority for pretending to save the planet with electric cars, I guess that's worth something, but that doesn't undo the rest of the problems.
Until electric vehicles stop being crappy, corporations simply aren't going to use them, and they can hardly be blamed for it. I do think they'll get better, I think they'll get longer ranges and faster charging and the mechanical problems will get sorted out, but I don't think that pretending the problems aren't a real makes them go away.
[1] https://www.cbsnews.com/news/electric-vehicles-consumer-repo... This one keeps bothering me because people keep saying that electric cars "cost more to fix but they're so much more reliable so it almost doesn't matter!!!!", when that's objectively not true, at least not yet.
> A lot of products that seem dumb do end up staying dumb.
Of course, some products will be a success and some will flop, but the successes can only happen so long as someone keeps trying and keeps improving it.
> I really do want electric vehicles to get better
Then you should be happy companies are trying to improve them. This is a good thing that Tesla (and others) are trying to make the semi work. It may eventually result in better outcomes for you, vs the alternative where nobody tries and it is guaranteed that nothing gets better.
> They break down more often [1], cost more to fix, they have shitty range, they take forever to charge, they're more expensive.
last week Consumer Reports listed Tesla as the lowest cost of 10 year ownership of any brand.
> Of course, some products will be a success and some will flop, but the successes can only happen so long as someone keeps trying and keeps improving it.
No argument here, I just was questioning the assertions because, and maybe I misread it, it seemed like you were suggesting the success was implied, which I disagreed with.
> Then you should be happy companies are trying to improve them. This is a good thing that Tesla (and others) are trying to make the semi work. It may eventually result in better outcomes for you, vs the alternative where nobody tries and it is guaranteed that nothing gets better.
Yes, I am glad companies are trying to fix them, but I don't blame other companies for not using them in their current state. They simply do not solve the problems that current corporations have to deal with for the reasons I listed.
What bothers me is that a lot of the electric car advocates seem to look at the future at the expense of the present. It's like saying "Everyone should use the Apple 1 computer right now because the Apple II will probably be better", and I don't really think that parses. Yes, it's good that Tesla and other companies are running the necessary experiments to make these things not suck, but that doesn't really change anything.
> last week Consumer Reports listed Tesla as the lowest cost of 10 year ownership of any brand.
I'd be interested in seeing the numbers corrected for the Cybertruck launch.
Also, I don't know how that squares with the thing I linked that indicates that as of December of last year Teslas were considerably less reliable than Lexus, Toyota, Buick, and Honda [1]. Consumer Reports is generally pretty good but I suspect that they're measuring different numbers for each article. It doesn't seem clear-cut to me.
I can't find it but swear one issue was that trying to fully utilize an ev semi with NCM batteries for distance hauling (i.e. driving it, fast charging it, driving again) brought up concerns about battery degradation, akin to the stories you hear about taxi/rideshare drivers using superchargers on an NCM EV without any charge limiting.
I thought the German experiments of allowing the trucks to charge while driving with overhead charging wires was clever and could be a potential solution to this, since then you wouldn't have to waste any time waiting for the truck to charge, but it looks like the infrastructure for that might be too expensive to justify that.
That's really the problem in broad strokes. Getting consumers off gas is all well and good, but even in the worst cases for some of the longest commutes I know of and people who love long road trips, that's probably at most 90 minutes of daily engine usage that's eliminated. That's just... fucking nothing compared to stuff like construction equipment and LTL trucks, that are both far larger in sheer engine size and carbon emissions, and run upwards from 12 hours a day. Bigger more consistently operating vehicles are better targets to actually get carbon emissions down, and they're far harder to electrify, as we're seeing.
Nobody wants to talk about the fact that just shipping less unnecessary shit would do tremendously more for the environment than the greenest tech available, in the same way it initially made such big waves during the early days of the pandemic. Like, imagine how much CO2 would be saved if we just shut down essential oils tomorrow. The whole thing, the entire industry, because it's flagrantly bullshit. I'm not even saying it's an industry that produces a ton of CO2, I'm just saying it's an industry that produces CO2 while accomplishing nothing useful.
Ammonia has no carbon atoms in it, just hydrogen and nitrogen which are abundant. It can be synthesized using the Haber process, and electrolysis, all energy inputs can be green. On the con side, its energy density isn't as good as fuel oil (half as energy dense). It needs to be compressed to stay liquid (like LNG). Also it's a poisonous gas. Could be corrosive to certain metals too. Maybe those issues can be worked around though.
I don't know if there will ever be a "right time" for electric semis. They need to be banned. They're super heavy death machines, far too dangerous to have on the road in instances of driver incapacitation.
American actually has the largest freight rail network in the world. In theory electric trucks would pair great with our freight rail network though. Still need to get from rail to stores and homes
Isn't a lot of long-haul transport still done via truck? Like you noted, last-mile won't go away, but maybe there is still room for improvement with rail.
I don't care how much I'm taxed if it means the US will use it for decent transportation that isn't car-based.
Yes we do, but it's not nearly enough to cover every major town and county. Stupid flaws in the system like the Selkirk hurdle should be systemically removed.
They're also offering charging logistics services, etc. The main innovations on the truck cab are creature comforts for the driver, and safety features like blind spot detection. That looks like a winning strategy to me.
They're also building lower range trucks, which makes sense. They can build more trucks with the same battery supply, and local deliveries are a much better fit for current EV trucks than long range routes.
The charge time is 90 minutes for about 200 miles of range, so it's pretty clear this is for short routes.
edit: I wonder how much wattage it takes to charge one of these things in 90 minutes. Whatever it is, it's about 1/3 as much as a 30 minute charger would be. Since they're helping out with logistics, it wouldn't surprise me if building faster chargers is currently infeasible.
> Svein Sollie, the transportation director at ASKO Norway, the logistical arm of Norway's largest food retailer NorgesGruppen, used his personal credit card to put down an initial deposit on 10 of the Tesla Semis in 2017 but has not received any.
"We are not happy with the situation at Tesla," Sollie said. "(It's) almost seven years now, it's a long time to wait.”
...
Meanwhile, UPS, Walmart Canada, Sysco and Schneider National (SNDR.N), a transportation company that works for PepsiCo's Frito-Lay, said they are turning to Daimler Truck, maker of the Freightliner eCascadia. All four companies said they had begun to put dozens of eCascadia electric big rigs on the road.
Just for reference ASKO delivers ALL the food around norway. And there is a general discontent in Norway with Tesla, plus solidarity with the union issue the workers had in Norway.
The article lays the blame at battery production, and servicing rollout. Both of which seem solveable. Sure would be nice to have a datapoint around how many batteries they need vs how many they are producing.
This had to have been expected since everything they have ever made has been delivered years late. Elon is nothing if not overly optimistic about timelines.
I think Elon operates on a different temporal plane than regular humans. When he says "next year", that means "I have no fucking idea" or "like ten years from now maybe?"
At some point though, it's hard to even blame him; investors keep enabling him. It's extremely easy to find all the cases of outright dishonesty that he's said (e.g. "We'll have full self driving next year", every year since like 2018), investors should really know about this, and they still give him money.
I don't really get it, outside of S&P500 ETFs that I don't really control the strategy of, I won't give Tesla any money, since it seems like everything Musk does is kind of corner-cut. The Cybertruck release epitomizes this, where they're charging an extra $20,000 for the potential of a Full Self Driving feature eventually just seems cartoonish, and maybe getting to fraudulent territory? (IANAL)
Even if we assume you are correct this is a great example of being correct and losing a lot of money - and boy howdy are there lots of ways to be 100% right about something and losing out.
I invested in Tesla's IPO with some chump change (mostly because I was a lot poorer then). $4000 turned into $200k+, at which point I sold half. So perhaps you are right but I'm $100k cash / $100k paper richer for being "wrong".
Being right won't pay your rent or keep you warm, but it can sometimes help you miss out on a lot of gains.
See my other comment for my bearish negative thoughts on Tesla and Elon.
On the positive side they have crossed into volume production territory. The place where suppliers not only return your phone calls they send people to ask you for meetings and offer discounts not available to the plebs. They have great brand awareness. They have a best-selling vehicle that continues to sell every single one that rolls off their 100% full production lines (at least in the US, not sure about elsewhere). That's demand and inventory positions other car makers would kill for.
Tesla foresaw battery production as being limiting and their joint venture with Panasonic in Arizona has given them battery supply and battery economics that other automakers simply can't match right now no matter how much they try.
There is a reason investors are bullish on Telsa.
Twitter has been a massive distraction for Elon. He seems to have surrounded himself with yes-men and enablers who just want to cash in on him. None of this is good but in a way the Twitter distraction has kept him more hands-off from Tesla than in the past so it may end up being a blessing in disguise.
> I invested in Tesla's IPO with some chump change (mostly because I was a lot poorer then). $4000 turned into $200k+, at which point I sold half. So perhaps you are right but I'm $100k cash / $100k paper richer for being "wrong".
Ponzi schemes will often lead to people making money in the short-to-mid term. Not saying that Tesla is an outright Ponzi scheme but I do think that their stock is overinflated and following something Ponzi-adjacent. I can find plenty of examples of charismatic people that develop large followings that really don't deserve it, and then everything eventually tanks.
Well Musk himself said that Tesla isn't a car company, it's a "Robotics and AI" company... maybe he just meant that they can't deliver on their orders. Then again they've failed to deliver on their automation promises too.
In this case that's not enough. When an incredibly good consumer product arrives 5 years late, consumers can buy something else in the meantime. They have freedom of choice in an open market. When a B2B product shows up 5 years late (and TFA indicates it's over 7 years late), it causes actual damage to the purchaser - and arguably to humanity.
These contracts typically include exclusivity clauses. They lock PepsiCo in, preventing them from purchasing electric semis from other companies that ramp up production sooner. PepsiCo has to lawyer up and nullify the contract with Tesla in order to purchase electric semis from companies other than Tesla. Meanwhile,
So Tesla is locking companies into contracts, failing to deliver, and leaving them in the lurch in the meantime. Cleaner transportation and fewer emissions is good for humanity - so let's celebrate the companies that are actually bringing us electric semis. The Freightliner eCascadia, Volvo VNR, Kenworth EV, and BYD 8TT are all in production. The eCascadia and the VNR are each being produced in higher volumes than the Tesla Semi.
Lawyer up? There is no way anyone at Pepsi would be stupid enough to sign an exclusivity agreement with Elon for a non-existent product. Even if they did sign some kind of contract, there’s nothing for Pepsi to nullify. If one party doesn’t deliver on their end of a contract, it’s broken
These competitors all face the same engineering challenges. Why is telsa struggling? Presuming better engineers and a headstart gives an advantage to tesla, ceteris paribus telsa is either ironing out kinks before rushing ahead or simply aiming for a higher quality product.
Every other manufacturer already has the customers, the employees, the manufacturing, supply chains, and they know the market better. Tesla is now a decade in to their Gen 1 and haven’t shipped anything because of their distracting engineering goals… they need to focus on the customers.
So, 5,000 electric semi trucks in 2029? I mean, I would think that would be a drop in the bucket. Volvo alone appears to have delivered 2,000 of them last year.
- first callout was OTR longhauls. Musk clearly didnt want his trucks stuck as lot-tenders where they would work brilliantly, he wanted publicity on the road.
- longhauls cancelled because obvious infrastructure limitations. batteries and motors failing more frequently due to the load and the range. reports of using tesla consumer vehicle components in the drivetrain. switch to regional routes
- regional routes failing between AZ/CA due to thermal and performance issues. range issues.
- professional drivers hate these trucks. worse than international (truck brand). center-seating makes visibility, toll booths and logbook checks a chore. side mirrors are static and too high.
Musk needs to come back to earth. OTR (over the road, long hauls of 1800 miles) is a non-starter and will never work with current technology. professional drivers can not lose 30 minutes every 400 miles on these routes to charge, they will miss all their drop times.
make the tesla semi truck a lot tender. massive power to realign and arrange heavy trailers all day long in a parking lot or warehouse lot. bonus points: make the tesla semi truck a driverless lot tender since lot-tenders dont need a CDL.
EDIT: If you want to see something I think the actual trucking industry is getting excited about, check out Edison motors. They're running a hybrid diesel/electric design that would work wonderfully for things like clean-air city driving where the batteries are getting topped up at every stop and speeds are under 50mph, and a small diesel generator when the batteries need a charge. this is similar to how Great Western Rail in the UK runs their trains (just with batteries) and still supports a traditional truck drivetrain. Its designed to be punished from what i can see...the primary application is as a logging rig.
https://www.edisonmotors.ca/