Tesla, Inc. is an American-based company famous for its electric vehicles and clean energy. The company is currently based in Palo Alto, California and the product that the company currently produces are electric cars, electric storage, solar panels, and solar titles. Tesla is ranked as the world's best plug-in and battery electric car manufacturer.

The market share in 2020 of the company’s plug-in segment vehicles is approximately 16%, which includes all hybrids and the market share of battery-electric is somewhere around 23%. The company was founded in 2003 by Martin Eberhard and Marc Tarpenning as Tesla motors. Elon Musk has always been an investor during the initial years of the company and has been CEO since 2008.

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What is Tesla Semi?

Tesla Semi Truck
Peisertdesign

The Tesla Semi is an all-electric battery-powered Class 8 semi-truck, which is currently under development. The company released two of its prototype in the year 2017 and the production is all set to start in the year 2021. The company during the initial press conference said that the truck would be able to run for 800 miles on a full charge and at 80% the truck would be able to travel around 650 miles. The trucks would be charged by the Tesla Mega Charger Station which would be powered by solar energy.

The truck would have Tesla Autopilot just like its other electric vehicles, which provide semi-autonomous driving on the highways. Elon Musk in an interview in 2020 said “If you want, for long-range trucking, you can take the range up to, we think, easily 800 km, and we see a path over time to 1,000 km range for a heavy-duty truck.” The company also claims that the truck won't break down for at least a million miles as the truck is capable of running on only two engines, and they have installed four of them. We all know that using an electric vehicle is not only beneficial for the environment but also helps save a lot of money that we usually spend on fuel, the company claims that an electric vehicle would help save a sum total of $200,000 per year.

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Battery And Performance Of The Semi

via roadandtrack.com

The minimum that the top-of-line model truck would be able to conveniently cover is around 500 miles and the other model would be able to go up to 300 miles before they require a charge. In terms of the weight of the truck, the company has shared little to nothing but the prototypes and leaked photos do reveal that the size of the batter is big. The truck would be able to charge up to 80% in 30 minutes and would travel another 400 miles, which is very impressive. Tesla said when asked about the performance of the truck they said, and I quote “badass performance”. The acceleration of the truck claimed by tesla is 0-60 MPH in 20 seconds when the truck is fully loaded and 5 seconds when the cargo is empty. The energy consumption per mile is less than 2 kWh.

If we talk about the semi-autonomous autopilot, the truck has more sensors than that of the cars, and it makes sure that it keeps a safe distance from the other vehicle and makes sure that the truck stays in the lane. One of the problems that the company has been facing is that in the U.S., the truckers have a limitation when it comes to the total weight of the vehicle and the weight it can carry, and due to the size of the battery being so big, it is not possible to follow the legal formalities. The company is trying to figure out a way that they can reduce the curb weight of the truck.

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Pricing and Competition

Tesla Semi truck efficiency
via electrek.com

The Tesla Semi comes in different models, and each of them has a different range. The company has said that the entry-level truck which would have a range of approximately 300 miles would start from $150,000 and the top model which has a range of 500 miles would start from $180,000, but in both cases, the initial amount payable would be $20,000. The company has also planned on offering a limited edition model ‘founder’s series’ model, which will be limited to 1000 units and would have its own trim. A lot of other companies have come up with class 8 electric trucks which are a good competitor of Tesla, some of them are BYD company, Daimler AG, Lion Electric Company, Ken Worth, Toyota, Volvo and all these have similar features, but Tesla has been successful in its four-wheeler and people are excited about the Semi as well.

The people who would require a truck like this would be people whose business needs transportation on daily basis such as United Parcel Service who have already ordered 125 of these trucks, PepsiCo has ordered 100 and DHL has ordered 10 trucks. Tesla has come up a long way during the past decade and with the truck, everyone is expecting a good result, although a lot of things are still pending, we can expect the production to start soon.

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