Blog Tesla's Semi Program Getting Closer to Reality

[Ty_McMahan]

Among the exciting Tesla events slated for 2020 is the first deliveries of the Tesla Semi. The company has said it plans to put “limited volumes” of the all-electric semi into production in 2020. It’s going to be fun to see them hauling down the road. Many companies with giant fleets of heavy-duty trucks are...
[WPURI="https://teslamotorsclub.com/blog/2020/03/04/teslas-semi-program-getting-closer-to-reality/"]READ FULL ARTICLE[/WPURI]

 

[ThomasD]

Where are the first mega Chargers going to be installed

 

[hill]

Yea - there would necessarily need to be at LEAST a dozen construction permits pulled already for building mega chargers. Nothing I see online shows evidence of that. So what would be the point of a delivery in 2020 towards the end of the year - w/out any infrastructure. Said massive Transformers can't just fall out of the sky. Anybody here of their Construction? Even one?
.

 

[dhanson865]

Battery Day will answer more questions than anything else since Tesla is production limited by the cells/packs. We'll know a lot more after that presentation.

 

[ThomasD]

I wonder how they plan to slow down the semi when regen is low or non existent Diesel semis have exhaust brakes to help slow them down

 

[adiggs]

Yea - there would necessarily need to be at LEAST a dozen construction permits pulled already for building mega chargers. Nothing I see online shows evidence of that. So what would be the point of a delivery in 2020 towards the end of the year - w/out any infrastructure. Said massive Transformers can't just fall out of the sky. Anybody here of their Construction? Even one?
.

I figure the point for all of the early deliveries, will be delivering into the drayage / short haul market, where trucks work out of a central distribution hub. Said hub having the ability to have charging infrastructure installed, and the trucks having the capacity to readily do their out and back work without charging while out.

From other companies and their early deliveries / deployments, these are the same kind of constraints that others are doing initial deliveries and learning under.


From there, I expect Tesla to be the first to define a longer route with charging in the middle, and build a charger along that route for mid-route charging. Sparks to Fremont comes to mind . Or maybe that's short enough that there's no point - just charge at each end.

So maybe it'll be with some other company as a partnership. E.g. if somebody has a route that goes Boise to Portland and back, that's about 430 miles. With hills and bad weather, I'd want to charge in the middle for going back and forth routinely. So partner with that trucking company (I'm expecting somebody like UPS / FedEx for this), and a truck stop entity, and build that charger that will really only support that one route for that one company initially.

That'll provide the in-the-wild charging experience, and that's also how the mega charger network will expand. Somebody wants to buy trucks for a particular back and forth repetitive route that needs mid-route charging. And in a few years, there will be enough of that to start stitching together a general use charging network.


I'm expecting it'll be more like 5 years than 2 before we see something that looks like a general purpose charging network, that a shipping company or individual operator can rely on for driving most anywhere in the country. There's too big of a market in short haul / drayage, and too big of a build with no demand on the front end.

 

[jeewee3000]

Given that Elon just announced a Gigafactory Central USA (Texas?) for Cybertruck and Model Y production, can we assume the Semi will be produced in GF Nevada?

There were rumors regarding a new building popping up over there anyway, and Fremont seems packed to the brim with S/X/3/Y.

Would you agree or is it too soon to call where Semi will be built?

 

[Saghost]

I wonder how they plan to slow down the semi when regen is low or non existent Diesel semis have exhaust brakes to help slow them down

Maybe they won’t allow low regen states - block off the top 5%, keep the pack warm always.

 

[EinSV]

I'm expecting it'll be more like 5 years than 2 before we see something that looks like a general purpose charging network, that a shipping company or individual operator can rely on for driving most anywhere in the country. There's too big of a market in short haul / drayage, and too big of a build with no demand on the front end.

I doubt they'll wait very long to get at least a rudimentary Megacharger network up and running on some of the most heavily traveled routes.

Given how fast Tesla has been moving lately -- for example, with Giga Shanghai and Model Y -- 5 years is an eternity. While it wouldn't surprise me if the Megacharger rollout is relatively slow during the first year or two while Semi volume is still small, by 2023 they should be cranking up production and I would expect a public Megacharger network to be available at least on key routes.

 

[adiggs]

I doubt they'll wait very long to get at least a rudimentary Megacharger network up and running on some of the most heavily traveled routes.

Given how fast Tesla has been moving lately -- for example, with Giga Shanghai and Model Y -- 5 years is an eternity. While it wouldn't surprise me if the Megacharger rollout is relatively slow during the first year or two while Semi volume is still small, by 2023 they should be cranking up production and I would expect a public Megacharger network to be available at least on key routes.

I consider your notion of the build out to also be entirely reasonable (and preferable from my point of view). My longer and slower build is partially informed by my observation that there's a lot more to being a truck manufacturer than manufacturing trucks. And it's either stuff that Tesla has been doing badly, or mostly hasn't been doing at all. They can hire industry veterans to help get them started, but there's still an entire organization to build up around truck manufacturing.

In the light duty vehicle market, I see little value in Tesla partnering with some other company to get more BEVs on the road. In commercial trucking I see the opposite - the relatively high customization and low unit volumes, the importance of getting service and parts everywhere, right, and the other non-truck stuff that goes into making useful trucks that are used as income producing assets (including the build of the mega charger network) - I see opportunity for a partnership (or an acquisition ) to make the commercial truck transition happen faster.

 

[Jedi2155]

From my understanding of the electrical grid, getting mega-chargers built out would likely take years if key locations can even be found especially since utility does their infrastructure planning in multi-year cycles.

 

[SilverSp33d3r]

Looks like they are hiring for the megacharger build-out.

Project Engineer – Charging Infrastructure | Tesla

 

[ThomasD]

How much acreage will be needed for each mega charger and how many Trucks will be able to charge at one time

 

[Bobfitz1]

From my understanding of the electrical grid, getting mega-chargers built out would likely take years if key locations can even be found especially since utility does their infrastructure planning in multi-year cycles.

Given that Tesla already has megapack capacity storage modules in production and can contract with companies able to put up large size solar PV projects, I doubt they would sit around a few years waiting on local utilities to plan and build infrastructure everywhere a megacharger needs to be sited. Vertical integration is a beautiful thing!

 

[Jedi2155]

Given that Tesla already has megapack capacity storage modules in production and can contract with companies able to put up large size solar PV projects, I doubt they would sit around a few years waiting on local utilities to plan and build infrastructure everywhere a megacharger needs to be sited. Vertical integration is a beautiful thing!

That's a good point, but would vastly increase the cost of such projects, but I do see use cases where it can be resolved though.

 

[brucet999]

Looks like they are hiring for the megacharger build-out.

Project Engineer – Charging Infrastructure | Tesla

So, they're basically looking for Jerome Guillen?

 

[marcoooo12]

 

[marcoooo12]

 

[marcoooo12]

Tesla and Edison were at UPS in ontario California back in July of 2019. The were showing off semi. Edison was there to scout a location for superchargers on our facility. About week ago I noticed them tearing out some of the natural gas pumps to make room for something new. Some should check Ontario California for permits.

 

[ThomasD]

How large is it Can it charge multiple trucks at once Hopefully it is a compact unit not taking up a large area