Back in November 2017 Tesla hosted a press conference and unveiled two prototype Class 8 semi trucks, as they referred to in their Master Plan a year earlier. These vehicles promised to revolutionise the entire domestic transportation industry with three times the power of a typical diesel semi and 500 miles of range on a single charge, thanks to an ultra-efficient drive train, minimal drag coefficient and an energy consumption of less than than 2 kWh/mile.

A lot of people were sceptical this could be achieved, however some clearly took notice. The first pre-orders were placed during the event and by mid-January 2018 roughly 450 were reserved. Not just by avid fans or mid-to-large shipping contractors willing to take a risk on some sci-fi technology, but titans such as PepsiCo, Walmart and UPS ordered over a hundred each, to name but a few.

After a long wait due to unexpected delays (COVID-19 and supply-chain shortages to say the least), but almost fitting with their usually over-ambitious timelines, on December 1st they finally delivered the first production vehicles to PepsiCo, and their subsidiary Frito Lay, during an event showcasing the vehicle and technology contained within.

I’ll sum it up below, but you can watch the full presentation here:

Specifications

• Tri-motor configuration

• Battery (kWh): 914 (estimated)

• Range: 500+ (537 estimated)

• Efficiency (kWh/mi): 1.70

• Charge time: 70% in 30 minutes

• Charge power: 1 MW+ (estimated 1.28 MW)

Design and features

Naturally they started from the ground up, guided by first-principles, to design the best possible solution to the task. That’s the reason for the unusual single, central seat for maximum comfort and visibility, large display screens constantly showing the wing mirror camera feeds and other useful information, along with navigation. The large cab space behind the chair with room to stand up and get changed into protective work gear if necessary, and ample storage for tools or personal effects.

Combine this with the immense power of the three motors - two for acceleration and one (yes, just one is all you need) for highway cruising, each are more powerful than a typical diesel truck engine to provide the power and responsiveness known in all Tesla vehicles. There's also no complicated gear shifting to worry about, which traditionally if done incorrectly presents a serious danger of jack-knifing - something the Tesla Semi is literally incapable of doing - it all comes together in a beautiful harmony to give the feeling of simply driving a very long car.

Along with the multitude of safety features we now expect such as forward collision warning, lane departure avoidance and traffic aware cruise control, the whole experience for drivers will be world's apart from what they've been used to and massive demand is inevitable as these trucks and their stories begin to spread around the globe.

Charging will also not be a worry so long as there's a Megacharger somewhere within a 500 mile radius, even then it will only take 30 minutes to reach 70% state of charge thanks to the huge 1 MW ultra-fast-charging capability, which is clearly required to manage such a large battery, but even this exceeds expectations and will take insignificantly more time than just pumping diesel would anyway.

Putting their money were their mouth is, they've publicly released full video footage from a test drive of over 500 miles, from Freemont to San Diego, with only one rest stop and of course no charging. All whilst pulling the maximum allowed trailer load for a combined weight of 82,000 lbs (~37,000 kgs).

For some context, compare this to the other offerings on the market currently and it's clear to see how this truck will slowly, but surely disrupt the entire trucking industry, beating out all it’s rivals on every single metric:

Note that these are only the electric 'competition', anything with an Internal Combustion Engine wouldn't even come close to this kind of efficiency.

The Tesla Semi (~37,000kg with load) boasts an efficiency of 1.7 kWh/mi which is only just over seven times the real-world average usage I’ve achieved in a Model 3 Standard Range+ (0.23 kWh/mi, weighing 1611kg), but for moving more than 23x the weight it’s an absolute marvel of technical engineering!

Even if all the above is not exciting enough, the environmental savings alone warrant attention. In the US, combination trucks account for only 1% of vehicles on the road, yet produce 20% of vehicle emissions and 36% of vehicle particulate emissions. So replacing all of those with electric would make some serious headway in cleaning up our air and reducing carbon in the atmosphere, and our lungs.

Is the best yet to come?

During the original announcement there was mention of a 'Convoy Mode' where up to two trucks could follow a single manually-driven Semi autonomously, sounds like a great way to optimise delivery schedules and reduce labour dependency, requiring only one human driver instead of three. Yet there was no mention of this during the delivery event, perhaps this feature proved more complicated than expected, but it's also very possible it's just been delayed or could be included in an upcoming Enhanced Autopilot release.

Lest we forget, Full Self Driving. That is inevitably going to be present on these vehicles as soon as it's ready for real-world deployment and will further change the game of commercial and industrial shipping. Deliveries requiring no human intervention except for charging, with greatly reduced fuel costs, not to mention a complete absence of the majority of regular maintenance jobs, means that once Tesla are able to really get the ball rolling and start producing hundreds of thousands of trucks a year, legacy players in the market will have to fall onto the bandwagon or be at a serious competitive disadvantage!