Tesla’s electric semitrailer, which was delayed by years, is according to the company boss Elon Musk (51) now in production. The first vehicles are to be delivered to the beverage and food giant Pepsi on December 1, as Musk said on Friday night Twitter announced. Numbers were not initially known. It is the version with a range of around 800 kilometers, he wrote.
The articulated lorry Tesla Semi was made by Musk Introduced at the end of 2017 and production was then planned for 2019. After that, however, Tesla preferred to use the existing battery production capacities for passenger cars such as the Model 3 and Model Y. Musk had announced the first deliveries by the end of the year in August. According to his earlier statements, production was expected for the coming year.
With the Semi, Tesla promises lower costs than operating conventional diesel trucks, among other things through cheap electricity at its special fast charging stations in the United States as well as easier maintenance. Among those interested are logistics services such as Fedex, DHL and UPS as well as the supermarket giant Walmart. There should also be a version with a range of around 480 kilometers.
In a recent study, management consultants from PWC came to the conclusion that electric trucks will dominate the market in a decade. According to the industry experts, by 2030 electric trucks will already be around 30 percent cheaper than diesel trucks in terms of overall costs. Then every third new truck in Europe, North America and China drive electrically. “By 2035, their share in new registrations in these markets will increase to over 70 percent.”
In order for e-trucks to achieve a breakthrough, however, massive investments would have to be made in a nationwide network of charging stations and hydrogen-Gas stations are invested. The experts put the effort for Europe alone at 36 billion euros.
The study did not want to determine whether purely battery-electric trucks will prevail over vehicles powered by fuel cells. Daimler trucks relies on both variants and is already testing the first vehicles on German roads. Whole test fleets with hydrogen trucks are to come onto the market in the middle of the decade and be tested by customers from 2025. In the second half of the decade, the fuel cell truck should then go into series production, as the manufacturer recently reported. The online retailer Amazon want in Germany use the first 20 heavy electric trucks in freight traffic by the end of the year. Volvo is supplying the forty-ton trucks, which are to be deployed from Düsseldorf and Dortmund.