Een update:
Dear,
Greetings from the Tesla truck team!
We are reaching out to provide some updates on our development efforts with the Semi. At the end of last year, we built new test vehicles featuring significant improvements we’ve made to the design since the unveiling. While some of these changes are obvious from the outside, such as redesigned door handles, the most important changes were technical updates to the vehicle architecture and powertrain to improve range, efficiency, and reliability. We remain confident that both our Standard Range and Long Range variants will exceed their 300 and 500 mile benchmarks respectively and look forward to confirming final range estimates as we get closer to production.
Here is some recent footage of the Semi on our test track in Fremont, CA.
We believe fast charging will be critical to ensure that electric trucks can be used by our customers with no impact to current operations. Through the Charging Interface Initiative (CharIN), we participated in an important testing event at NREL to demonstrate our proposed solution for a high speed charging connector, also known as the Megawatt Charging Solution. As of now, The MCS connector is the only connector capable of providing a fast charging solution. CharIN’s goal is to develop and recommend an industry standard design for a connector capable of charging heavy duty trucks quickly, and the NREL testing event was a key step towards achieving that goal.
You can read more about the NREL testing event here.
Most recently, we completed another round of winter testing to validate vehicle performance in cold weather and low traction conditions. We continue to believe the Tesla Semi will offer best in class traction and a safer driving experience overall. Safety remains an important objective driving everything we design at Tesla, and we look forward to building the safest possible truck for customers and drivers.
In the coming months, we will extensively drive our latest test vehicles and collect valuable feedback and data to quickly iterate on our design and improve manufacturing processes. Last year we selected Austin, TX as the location of our newest Gigafactory. This facility will eventually become our final manufacturing location for the Semi once construction is finished.
We appreciate your interest in the Semi and will continue to share updates as we reach new milestones.
Best regards,
Tesla Truck Team
