Tesla Semi

[jhm]

One thing that should be clear about the transition to full MC coverage is that fleet operators should have an advantage over independent operators. An independent may have to pass up on loads whenever they are out of range for current network. I don't expect to see I've Road Truckers the Tesla Episode anytime soon. But if your a fleet operator where 20% of your routes are well served by MC network and other infrastructure, then perhaps 10% of your trucks could be Teslas. If you're saving money on that 10% and the other 90% of your trucks are adequate for the 80% beyond reach, then no problem. You save your money on your 10% electric fleet. Next year when you have to replace 5% to 10% of your fleet, you check to see if the MC network and other infrastructure has expanded to cover 30% of your business. If so, you may be able to get your fleet to 20% electric. Year after year, you can keep expanding the electric portion of your fleet as the MC network expands to support that. The bigger your fleet is, the easier it is to take advantage of limited MC coverage. A small fleet or just a single truck would have a harder time making the transition.

I also think that Tesla would be listening to the large fleet owners too. So they could influence how Tesla prioritizes MC rollout. This would advantage the large clients I've smaller ones. The ultimate advantage would go to Tesla. I expect that they will want a fleet to deliver Tesla product. So routes that connect Tesla to its factories and customers will have a natural priority.

 

[adiggs]

One thing that should be clear about the transition to full MC coverage is that fleet operators should have an advantage over independent operators. An independent may have to pass up on loads whenever they are out of range for current network. I don't expect to see I've Road Truckers the Tesla Episode anytime soon. But if your a fleet operator where 20% of your routes are well served by MC network and other infrastructure, then perhaps 10% of your trucks could be Teslas. If you're saving money on that 10% and the other 90% of your trucks are adequate for the 80% beyond reach, then no problem. You save your money on your 10% electric fleet. Next year when you have to replace 5% to 10% of your fleet, you check to see if the MC network and other infrastructure has expanded to cover 30% of your business. If so, you may be able to get your fleet to 20% electric. Year after year, you can keep expanding the electric portion of your fleet as the MC network expands to support that. The bigger your fleet is, the easier it is to take advantage of limited MC coverage. A small fleet or just a single truck would have a harder time making the transition.

I also think that Tesla would be listening to the large fleet owners too. So they could influence how Tesla prioritizes MC rollout. This would advantage the large clients I've smaller ones. The ultimate advantage would go to Tesla. I expect that they will want a fleet to deliver Tesla product. So routes that connect Tesla to its factories and customers will have a natural priority.

Exactly. Pretty easy even for a big fleet operator to identify their "next big route" that the EV trucks can't or don't serve well enough for the fleet to switch, and to work with Tesla on where MCs would need to be added to enable that route, and for Tesla to then prioritize those locations in order to enable the sale of vehicles along the route.

AND it'll be easy for those same fleet operators to be buying and installing their own privately owned and operated MC / SC facilities at their distribution centers (for vehicles that are moving part of the day, and parked part of the day) so they can be recharged while parked.

In fact, I sort of assume (am I wrong?) that fleet owners own and operate their own fueling stations / pumps at their distribution centers. They buy fuel at wholesale, and trucks get topped up when they're "home", saving time on side stops for fuel, and saving the company the retail markup. Clearly not a solution a small or single operator is going to make use of, but a scale advantage available to big enough fleets.


If the US market is 100k trucks/year, I figure Tesla will be doing well to build and deliver 1k trucks in the first year. For that first 1k trucks, private SC and a few showcase MC installations along routes identified with a small subset of potential customers will be plenty of charging support to find buyers for those first few trucks.

That'll be far from a fully developed infrastructure, while also showing signs of life on how we get to a fully developed infrastructure based on real world use and feedback.

In the second year, Tesla would be doing well to build and deliver 10k trucks. That's nothing to 10% market share (in my made up numbers - I haven't been able to find data on US market units) in 2 years, and sounds achievable to me between privately owned fleet charging plus continued expansion of the MC network, where each expansion is intended to support specific routes.

As @jhm has pointed out previously, the MC network can grow with the truck units and vice versa. You don't need to solve all use cases in order to sell the first unit. You'll get some initial sales to fleets that want to test out the truck in limited and then expanding use cases. Tesla will need to front some of the MC network build, and then continue building the MC network just ahead of purchases by users with specific routes / use cases in mind. Heck - there's no reason Tesla can't get the MC network build department formed and working now with fleet buyers, understanding how many trucks and which routes look most interesting. Aggregate that insight across all of the customers Tesla is talking to, and the first 5 routes to electrify will probably stand out like a glowing neon sign. Get started on land acquisition and permitting now, and those first 5 routes will be ready when the first truck is delivered.

 

[dc_h]

also think that Tesla would be listening to the large fleet owners too.

Big advantage of direct sales. They will know where demand is and can coordinate new megachargers with new orders. One order for an operator from LA to Albuquerque is not going to justify 5 megachargers, but 50 trucks in Memphis would justify megachargers covering FedEx fleet range from Memphis.

 

[EinSV]

@jhm and @adiggs,

Although I greatly respect both of your views I think Tesla is likely to build out the MC network much faster than you predict precisely so it can open up high use routes for independents or small/mid-size operators.

Having a robust, public MC network relatively early on would open the door to more aggressive smaller operators to switch more quickly to an all or mostly electric fleet, which in turn would pressure the major players to accelerate the transition to EV. IMO Tesla will probably not want the slow pace of adoption by the more conservative players to limit the pace of the transition to electric, and won’t want to allow them to control the charging network.

I’ll go one step further and predict that Tesla will probably announce initial locations for the MC network in advance of initial Semi production to try to secure additional orders, including from smaller operators.

There could be a slowish Semi production and MC rollout the first year or two but I expect they will want to scale up quickly after that and having a credible public MC network in place will allow them to do that.

When you have a technological advantage as Tesla will with the Semi, one way to capitalize on it is to create network effects. Moving quickly to establish a robust charging network is the best way I can see for Tesla to do that.

 

[adiggs]

@jhm and @adiggs,

Although I greatly respect both of your views I think Tesla is likely to build out the MC network much faster than you predict precisely so it can open up high use routes for independents or small/mid-size operators.

Having a robust, public MC network relatively early on would open the door to more aggressive smaller operators to switch more quickly to an all or mostly electric fleet, which in turn would pressure the major players to accelerate the transition to EV. IMO Tesla will probably not want the slow pace of adoption by the more conservative players to slow the transition to electric, and won’t wanr to allow them to control the charging network.

I’ll go one step further and predict that Tesla will probably announce initial locations for the MC network in advance of initial Semi production to try to secure additional orders, including from smaller operators.

There could be a slowish Semi production and MC rollout the first year or two but I expect they will want to scale up quickly after that and having a credible public MC network in place will allow them to do that.

When you have a technological advantage as Tesla will with the Semi, one way to capitalize on it is to create network effects. Moving quickly to establish a robust charging network is the best way I can see for Tesla to do that.

I agree that's possible, and in fact you've probably hit on exactly the primary factor that will lead to how aggressive Tesla is behaving with the introduction, roll out, and ramp of both trucks and network.

Namely - how aggressive are the larger fleet operators being about this.

If they're clearly setting up for multi-year evaluations and toe-dipping, then Tesla can pull the lever on demand as you describe - build the network anyway counting on the smaller operators to adopt faster / sooner and put pressure on the bigger operators.

I can easily see the scenario you describe coming about.

 

[jhm]

@jhm and @adiggs,

Although I greatly respect both of your views I think Tesla is likely to build out the MC network much faster than you predict precisely so it can open up high use routes for independents or small/mid-size operators.

Having a robust, public MC network relatively early on would open the door to more aggressive smaller operators to switch more quickly to an all or mostly electric fleet, which in turn would pressure the major players to accelerate the transition to EV. IMO Tesla will probably not want the slow pace of adoption by the more conservative players to limit the pace of the transition to electric, and won’t want to allow them to control the charging network.

I’ll go one step further and predict that Tesla will probably announce initial locations for the MC network in advance of initial Semi production to try to secure additional orders, including from smaller operators.

There could be a slowish Semi production and MC rollout the first year or two but I expect they will want to scale up quickly after that and having a credible public MC network in place will allow them to do that.

When you have a technological advantage as Tesla will with the Semi, one way to capitalize on it is to create network effects. Moving quickly to establish a robust charging network is the best way I can see for Tesla to do that.

Yeah, I'm all in favor of going fast. My post above was just from the point of view of an operator that may just be on the edge of the network. But from Tesla's viewpoint, you want to light up all the major routes very fast.

It would be nice to have a map that shows how much freight moves on each segment of the interstate system. I would expect that lighting up I-5 from Mexico to Canada, I-80 from San Francisco to New Jersey, and I-95 from Florida to Maine would be an excellent start. These three highways cover 6200 miles. So about 30 MC stations would provide basic coverage with stations about 200 miles apart.

Tesla could actually deliver quite alot of cars along this skeletal network. I'd like to see this much developed with the first 18 months of production.

 

[jhm]

This map show segments with high freight movement.

See Major Freight Corridors - FHWA Freight Management and Operations

 

[EinSV]

@jhm, LOL, I was just about to post the same map, plus the one below from the same publication, which highlights the full corridors. So three main Western E/W corridors, two Western N/S corridors and a more complex network in the East.

Edit: On a closer look I believe the map you posted more clearly shows the most heavily used trucking routes separated from the rail component so may be a better reference point for a potential charging network.

 

[adiggs]

Keep this up and we'll have crowd sourced the work Tesla needs to do for the MC network

I'm betting that little nublet in California extending to the Nevada border is going to be the first electrified route.

 

[EinSV]

Keep this up and we'll have crowd sourced the work Tesla needs to do for the MC network

I'm betting that little nublet in California extending to the Nevada border is going to be the first electrified route.

That seems like a pretty good bet.

Focusing on the map posted by @jhm, surprisingly few corridors would seem to cover a significant percentage of the major routes.

 

[jhm]

Ha, both maps are good. I-40 looks pretty important. I was thinking of I-80 first because it connects Fremont, Gigafactory 1 and the Northeast US. Not too far from Gigafactory 2 to boot! So that would seem like a particularly important corridor for Tesla. Maybe I-75 would be a better choice than I-95 judging by freight.

 

[neroden]

Land for solar fields could be problematic, but I expect Tesla to use grid power initially and PPAs where cost effective.

I don't think Tesla can deliver the promised 7 cent prices with grid power in most of the US. In cloudy hydropowered Washington State, yes; in California, no way.

The "distribution and transmission" charges alone are over 6 cents in many places. Tesla *has* to install batteries to avoid high peak-usage charges, so that cost is unavoidable. This will bring them over 7 cents.

I think they're planning to set these up as primarily off-grid operations, possibly with a thin grid backup, from day one. Obviously there may be a few exceptions in areas with cheap hydropower nearby.

 

[EinSV]

Ha, both maps are good. I-40 looks pretty important. I was thinking of I-80 first because it connects Fremont, Gigafactory 1 and the Northeast US. Not too far from Gigafactory 2 to boot! So that would seem like a particularly important corridor for Tesla. Maybe I-75 would be a better choice than I-95 judging by freight.

I-5, I-40, I-80 and I-75 could make a nice core. Most of the other main corridors are east of the Mississippi where 500 mile range and 400 mile recharge can cover a lot of ground, even accounting for temperature, headwinds, etc.

 

[neroden]

This map show segments with high freight movement.

See Major Freight Corridors - FHWA Freight Management and Operations

Weird little map; the cutoffs are rather arbitrary. 8500 trucks per day is probably substantially lower than 50 million tons per year because most truck cargos are light. Interesting to see how busy the Ohio River remains, after over 200 years of commercial activity. You can see how heavy the coal trains from Wyoming are, disproportionate to volume.

 

[jhm]

The map EinSV posted covers 26k miles. This largely connects the dots in the map I posted. It covers 95% of the entire interstate system. Set MC stations about 200 miles apart would imply about 130 needed. But in many areas you have interchanges that could serve multiple routes. So maybe 100 would be a good start. Starting at 200 miles apart you can serve both the 500- and 300-mile range versions and later fill in about 100 miles apart later.

So I think we'd be off to a good start if Tesla could set up 130 in this network of 26k miles within three years. I also think this initial coverage could be adequate for over 100k trucks.

Note that where the red dots are, you've got I've 8500 trucks per day passing by. So having just a few percent stopping to charge would keep a station busy. (I'm still thinking an MC station with 40MW charging about 200 per day.)

Should I ping Elon and let him know what the plan is?

 

[jhm]

Weird little map; the cutoffs are rather arbitrary. 8500 trucks per day is probably substantially lower than 50 million tons per year because most truck cargos are light. Interesting to see how busy the Ohio River remains, after over 200 years of commercial activity. You can see how heavy the coal trains from Wyoming are, disproportionate to volume.

The authors assume average 16 tons cargo per truck, 365 days per year. So gets to 50M tons per year.

At any rate if 2% of 8500+ trucks per day stop to charge, we've got a well utilized MC station. Gaining this sort of local market share could be an important factor in siting MC stations.

 

[LCR1]

Last reply. Without him and his money no Tesla. It’s f’ing god darn amazing what has been done.

Never said it wasn't amazing, but that doesn't me he started Tesla.

 

[LCR1]

..on an ideal route. I'm guessing you're missing Fort Stockton (still in permit) and Willcox (under construction).

I guess you don't know what's going on in Ft Stockton.

 

[LCR1]

Where in California? I know I could drive from Atlanta, GA to Loomis, CA, where my parents live. But all this is along interstates. Getting to places far from the interstate can still be challenging.

Southern route is a little lacking. Until a few weeks ago El Paso - Tucson was impossible, Ozona - Van Horn isn't possible at the speed limit and questionable below a S90. It's uphill and traditionally strong headwinds, so ground speed doesn't always equal air speed.

 

[ohmman]

Anheuser-Busch Orders 40 Tesla Semi Trucks