The Tesla Semi cab from the practical POV of someone who drives trucks | Hacker News Reader

The Tesla Semi cab from the practical POV of someone who drives trucks

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520 pointsdanso502 comments

I am not a trucker, so I can't comment on the veracity of TFA's claims. But this rant reminds me of many similar things I've read about products that were designed by people only had superficial experience with the industry they are trying to disrupt.

A lot of the things that matter aren't necessarily obvious to the designer or engineer who knows little about the nuts and bolts of every field. The usual remedy is to either follow a design process that incorporates user viewpoints, or to hire people with direct experience in the field.

Take the "wiping the mirrors" complaint. One design makes it easy to lean out the window and wipe the mirror by hand. Another design might make the mirrors retractible.

If I read a complain that retracting the mirrors was unnecessary complexity, I would think "Hmm, maybe, but then again it's a tradeoff because the narrow cab is more aero and increases range." I'd have a feeling that the designers knew this was an important use case, but this person complaining doesn't like their solution.

But it worries me that a number of use cases that seem quite obviously common even to a layperson... Are neglected outright. I don't get the impression that Tesla knew about all this and decided not to do anything about them, I get the impression that this is a company who thinks "design" is all about styling, and not about usability.

Somebody resurrect Steve Jobs.

My general design process:

1. Design it myself. Get my ideas on paper before I'm biased.

2. Review designs. See how other people did it.

3. Talk to experts.

4. Integrate ideas and build it.

Most of my clever ideas turn out to be dumb at step #2 or #3, but a few pan out, and those have been important. In many cases, there is some kind of fusion too.

It seems someone missed steps 2-4 here.

That sounds intriguing. Can you talk about some success (and failures)?

No, since that would tie back to my identity. I use throw-away accounts online. When I upgrade my web browser, this account will disappear and a new one will appear.

I have the level of fame where you almost certainly wouldn't recognize my name, but where most people (not just on HN) have heard of one project I created from scratch (to give an analogy, very few people would recognize the inventor of the Nerf gun, the Super Soaker, the touch screen, a popular TV show, or the iPod, but if you said "I'm the inventor of the ____," they'd know who you were).

It takes about 30 seconds with Google my successes and failures to figure out who I am.

I attribute that success to:

1. Being willing and able to talk to a large and diverse set of experts (and not just recognized ones; in the above example, an expert might be a trucker, rather than just a truck designer, and you want to talk to both, not to mention people who hire truckers, people who ship things, etc.). Finding something like an "expert trucker" is probably harder than you'd imagine; "expert trucker" isn't the same as "random trucker."

2. Being able to swallow my ego, ignore my ideas, and follow their advice.

Most of my success was based on gluing together ideas that other people / products had in innovative combinations, and in being somehow effective at scouring the universe for good ideas.

Sometimes I actually do a slightly similar one. I do 3. 2. 1. 4.

I also sometimes skip point 2. to avoid any bias and follow their own pitfalls instead using my own creativity from the raw material of point 3.

But your workflow is great. :) It's the same than Apple or Ford when they created the first cars. Like their famous quote: if Ford asked first to experts what the next transportation will be they would have said faster horses. It had to start from a visionary first and not experts.

I'm not a designer but one principle I've adopted in most things I purchase is to minimize complexity. My goal is always to optimize for "least willpower consumed". Because I know that if its not easy to do, I'll just skip it after a long day.

If I was making something for professionals who might use the tool for long, tiring hours, I'd probably want to give them the least bit of complexity possible. At the end of an 8 hour shift, how many truckers will have the energy (or rather, spare willpower) to press a button, wait for the mirrors to retract, clean it, and press the button to get it back into its original position? Compare that to the much simpler single-step current process (grab cloth, clean mirror).

The fewer clicks, the fewer steps, the fewer movements something takes, usually, the better.

Considering that the original lead for the project was also the lead for the Cascadia, I don't think its fair to say that they lacked people with industry knowledge.

If anything it reminds me of all the arguments on slashdot when iPhone was announced that it would never take off because full touchscreen phones without a physical keyboard were a gimmick.

Is the difference here is there is already long running expectations? The iPhone was charting a brand new course across undiscovered seas, how trucks drivers interact with their vehicle is an experience with literally generations of data.

That's how it looks with the benefit of hindsight.

In 2007, there were plenty of people who thought the iPhone wasn't charting a brand new course across undiscovered seas. They thought it was an expensive, overly engineered toy. They thought the smartphone market of Blackberry and Windows Mobile devices was already mature.

Keyboards go back a long way, and the iPhone was widely panned as "not a professional device" because "how could you type email on it?" After all, we all had experience with just how bad on-screen keyboards were. It was so bleeding obvious that Steve was an idiot.

But then people actually used iPhones. While not as good as a physical keyboard, Apple's soft keyboard was vastly better than anyone anticipated. So good, in fact, that everyone basically forgot about physical keyboards and started typing their email on iPhones.

A big part of it was two things:

1. Apple put an actually-good LCD in the iPhone (Apple's LCDs get brighter and dimmer than the competition)

2. Apple used a capacitive touchscreen (that didn't suck).

I think the key thing is "is Tesla going to install good or shitty screens?" My guess is good screens--so I kind of laughed when the trucker complained about Mercedes touchscreens being too bright at night. Just like Apple's good screen enabled things you couldn't have before in a phone, I think Tesla's will too.

They can show blind spot cameras, for example. That may mitigate most or all of the impact of the center driver position on visibility. The same cameras can potentially show a better view than the mirrors (who cares if they're hard to clean when you only have them installed for legal compliance). So the giant screens enable Tesla to offer a Semi with vastly better aero than the competition.

"good screen" isn't enough in this case. They should invent something that doesn't exist now.

The problem isn't just the quality or sensitivity of the displays (though that could also be a problem). The problem is that any interface designed for drivers that requires you to stare at the interface and not the road is a bad idea. Any control that you are likely to operate while the vehicle is in motion needs to be something you can find by touch alone. A fixed, physical button.

Even more to your point: We even have tons of data already on touch screens in vehicles.

They repeated exactly the same mistake early EV cars did, Prius, i3, Leaf, all ugly, quirky or just impractical for completely unrelated reasons to being an EV. Trying to reimagine what a car is, instead of just taking a good old proven chassis and slamming an electric drivetrain inside.

Yes, there are enablers and constraints in EV platforms you both need to and should make use of, like more floor space, frunk, aero. Tesla finding the right things to change out of that pool is what made them successful. Today most other manufacturers have come to their senses and we today have great selection of good and non funky EVs on the market. This semi on the other hand is the i3 of trucks, judging by the Twitter thread.

Slashdot is the Jim Cramer of tech. (“No wireless. Less space than a Nomad. Lame”).

But then we also had the cybertruck that seems stuck because of its design, or the hyperloop. It wouldn't be Elon's first dumb idea.

Or the tunnels..

Fat fingering an instagram post rarely causes an accident which can delete a family from existence in half a second. The argument against touchscreens in vehicles is sound, not just contrarianism.

The Tesla semi design is the exact opposite of the iPhone's keyboard removal. It's larger but still less useful and flexible because its use of space is so inefficient.

The smartphone's lack of a physical keyboard is a tradeoff that works well for most users who tend to consume a lot of media content and rarely write long texts on it. According to that truck driver the Tesla semi is not a tradeoff but a downgrade without any upsides.

Here's that Slashdot thread: https://apple.slashdot.org/story/07/01/09/1857231/iphone-app...

People appear pretty excited on average. Most of the naysayers seem to be metahumor about the community's bad take about the iPod.

Phones are toys, cars are tools. Completely different design requirements.

My phone is a tool that I use to communicate and store information.

Don't throw the baby out with the bathwater: There are STILL lots of real UX issues with touchscreens.

- Answer the phone without looking at it

- Start sending a text message without looking at it

- BLIND PEOPLE

Etc, real concerns do exist.

Heck, even most of what Microsoft designs/builds/releases is after-the-fact mind boggling un-user-friendly, and they are mostly working on their own and hugely deployed products with many years of real world experience already under their belt. And they still screw it up regularly! I don't readily know what one would call this phenomenon. Is it as serious as technical cancer? Dementia? If feels like a disease that is spreading to so many companies rather far, and fast. Perhaps the good news is that it should result in more competition, I think. Tall growth getting hit with beetles, ideally leaving behind fertile ground for something else?

this rant reminds me of many similar things I've read about products that were designed by people only had superficial experience with the industry they are trying to disrupt.

I've had similar experience with silly old web development.

I spent a week sitting down with actual users of the web site that I was so proud of and watched them use it. Oh, man did that hurt.

All the "telemetry" in the world will never prepare you for actually watching real people at work and talking to them.

It completely changed the way I build web sites.

The Tesla designers should spend more time in truck cabs, shadowing actual truckers. Based on this Twitter rant, it should be illuminating.

To me, this point alone continues to highlight that musk is just focusing on looks instead of function-

> Tablets. I drove a modern Mercedes truck with tablets and it's pin in the arse. Tablets are simply not designed for use in moving vehicles. You need a physical button, so you can reach for it even without taking your eyes off the road and feel it. (10)

This is a KNOWN issue. There's very very little upside to any sort of touchscreen in a moving vehicle. And while in normal cars they move units because features over functionality is acceptable, trucks aren't status symbols first. They do, at the end of the day, have to do the job they're designed for efficiently, and things like this are clearly just "trendy" not practical.

Not just efficiently, safely.

Cars kill 1,500,000 people per year (= a 787 full of passangers every couple hours). What's the big deal about safety? /s

In the US that number is usually below 30,000, and majority of that 30,000 is alcohol related.

>majority of that 30,000 is alcohol related.

What's your source for this? Most sources I'm finding say alcohol-impaired driving is involved in about 30% of US traffic deaths.

I didn't make the claim but I thought to look it up. From NHTSA's report, if I'm reading it correctly, 2021 had 42,915 traffic fatalities, of which 8,174 were related to alcohol. I think those numbers are estimated. I'm not aware if there's better data.

https://crashstats.nhtsa.dot.gov/Api/Public/ViewPublication/...

My information appears to be a few years out of date - probably from the last time I had this debate here on HN. 2021 does appear to have been a particularly bad year...

Regardless, the numbers are very good for the US, compared to the rest of the world. iihs.org[1] indicates the US is averaging somewhere around 1.5 fatalities per 100 Million miles traveled.

Compared to the rest of the world... that's pretty decent. Most of the places with significantly high fatality rates are not the places that will be purchasing self driving electric vehicles anytime soon...

[1] https://www.iihs.org/topics/fatality-statistics/detail/state...

You are deluding yourself if you think the US is doing well on traffic fatalities. From the graph at https://www.nytimes.com/2022/11/27/upshot/road-deaths-pedest... we can see that US car deaths/capita have dropped slightly (10-20%?) since 1995. Meanwhile, in France where the rate about matched in 1995 they have dropped by 3x, leaving the US rate at about 2.5x the French rate.

But at least we aren’t French.

Recent US Traffic fatalities:

2021: 42,915

2020: 38,824

2019: 36,355

2018: 36,835

2017: 37,473

According to https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motor_vehicle_fatality_rate_... the last time the US had fewer than 30,000 traffic fatalities was 1945

Alcohol is 100% orthoganal.

If every single driver were legally drunk at all times, poorly designed vehicles will still result in more and worse accidents then well-designed.

If every driver were drunk at all times, roads would be designed with that in mind. It's much harder to dangerous things in a car with better designed roads

Sure, but irrellevant.

The point is that the design of the vehicle, or anything, needs to be as good as possible regardless of anything else, and there is no overriding excuse not to.

It's not like the poorly designed controls are necessary for some other even more important reason.

If both roads and drivers were all excellent, the vehicle still needs to be as excellent as possible. If all other factors are so good that only 10 people die each year from car accidents, there is still no excuse for making vehicles less safe and make that become 20.

Alcohol, lack of alcohol, good roads, bad roads, speed limits, none of that matters.

Car crashes are the leading cause of death of children under age 18. The number of deaths has risen in the US even as it's fallen across the rest of the world. I have begun to wonder if phones are just a convenient scapegoat, even if the criticism is in the right direction.

I wonder if it's a combination of phones, car centric city design with wide stroads, and automatic transmissions. The latter two make driving very easy and boring, with long waiting periods at red lights, high speed between the lights, and you can keep your phone in one hand all along because there's no stick to shift. No wonder people are not looking at the road.

Wide stroads definitely don't make driving easy and boring -- stroads make for high speeds and constant opportunities for crashes

They absolutely reduce the number of variables requiring attention, except the problem and the source of danger is they only appear to. They make the way appear to be free of things to look out for, and so appear to require less attention. That's the "boring".

In reality of course, all the same kinds of unexpected events can still happen at any time. A baby can suddenly appear anywhere along one of those roads. But that doesn't mean the road does not encourage inattention.

Is there any real data on this?

It comes up periodically here and it makes some logical sense but I don't know of any regulatory efforts or push back and I'm certain someone would blame in-car screens if it was the cause of more accidents. Screens seem to keep getting bigger and incorporating more function.

The other factor that counters it is there is also a lot more automation. I have a 10 year old car and the lights are automatic, the climate control is automatic (I think my wife or I adjust it about twice a year) Things like hazard lights are used fairly rarely and I've never needed muscle memory for it.

Several studies have shown touch screen are less safe. Having tactile controls doesn’t prevent automatic wipers etc, it’s a pure UI choice as your generally run everything through the CAN bus either way.

The initial idea for the CAN bus was simply to save copper by having fewer wires inside the car, it was only much later that touch screens leveraged that system. Basically if you want a truck release from a key fob and a trunk release from a door you might as well have both talk to a computer which only runs connection to the trunk. At which point you can redesign the controls more or less independently because they don’t change how everything is wired up. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CAN_bus

Hazard lights need to be accessible with zero thought so you can warn people the instant a hazard arises, without taking your eyes off the road during hazardous conditions. My car has them on a big red button in the middle of the dashboard, and that's the way it should be.

The reason for the touchscreens is simple... compared to all the design and manufacturing needed for a good console of buttons, it's cheap just to slap in an identical tablet unit in every car model.

From the very start it was just Tesla penny-pinching.

This is an 80/20 problem if there ever was one, maybe even 95/5. In my car I really want the audio volume, heater fan speed, and wiper control to be tactile. But beyond that, I can probably deal, and even the heater fan speed might be negotiable.

In my 2003 car, the fan speed is buttons, oh well. In my 2013 it’s a paddle and I like it a lot better.

The newer car also has a knob for navigating the touchscreen, which isn’t perfect but is way better than touching a screen. The older car has no touchscreen and I like that better.

I didn’t rtfa because it’s a Twitter thread, and I didn’t see any comments on this in the 250 or so below. What else really needs to be a tactile control on a truck?

(Edited for clarification. I said “touch-based” when I should have used “tactile”.)

Could you please explain more about why you would prefer those specific controls to be touch based? Is it to have the possibility of finer-grained adjustment?

For me, wipers and audio volume are controls I want to be able to access immediately and without taking my eyes off the road, as they sometimes need to be used with urgency. (For example, turning down high volume to reduce distraction or activating wipers to clear a sudden downpour.)

It's so you don't have to look at them to use them while driving. Screens offer no tactile feedback that guides you, you have to look, which is dangerous.

Right, tactile was the word I should have used.

I think "touch based" is used here to mean knobs and buttons, not a touch screen.

I think his wording is off, and he means touch based as in tactile feedback. Not touch as in a touch screen.

or when another vechicle splashes you with a mass of mud or snow from a puddle or slush pile from plowing, or snow blows off the top of another vehicle etc, suddenly blind, at highway speeds with other vehicles, maybe with no barrier seperating the oncoming lanes, and your wipers require navigating menus on a tablet???

Even non-critical controls still need to be tactile, and not change from one day to the next, don't move location or change behavior from updates, because even if you don't need them in a hurry to avoid crashing, you still can't be hunting around in a multipurpose interface while driving just to change which direction the air vents point. Not a hyperbolic example, the Rivian actually has that.

Teslas have a button on the stalk to run the wipers, and you can use voice commands, is there a company that requires menu nav?

I get anxious even thinking about volume touch control. Got a higher pulse and everything :-D

Even Tesla knows this is a bad idea. They have a volume dial on the steering wheel, for your thumb.

I think tactile controls should be those things you would want to change while driving:

* Climate control heating/ac/defroster temp up/down fans higher/lower

* windows up/down

* signal left/right

* windshield wipers

* volume up/down

* audio basics (next track/previous track)

This allows you to keep your eyes on the road and rely on muscle memory to make the changes quickly. It's an important aspect of auto safety. Things like gps route selection, loading music into vehicle or configuring playlists can be done with touchscreens as these are complex tasks that are unlikely to be done while driving.

That’s a tidy list. Thanks. NO2 boost? ;)

Do trucks have additional tasks?

He's a basic switch and gauge cluster:

https://weaverauctions.com/assets/auction/105/34610-9.jpg

It seems they could have a set of programmable buttons with LED surface, as I've seen in computer keyboards for years. As sibling comment points out this is an 80/20 situation.

As much as I enjoyed my recent first time experience driving a Tesla, the screen controls frustrated me immensely. I guess they expect you will be talking to the car to make changes soon anyway, but we all know that doesn't work great either.

Edit: not to imply you were defending the choice. I can see why it is understandable when trying to iterate fast.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=qj7GYU-wedo

My 2013 BMW has 8 physical buttons that can be easily programmed to do whatever I want. It's awesome. Unfortunately this feature has been deleted from the newest models...

To expand on that, it is because Tesla fundamentally approaches design like a tech company instead of a manufacturing company. For example, you see this with how they make changes to their cars. They don't have any real model year. Any car of one model can be slightly different from others of the same model from the same year. They could also be nearly identical to once produced two years earlier. It all depends. They just make changes to them whenever they feel like making a change.

The tablets are there for the same reason. Instead of spending years fine-tuning a dashboard design through research, they can throw a tablet in there and release whatever software they currently have. They will get feedback from people like this Twitter user telling them they have it all wrong, then they iterate and release a software update. Maybe that process eventually gets them into a better place like it often does for tech companies, but the bigger problem is that this approach completely fails when it comes to their other design choices. You can't push out a software update to change the angle of the windshield. And this lack of focus on the initial design is what leads to making the bad choices highlighted in that thread.

Physical buttons are far harder to produce and, once made, are set in stone until the car is recycled. Touch controls can be reprogrammed, updated, improved, etc, mixed with voice input, etc. Far more possibilities for improvement.

if only someone could invent a device with physical buttons that could connect to a device like a tablet or other computer.

Who said physical buttons cannot be mixed with voice input? Most physical buttons these days are just an interface to the CAN bus, where the function is performed (in software) in the BCM and can easily interface with the voice module.

"Improved" is an interesting term. How much improvement can you make to climate control buttons? Their function in most vehicles has not changed in 30 years and are largely the same aside from styling.

I feel like we just had this conversation two days ago, with the Amazon driver that has to use a touchscreen to open the cargo door in his new EV delivery van. Another ridiculous design courtesy of SV. Maybe the Juicero engineers found a new life at the EV manufacturers.

That's ridiculous. Multi-function displays/inputs have been a thing for decades. A physical button does not need to map to one and only one function. Just like MFDs in aircraft, physical buttons in a car display can perform different tasks depending on the mode of the display. I've had several car head units over the years with multi-function buttons.

Touch screens in cars are shit. Not only is there no tactile feedback but you can't place your finger on a button before pressing it like you can a physical button. To touchscreens a touch is a press so you better hope you touched the screen in the right place and your finger didn't move around because of a bump in the road.

When the original iphone premiered, a lot of experts were saying it'll be a failure because it lacks physical controls and it makes calling while driving impossible.

Fast forward to now, even Android phones have lost all physical buttons for home/back/menu and now it is all just touch screens. This approach allowed changing button-controlled interface to gesture-controlled.

So touch screens might be shit, you just don't need to touch them while driving.

People spend a lot of time staring at their phones because of those touchscreens. Which is what the phone makers want. But automakers and fellow drivers -- not so much.

For the same reason, the US Navy announced it was moving away from touchscreen controls. When actions need to be taken quickly, muscle memory and tactile feedback are preferred.

https://news.usni.org/2019/08/09/navy-reverting-ddgs-back-to...

I didn't know car drivers need to be really quick when taking actions like climate control or music volume adjustments.

If they are driving, yes, they do, because their attention needs to be focused on the road.

Changing climate controls never requires any kind of immediacy.

Just today I had to turn on my windshield defogger while driving lest I be unable to see. Have you ever driven a car before?

Yes, actually. Never in decades in had to do something about climate control urgently. There is always a pause when you can do it safely even on a touch screen. I used Android Auto quite a lot before Google broke it.

As I said, if we're talking about advanced cars, touch panels are more versatile, better suited for future updates, and all important functions should understand voice commands anyway.

> When the original iphone premiered, a lot of experts were saying it'll be a failure because it lacks physical controls and it makes calling while driving impossible.

Several things to unpack:

1. Dialing a phone while driving was no better with phones with physical buttons than with an iPhone. When the iPhone was released there were few truly hands free calling systems in cars, many jurisdictions have laws against phone use in cars. This is a moot point.

2. Touchscreens on phones before the iPhone were shit. The UIs were primarily designed for a stylus. In the rare situation UI elements were even big enough to hit with a fingertip the resistive screens sucked and wouldn't properly register a touch. Physical buttons were necessary because the screens and UIs were not designed for touch. The iPhone changed that calculus.

> So touch screens might be shit, you just don't need to touch them while driving.

Except for functions like the defroster on Teslas which requires navigating nested menus on the touchscreen to activate. So you definitely need to use the touchscreen while driving if all the physical controls have been replaced by a touchscreen.

> Dialing a phone while driving was no better with phones with physical buttons than with an iPhone

This is absurd. I could not only dial, but also answer to calls and write whole messages on keyboard phones without ever looking at the device. They were tactile and the home key (number 5) was easily located by rubbing the thumb against the keys.

With an iPhone, the simplest of these tasks, taking a call, still requires me to look at the screen and aim for the right place where the button is.

Otherwise I agree with your points.

The average driving-age person could definitely not dial and text on a T9 phone and drive safely. You could have but the uptick[0] in accidents related to phone use in the early 2000s are a testament that this was not a common skill.

You're not wrong that a tactile keypad was superior for dialing without looking. Touchscreens were a major step back for anyone practiced at blind dialing/texting.

[0] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2951952/#!po=25...

Controls that change based on mode are terrible for a vehicle. IE, a physical button that's programmable and doesn't always do the same thing, is no good.

Controls that change location or behavior from one day to the next, are absolutely horrendous.

"From the very start it was just Tesla penny-pinching."

I don't think so. I think it was worse, and indicates a deeper (and more depressing) inadequacy:

I think Tesla put the big screen (17" ?) in the first Model S as a signifier of high technology and modernity.

So far, so good ...

Now, however, as the Tesla itself came to signify the steps forward to an electric car future and modernity in general, designers of other cars copycatted the Tesla so as to evoke the same sentiment.

Meanwhile, actual interior design of automobiles has regressed significantly - and very often, dangerously - and we have one, and probably two entire generations of vehicle models to get through before it gets fixed.

In the meantime, get used to monstrosities like this:

https://cdn.bmwblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/05/bmw-7-ser...

... and if that wasn't bad enough:

https://media.wired.com/photos/625f4ef8536da34b19a67a72/mast...

These designers are clowns. They should be ridiculed. Screens are a poverty.

I drive old vehicles, but a few years ago I got the itch and walked into a Toyota dealership. When I was told they don't offer vehicles without the screen I walked out and have basically refused to purchase anything with such a screen.

I've driven a few rentals with them and yes, they're not the most terrible thing ever, but they definitely are inferior to not having them. I really hope what you're saying will come to pass and we'll get rid of them or have a better version of their functionality because they are so obviously unsafe it's nuts to me they were ever put in.

I think Honda announced they would be getting rid of them, if I were to buy a new vehicle today it would most likely be them for that reason alone, despite me being loyal to Toyota up to this point (I just trust their vehicles).

To be fair, it seems that all the other manufacturers have decided to join in on that penny-pinching. :(

It's true that physical buttons are superior, but the upside of the screen is that the UI can be updated by software.

And it is nearly impossible to reliably tap a button on a touchscreen in a moving vehicle on even smooth roads (at least by me).

One technique is to dock some of your fingers against known reference points such as the corner of the screen, then you can stabilize the finger pressing the button and rely partially on muscle memory to locate the target button.

Yeah, this is the way. Still much less comfortable than a physical button, but not a great issue for power users either.

or best of both worlds and have physical soft keys down the side like oscilloscopes and other test equipment have.

Yes, that's the downside.

Why don't we have any physical "dynamic" controls yet? A "3D" touchscreen? Something like a ferrofluid [0] layer underneath a flexible display. It seems both technically possible, and a way for us to have our cake & eat it.

[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ferrofluid#/media/File%3AFerro...

Or something like the new Stream Deck? https://www.elgato.com/en/stream-deck-plus

Actual buttons/dials that can be customised to what you want them to be?

You still have to look at the screen because you can just feel it with your fingers without looking at it.

Updating UI and potentially getting used to new layouts is really something that will improve road safety..

People, this isn't kindergarten or high school. Traffic is serious thing, not a playground

> This is a KNOWN issue. There's very very little upside to any sort of touchscreen in a moving vehicle.

That’s a very confident statement to make without data to back it up.

Strong disagree. I see a huge number of benefits from the touchscreen in my Tesla. Continuous improvements to how the fundamental controls operate. New features that could only have been possible due to the controls not being hardware…

And generally speaking my vehicle seems to save me from human lapses in judgement even when I’m paying perfect attention so I’m not convinced about the argument that they purely increase distraction.

You have to take your eyes off the road for multiple seconds to turn the defogger/defroster on, as one example. Maybe there are studies to back it up too, but intuitively, this seems unsafe compared to turning a knob that you don't have to look at.

Are you able to perform a good majority of functions without taking your eyes off the road over 95% of the time? In my perfect setup I would have configurable buttons to map critical functions to and then a touch screen for non-important things. I have a very hard time seeing how a touch screen alone would be better than touch screen + a couple buttons.

Yes. Everything you need while driving is on the wheel or at a well defined corner of the screen (which big touch targets). And that too can be avoided if you’re willing to use voice control.

I'd love to hear how the car has saved you while you were paying attention.

- Changing lanes with someone in my blind spot just behind the B pillar

- someone changing lanes into me while cruising

- car tried to cut across from lane to my right to lane to my left. Got blocked from going to left lane and slammed brakes in front of me

- saw brake lights farther than I could in a snowstorm

It’s like having someone with 100% attention and 360 visibility watching your back at all times.

From: December 23, 2021

“Tesla hiring drivers for reliability, performance and homologation testing of Tesla Semi”

Source: https://driveteslacanada.ca/semi/tesla-hiring-drivers-for-re...

It’s a bit silly to assume they didn’t solicit feedback from real truck drivers. While developing a multi-billion product. But “Musk/Spaceman Bad” right?

The complaints in the linked thread are not about reliability, performance or homologation.

That’s just one of the many jobs they posted during the development of semi. They also have “real” drivers that put a ton of hours shuttling Tesla cargo from NV to CA and vise versa.

Not to mention the author is from the EU. Trucking in the U.S is vastly different. I drove in both regions during my time in the USAF.

In your honest opinion. Do you think they just developed the semi without gathering/soliciting feedback from real truck drivers?

Musk's whims clearly took precedence over any sort of received feedback.

That a very opinionated yet empty statement. Please elaborate and share your experience driving long haul semi trucks in U.S. interstates and city streets.

flight yoke

Can you point out where? This looks pretty circular to me: https://www.tesla.com/semi

I am responding to the challenge that Musk doesn't ignore all sense and advice and feedback and established best practices in favor of simply what he thinks is cool.

You know Elon Musk didn’t design this truck, right?

Perhaps, but SpaceX interfaces share the same issue: focusing on looks at the cost of usability, so I would think that either he's involved in this quite a lot, or he built both companies to have similar cultures. For example, the first mockup of Dragon v2 control panel presented to the public [1] looked all sci-fi, but as someone who actually knows how spacecrafts function I can tell just by the look that this was unusable. They were forced to switch to a much more pragmatic design [2] during the development, probably because folks from NASA shared some real-life experience and had their own requirements written in blood. Still touchscreens, but only where it doesn't matter (hard to have tactile controls in a spacesuit anyway), with a handle to hold onto under acceleration and to provide a basepoint for muscle memory, and buttons under protective caps for critical commands.

[1] https://i.imgur.com/sWHPfFR.jpg

[2] https://i.imgur.com/RZ7ucEu.jpg

So what you're saying is that his company posted a mockup then listened to people with real life experience through the development process and produced a good actual product?

Is this supposed to be a bad thing?

I rented a Jeep today. It has most functions on a touch screen. But above 60mph (I think) the controls all lock so you can’t touch anything.

They probably did it for safety but it feels so dumb. I’m on a highway trying to turn off Bluetooth and then FM but I can’t. All screen functionality locked, no workaround.

That's probably a restriction on the rental that's just an option if you own it. My 2013 Ford allows me to limit several things over 55mph for drivers using my second car key.

Devil’s advocate: the buyer and operator of the trucks may not care what the driver thinks. Most of these complaints don’t seem to hit at the truck’s profitability for its target market.

That's a weird position to advocate from. I mean, it's the traditional soul-sucking capitalist position: who cares about the user as long as it makes money?

Gross.

Unless the inconveniences inconvenience the decision maker, it wont influence the decision.

This is human nature and agnostic of political or economic model that human exists within.

Well, empathy, social issues, etc, may or may not cause an inconvenience…

> That's a weird position to advocate from.

So weird -- it's the devil!

Comparing corporate decision makers to devils is unfair and bigoted against devils.

About half of U.S. truckers own thier own rigs, europe has fewer owner-operators. Do you want to start by throwing out half the domestic market?

Pretty much, yes? I mean, EV trucks are going to start out limited to fixed routes with known charging facilities. They require more expensive capital outlay and have probably-cheaper-but-very-different maintenance regimes that will benefit from commonality more than "just another diesel tractor" would.

So I'd say yes: absolutely sell to the fleet market first. Individual truck owners will come along (likely from the used market) as the facilities evolve.

As a counterpoint, check out the review of the Amazon truck by Rivian by a delivery worker, that was posted here on HN just this week. It turned out being a good experience for the driver. If UX issues are big enough that they can potentially affect productivity, then corp headquarters will care.

> As a counterpoint, check out the review of the Amazon truck by Rivian by a delivery worker, that was posted here on HN just this week.

For those who missed it like me, it seems to be https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33890585

Why is this surprising. After all it’s the company that eliminated steering wheels and door handles.

I've driven truck for 4+ years.

Side mirrors: I have _never_ cleaned the mirrors by hand. That happens when I'm refueling with a squeegee on a long pole that they have at truck-stops. I will tell you that those mirrors will vibrate like hell and be difficult to see clearly out of. That far away from the chassis and with only one point of contact will make it vibrate a lot.

Gatehouses: that is a very valid point, but most guardhouses (I mostly just have experience with Ford/Chrysler/GM) make you get out of the truck and go open up the trailer. You don't even roll-down the window to talk to them.

Weigh-Scales (aka Chicken-Coops) where Highway weight inspection happens: Most just use a speaker on a pole at window height, but other places (like USA/CAN border crossing) you have to pass paperwork back & forth to agent, so this would be difficult.

Entry/Egress: these are valid points but the need to enter/exit from the passenger side has only happened to me once. My biggest use of the passenger seat: That's where I kept my cooler for food/beverages.

And that brings me to my list of observations that make this tractor seem like a non-starter (from things i noticed watching the '10 hour drive' video):

(1) The monitor on the right-side of the driver. Some of the time it was a map/GPS, but most of the time it was displaying text that the driver leaned over/turned his head to read. This might have been dispatch notes, or vehicle diagnostics or something else. HELL NO, not even once would I ever drive something that required that much attention away from the road.

(2) Food/Beverage options. Most drivers that I ever saw used a LARGE 24oz-36oz insulated mugs for coffee. A lot would pour an entire pot of coffee into their mug! So most trucks had 'over-sized' cup holders. The 'nicer' trucks I drove also had shelves with guard rails (it always reminded me of boat-storage) in areas that I could put food that I could eat while driving. I didn't see that same kind of space. The less-nice trucks would force me to use the passenger seat. This truck did have lots of area, but there was nothing to prevent things from sliding around.

(3) Load/Log paperwork: Usually kept in a clip-board (mandated by law if carrying hazmat material to be stored in drivers-side door pocket). Once again door placement and lack of shelves play an issue here. I often kept mine on the passenger seat. This material is rarely touched while driving, but there is a considerable amount of paperwork that needs to be done each time the truck stops. Related: Notepads. About half the companies that I worked for required that I log the vehicle mileage (and time) when crossing state lines. There might be adequate space for this. Notes were needed to be written down quite frequently.

(3) Range to refuel ratio. I drove a 600 mile radius centered around Detroit. I would goto Quebec, Missouri, Tennessee, and all points in between. Each time I needed to 'fill' the fuel tanks would take ~30 minutes. That 30-minutes would give me ~1800 miles of range (VERY rough estimate, I never got close to empty). I would often get fuel at either designated locations (like at the company lot)or when I was OTR I would do it before I stopped for the night (as needed). Even if Tesla built out a super-charger like network for the trucks I can't imagine having enough time to make 3x more stops, with each stop taking MUCH longer.

This isn't for OTR though, as most truck routes are shorter in nature. They aren't gonna touch long haul for a while. Though they do apparently charge up very quickly.

I agree there are a lot of negatives though. Not a truck driver but the ipad light seems like it would be very annoying and then reading instructions while driving, especially where you have to turn your head away from the road is really bad.

Ultimately I think people are too worried about the interior. It's not gonna be that hard to move seats over if needed.

On mirror vibration, my personal experience is that a lot of it is contributed by the diesel engine, at least on the freeway / at idle. It is really obvious when you're cranking it. The proximity of their mounting point to the engine bay doesn't help either. IMHO the axle-mounted motors are gonna suffer less from this particular cause, but maybe the bad roads will make it worse regardless.

A related point is "E-mirrors". The regulation is not there yet in the U.S., but apparently they are in Europe [1]. I think they have the potential to be _more_ safe than traditional ones, despite the glare issue at night --- for example taking advantage of the low-light HDR capabilities. Also, their FoV don't shift around as the driver's head does; this may be both a pro and a con.

[1]: https://www.greencarcongress.com/2019/12/20191214-mirrorcam....

Also, had they made the driver's seat slideable left-to-right (e.g. with 3 locking positions) it would solve the problem of not being able to hand something over the left window ;)

> Somebody resurrect Steve Jobs

He would have hidden the ignition keyhole below the steering wheel because of the ugly aesthetics

It's ok, it lights up for 30s after the door opens. Oh you need to find it but were in the cab for longer than 30s? Just open and close the door again, dum-dum!

And others emulating them. I would like a Rivian for several reasons, but I can not accept the cab, especially the suv. It's the stupidest least functional least convenient least utility thing imaginable for a utility vehicle.

It's a rolling Apple "one button" joke.

Your critique makes sense, it reminds me of an electric truck startup called Edison that was started by a former truck driver: https://www.edisonmotors.ca

Basically the exact opposite approach, they started by bolting together mostly commodity parts. It's not pretty in a consumer product sense but for industrial users I get the sense that sleek is not good if it comes at any cost to serviceability, durability, parts commonality, etc. I don't know if that specific company will go anywhere but I like the approach.

IDK, when I see threads like this hit high rankings on HN, I don't even have to click through to know that it's a rant — it wouldn't make the front page if it was like "Sweet, this looks good."

Parts of the thread are just nonsensical; for example, I've seen many other threads and business analysts concerned about whether an electric semi-truck is even viable at all. Meanwhile, this thread explains that "All major truck manufacturers offer [sic] electric trucks for years now." Wow, maybe everyone else is wrong and doesn't know anything about truck sales? So I did the bare minimum of research, and... The Mercedes truck he claims has been offered "for years now" is in prototype phase and has never been released; the Volvo class 8 semi was only released in October of this year and has less than half the range of the Tesla; the Scania was also only launched this year and similarly has less than half the range... He even cites "Nikola" as a manufacturer that you can buy a truck from. Nikola! The infamous company that was convicted of securities fraud for faking their electric truck last year! Apparently as of this year they finally managed to deliver a whopping 48 trucks, all of which were promptly recalled for safety issues. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nikola_Corporation

Meanwhile, the snow considerations from the dreaded "angled windscreen." In the thread, the author posts a few pictures of trucks with completely vertical faces. Is that representative of semi trucks? Well, let's go ahead and look at a picture of the Volvo electric class 8 semi that the author was touting... https://cleantechnica.com/2022/10/18/first-drive-the-volvo-v...

Uh-oh. It's got way more horizontal faces that the Tesla! And look at those giant mirrors placed 5+ feet in front of the cab... How will the driver wipe them without leaving? Whoops. Or, maybe that's not actually the death sentence for the truck that the author claims?

And then there's the "place to put a mattress." But — the Tesla Semi is what's known in America as a "day cab." Day cabs do not have places for mattresses, and it's generally illegal to sleep in one: https://ratings.freightwaves.com/day-cab-vs-sleeper-cab/. If you're on a route that requires sleeping, you need a sleeper cab. And yup — the Tesla Semi isn't one. But neither is any other day cab.

Rants like these are usually pretty boring TBH: if the product is actually terrible, no one will buy it (and thus the author won't be angry about it). The anger betrays their certainty that the product is actually more attractive than they'd hoped, and than they're claiming.

Maybe the problem is that he is being critical of something made for Americans being European. American semis would be super stupid here, as well as European trucks might be stupid there, but then again Brazil is as large and less dense than the US and prefer EU style trucks.

> if the product is actually terrible, no one will buy it (and thus the author won't be angry about it). The anger betrays their certainty that the product is actually more attractive than they'd hoped, and than they're claiming.

"People loudly disagree with X, this proves X right" has never been a convincing argument.

Just for one example, you have to know that the people who buy industrial equipment don't always communicate with the people who will be expected to use that equipment. "My boss is gonna get seduced by this shit and I'm gonna have to deal with it" is a perfectly legitimate concern.

For another, you've read enough tech news to know that people find terrible design annoying even if they don't expect to ever have to use it themselves, especially if it falls within their field of expertise.

Tesla knows all this.

This truck is for a very specific niche: owned fleets near two warehouses or within a 500 mile round trip from a major port. Basically: all the warehouses in the Inland Empire near LAX and Long Beach and the warehouses in the Newark area that service the NYC metro area. It has the potential to dramatically reduce costs for some routes/corridors.

It will be a big hit in these areas. It will have a large impact on a very specific niche. There's nothing wrong with that. These aren't going to be used by independent truckers. It's not for them. It's for drivers making the same 80-100 mile or so trip from port to warehouse every day.

I don't see how that is relevant. Nearly all of the criticisms posed (maybe not the snow one?) would still be relevant to a driver in the situation you describe. This has nothing to do with range or even the fact that it's electric

While I largely agree with you, there are at least a subset of the complaints in the Twitter thread that are pretty inconsequential if the truck is only intended for < 500 mile routes (for example, the "no space for a bed" complaint).

You think that drivers won't be asked to do 3 trips a day, or that the truck will never break down miles from anywhere?

Who cares if they do 3 trips a day, it's not like they won't need to stop and unload on each trip. Beds-in-cabs is really only a thing for long haul truckers. There are tons of vehicles used for trips of the length that the Tesla Semi is for that don't have beds, and nobody would expect they would.

> There are tons of vehicles used for trips of the length that the Tesla Semi is for that don't have beds, and nobody would expect they would.

Citation needed.

The driver sleeps in the truck in neither of those scenarios. The driver drives back and forth from the port until his shift is over, then another driver takes over. If the truck breaks down ... you're in the middle of Los Angeles. Someone from the company picks you up, and you drive another truck, or go home.

GP's (very reasonable) thesis is that these are for truck driving as a day-job, in fair-weather locales, which obviates most of the complaints.

Not even, though. GP mentions the NYC metro area. I wouldn't call that a "fair-weather locale" in the winter. All the snow-related complaints seem to apply here.

I mentioned 3 trips a day because you could wake up in Los Angeles, drive deep into the inland empire, drive back to Los Angeles, and then back into the inland empire again. This was the context mentioned by an earlier top-level comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33926883

You are quite right that running into problems in the Los Angeles is only a minor inconvenience. Having worked at both ends of this route, I regret to tell you that the other end is not the most welcoming environment. You probably wouldn't be out there too long if you did break down, but the desert gets pretty chilly at night.

People have day cabs now that they cant sleep in... So what's your point? This is a day cab.

Most of the criticism assumes people will be in these cabs for 8 hours at a time. They won't. This is for very short trips. We are talking 80-100 mi each way. 2-3 hrs in each direction, max. It's not for independent truckers.

Even in this case what advantage it has over existing electric trucks which don’t have these design flaws?

What existing electric trucks?

Here are four examples for you:

Mercedes: https://electrek.co/2022/09/19/mercedes-benz-eactros-longhau...

Scania: https://www.scania.com/group/en/home/products-and-services/t...

Volvo: https://www.volvotrucks.com/en-en/trucks/alternative-fuels/e...

DAF: https://www.daf.com/en/about-daf/sustainability/alternative-...

Are any of these actually for sale yet? I work for a trucking company that says they ”have” alternative energy vehicles, but nothing is shipping yet.

https://twitter.com/TOrynski/status/1600970796159336449

Mercedes, Volvo, Nikola, Renault.

In an ideal environment the operating cost of a Tesla Semi is about 1/3rd (conservative estimate) that of a diesel.

That environment is, again, very specific. But if your routes are short and predictable, you have massive warehouse space for solar, and you can get your average electricity cost as low as Tesla can then it pays off. 1 million miles in a diesel is going to cost well over $1 million dollars (including the price of the cab). With a Tesla Semi that cost is at least half… IF you can get the electricity cost low enough.

There are several other electric semis, the thread lists their manufacturers at the end.

Yes there are: https://www.volvotrucks.com/en-en/trucks/alternative-fuels/e...

What about the 4 examples of other electric semis shared at the end of the original thread?

https://twitter.com/TOrynski/status/1600970796159336449

TFA references several competing electric truck makers such as https://nikolamotor.com/tre-bev

Nikola was convicted of securities fraud last year for faking their electric truck. They finally delivered 48 trucks this year, and then all of them were immediately recalled for safety issues. I think the fact that the author referenced them as viable alternatives is pretty emblematic of how accurate the thread is.

You have to run 3x as many of them, because they move less than 1/3 the freight per run.

Unless you are moving toilet paper or packing peanuts.

This is my issue. You're replying but clearly you are missing that there arent any electric semis to compete with.

The author of the thread also clearly hasn't ridden a tesla semi, so he is just assuming that eg the mirrors can't be cleaned either from the inside nor the outside. Isnt that a bit too bad of a take?

I mean I love to read about his experience, but many of his points of criticism seem hypothetical.

> there arent any electric semis to compete with.

What do you mean? The author of the Twitter thread mentions four electric semi options in the thread.

i see

80-100 miles from Port of Long Beach being 2-3 hours? Have you ever driven on the 110, 405, 105, or 605?

That doesn't seem to be the case at all? The windscreen complaint is about what happens when the vehicle is parked. The baffling "seat is in the middle" decision affects all drivers, both when passing (ever driven in the UK for the first time and tried to pass?) and at toll booths. The muddy floors are worse with short-haul drives, since you're in and out more often. The tablets impact anybody driving at night. The only long-haul thing I really see here is the bed thing.

I don't think Tesla knew all of this. I think they just fucked it up.

The drivers won’t even be in these things soon.

In 2017, he said they all would come with "full self driving", standard, in 2019. You could tell it wouldn't, because his lips were moving.

The main problem with these things is that they can only move 5 tons if they have to go up a hill.

Yes, we know. FSD is coming and there will be a million of them driving autonomously next year.

For what these are designed for its pretty easy.

They'll be banned from driving after the smart cruise control veers into a cyclist.

<flippant> Maybe the designers were worried about UVA/UVB exposure for truckers. </flippant>

see https://www.cbsnews.com/news/trucker-accumulates-skin-damage...

> Most of the criticism assumes people will be in these cabs for 8 hours at a time

Somebody has never driven from Long Beach to the Inland Empire...

The central seating position issues become less relevant for this use case.

> It has the potential to dramatically reduce costs for some routes/corridors.

This alone is extremely relevant.

What on earth are you talking about? What has that got to do with the criticisms in the post? If they were taken into consideration, how would that in any way affect their cost savings?

all the criticism is from the point of view of a european trucker dealing with weather. The only weather those trucks will be dealing with is hot and hotter, and the cab shape and size is normal for US trucks.

That tweet stream is mostly an uninformed nothing burger and this comment comes from someone that HATES Elon Musk.

These sorts of posts always show up anywhere that somebody posts anything remotely critical of a Tesla product. They could make a combination trash compactor-bassinet that randomly switches modes and somebody would come out of the woodwork and post “People don’t realize the value in maximizing functionality in small spaces”

Except the driver (user) is not the buyer.

See also - medical health record systems.

The driver is the buyer for at least half the trucks in the US.

What if it is relevant and all the criticisms are true?

It’s a big world - a company targeting a very specific narrow niche in a specific location sounds like a great strategy for getting started. And it wouldn’t invalidate the euro truck driver insights on what would work for Europe’s logistics reality.

I'm not following, how would it reduce costs over different trucks?

Cost-per-mile is cheaper from electricity than from diesel, and it's expected to have lower maintenance costs too (fewer moving parts, no oil changes, etc)

> Cost-per-mile is cheaper from electricity than from diesel

Depends where.

> and it's expected to have lower maintenance costs too

That's theory. Compare maintenance costs of a Tesla and any hybrid Toyota.

It's been almost four years for me, and I've had to spend exactly $0 in maintenance on my Model 3. We'll see what the future holds, but not bad so far.

It has been 3 years with my Toyota and all I have paid for is new windscreen-wipers (winter ruins them). I don't see how that matters though. What matters are actual numbers from a trusted source: ADAC (German motor organization) says it costs $0,51 per kilometer to drive a Tesla Model 3. My Toyota costs $0,31. Nothing exceptional about the price on Tesla maintenance.

How did you skip oil changes?

My PHEV has a two year oil change interval, I'd imagine a Toyota hybrid does too. So in 3 years of driving, there's one oil change, but they only said they didn't pay for anything other than wipers. First service paid for is a pretty common incentive with a car (may be factory included)

You didn't link your reference, so I don't know how those numbers were calculated. However, they are so large they are clearly not maintenance costs, but probably all in costs. That's apples to oranges (Tesla vs Toyota are two different segments). It's also not the topic of conversation (Tesla maintenance costs).

If its been 3 years you should really get an oil change.

ADAC's measure includes the cost of the vehicle itself so that number is completely inappropriate for the actual operating costs. Also ADAC has been called out as wrong and having biased testing many times: https://insideevs.com/news/456957/bjorn-nyland-charging-loss...

The cost per mile will be radically lower IF (big if) customers can actually achieve the wholesale electric rates that Tesla estimates are possible. Like, dramatically lower. The cost of diesel over 1 million miles is going to be north of $600k easily. At Elon's "guaranteed" 7¢/kwh the cost to run a Tesla Semi over the same mileage is about 1/3rd.

This truck is designed to be an efficient workhorse for short routes with owned fleets.

Electricity cost is much higher in the US and almost 10 times more expensive in Europe.

Also, a diesel engine can easily run millions of miles, I don't believe a battery's efficiency would hold even few hundred thousands. Teslas don't at least and degrade around 10% every 100k miles, with most dying before hitting 400k.

Like everything those calculations seem always based on best case scenarios and ignore that batteries are super expensive and degrade at each cycle.

Hence the big "IF".

Still, some companies will be able to realize the gains. They can invest in solar on site. The people purchasing these often have warehouses with 1,000,000 sq ft of roof space.

My residential retail electricity is 0.098 per kw-h. Midwest prices are generally decent, but the town is buying from ~1 large utility to get that rate, with a few solar panels perhaps lowering costs some of the time. Seems like there is room to do better just going to market, and there is certainly room to do better by buying directly from new solar installed in the next few years.

Diesel Engines are rarely getting more than 6 or 700k without a 30k+ rebuild. You make it like they are all going millions of miles, that's not accurate.

> Elon's "guaranteed" 7¢/kwh

Can somebody say more about this? I'm struggling with finding more info on it.

Further up, folk were talking about this being useful near LA in and in CA ... but the price of electricity is well above that here.

You may be thinking of residential rates which are many times higher

I just checked in the commercial rates are slightly over 7 cents today

It’s on one of the slides in his presentation. In fact, I think it’s been in multiple presentations. May not be the easiest thing to find because I remember it being skipped over and in small print somewhere but he does speak to it.

It's likely being guaranteed because he knows the cost of installing solar and battery banks and he (and his customers) doesn't have to buy directly from local power companies.

> how would it reduce costs

https://youtu.be/BiJ45_hXJe0?t=69

Doesn't that work out to like 2¢ per ton-mile??? Don't confuse yourself by only looking at the numerator. It probably costs close to $100k to refuel a train.

Besides the fact that other electric trucks already exist, I question the roadworthiness of a design that doesn't have any instrumentation directly in front of the driver (like a speedometer...) and that puts the driver several paces and a corner away from a door, which seems like a distinct disadvantage in the event of a crash or a fire.

There is really no difference if the speedometer is in front (actually below) or to the right. In both cases your eyes have to refocus. I tried both. It‘s a non-issue in the Model 3/Y.

Still can’t hand papers out the window, which happens to all trucks (weigh stations aren’t optional, etc).

Still getting mud all over the inside with the door behind the seat. Even if you aren’t sleeping in it, you’re spending time there.

Minor inconvenience. Pepsi doesn't care how you hand papers to someone. FedEx doesn't care if you get mud in the cab, you'll just have to clean it after your shift.

This is the kind of efficiency tool that will be bought by large corporations and forced on drivers.

You still have to look over you shoulder when merging and need the ability to shift your body to see in the mirror or to check where your tire is when backing up.

I get that lots of car drivers merge by faith, but you kill people and potentially spend time in jail in a CMV.

Local deliveries are far more dependant on this than OTR, and even the drivers of front discharge cement trucks with narrow cabs complain about this.

Sucks to have to drive this then.

If Pepsi believes it can cut its transport costs for certain routes by 20% it doesn't care how inconvenienced or annoyed you are.

It doesn't until there are negative externalities, you know, like labor retention rates, that cause those transport costs to go back up.

Tesla might be able to sell some of these to some companies for a while, because brand recognition and Elon stans in purchasing positions. That's not really a good strategy for long term growth, and Tesla can't just will an automotive niche into existence.

This guy genuinely has no clue what labor retention rates are. He thinks an unsafe truck that saves a tiny percentage of money will actually save large corporations cash on their bottom line

The thing you're missing, and most folks in this thread are missing is... there's already a bunch of electric semi's out there available for purchase right now.

Nobody is buying them (by nobody I mean so very few...). If Pepsi really thought electric was the way to go, they would already be doing it.

Tesla's semi is going to be a major flop...

They have already sold a bunch of these. Close to 1000 units now I believe. Pepsi ordered 100 of them.

A pre-order based on a marketing prototype is not a real sale.

Their range is awful that's why. Most of them have ranges with less than half of what the Tesla Semi has.

Pepsi probably bought their delivery slot for the publicity more than the trucks being practical. It isn't like they got the first delivery slot by finding a golden ticket in a chocolate bar.

If it really "sucks", you'd probably see incident rates go up, meaning down time, maintenance costs, legal issues, even impact on the public image. There is a point where bad mood and annoyance of a troubled work force become a serious inconvenience.

TBH, I really wonder if fuel delivery would be a big market eventually. There seems to be a lot of traffic between near-urban terminals and urban gas stations that is very inefficient with diesel semis.

> It's for drivers making the same 80-100 mile or so trip from port to warehouse every day.

Why the range, then? Surely something lower-range (and thus cheaper) would be preferable there.

Trucks tend to have lots of idle time - truckers like their comms and climate control to work while they’re waiting to get loaded, for one.

Also, you might have a local truck used in more than one back to back shift.

It sounds like Tesla has a lot to prove to skeptical truckers, so a big number on range can head off some criticism.

I think what people are saying is that there are a lot of 80-100 mile trips that this can serve, where the criticisms aren’t really a big issue. But more range still means expanded use cases.

It doesn’t have to prove anything to truckers. It’s not for truckers. It’s for large companies that want to reduce their transportation costs. They don’t care about you, the driving experience, how inconvenienced you might be, etc.

In general, companies _do_ care somewhat about worker convenience; poorly designed inconvenient things slow everything down. Particularly with trucking, actually, I'd have thought; I'm not sure how it is in the US, but there's an acute shortage of truckers in much of Europe (particularly post-Brexit), so employers won't necessarily want to annoy them for no good reason.

But why buy a truck that has such a narrow use-case? Economic situations can change a lot over the lifetime of a semi, and not being able to drive longer routes is a notable limitation.

I don’t know. Probably the same reasons people buy small day cabs today.

Many trucks have even more narrow use cases than their range. Some are built specifically for particular types of cargo. Typically these trucks are purchased when the business has a specific need, and I suspect that this truck will only be considered by buyers with that specific need.

Also note that (nearly?) all EU trucks are cab-over-engine because laws in Europe on the overall length of the truck are more strict, so you get more cargo for the same LOA vs a conventional cab. Author of TFA certainly appears to be in Europe.

If that's the use case then Tesla has entered the market late and with an inappropriate solution. You can already buy that local route electric truck from 4 different legit truck companies.

It snows in the NYC metro area, so all the complaints about how the truck is unsuitable for snow are still applicable.

Wait so Tesla knows that it's not possible for the driver to reach out the window to hand over the paperwork necessary to get into and out of a port, or through scales, because... the truck is designed for ports. Ok then.

> It's for drivers making the same 80-100 mile or so trip from port to warehouse every day.

So this truck is bad as a truck...except for the use case where it should have been a train in the first place?

"Drivers sits in the middle. This makes overtaking or looking ahead more difficult. But also makes it impossible to reach out of the window to pass the paperwork or to talk with the guy in the gatehouse when you enter a port or a factory or, say, a tollbooth."

This one seems like the worst one of all these criticisms.

My guess is that they needed to get the drag coefficient down, and did so by first raking the windshield back, then pinching the cab horizontally to get some more gains. That narrowing of the cab then led to the center-seat arrangement?

Bonus being that you don't need to configure a LHD and RHD version of this truck for different markets.

Different markets can’t be addressed with the same truck anyway. Lights are different, mandatory equipment is different, EU trucks are limited cabin-inclusive, US trucks are cabin-exclusive, etc.

Lots and lots of LHD trucks serve the UK making daily cross channel trips, or even just based here full time from Dutch / Eastern European shipping firms.

The UK was until very recently part of the same market, with no reason to change all their truck design rules after Brexit.

The US/Europe scenario is not the same.

LHD/RHD swamp doesn't really matter given that the truck is probably too long for UK.

They would still need to swap out headlights anyways.

It's possible to have that same hardware headlight and control distribution patterns/behavior in software

UK is not the only country to drive on the left of the road, including Australia, India, Indonesia, and Japan.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Left-_and_right-hand_traffic

...and it's unlikely that Tesla truck would be a popular choice in these countries.

It may be too big also for Japan, so maybe fine only for Australia?

Efficiency seemed like the reason for the tilted windshield too.

This truck still appears to have a passenger seat on the right side, though, despite the driver being in the middle? So presumably they'd still have to reconfigure it for RHD.

Worst as in most salient or least?

As in, the most damning, or the least relevant?

Most damning. The driver being able to easily lean out the window to talk to people as it passes tolls, inspection points, hell, weigh stations, is important. That all of these engineers and designers massively overlooked such a vital component of truck driving out of Tesla's own hubris is hilariously embarrassing, IMO.

We can only assume they overlooked it. The opinion of someone who has actually driven a Tesla Semi through a weigh station would be infinitely more relevant than anything you, I or the OP have to say.

And like most things, it's going to be a series of trade-offs. Perhaps they decided that in a big picture analysis, the disadvantages are fewer than the advantages.

If you want industry buy-in, you generally need the industry to be on-board with what you are doing.

Building some product in a dark warehouse, then thrusting it onto the industry is a recipe for rejection and failure.

>The opinion of someone who has actually driven a Tesla Semi through a weigh station would be infinitely more relevant than anything you, I or the OP have to say.

Thank you for quickly dismissing the opinion of someone who has experience driving semi-trucks and currently works adjacent to that industry, interacting with truck drivers on a daily basis.

I see a massive, massive flaw in this design based on my own experience but, "Nope, shut up, you haven't driven the new one, your opinion is invalid". Got it.

I didn't say shut up, and I didn't say your opinion is invalid. Your opinion is valid. Please stop putting words in my mouth. All I'm saying is I don't feel there's a need to come to any conclusions about the design until we've had feedback from people who have actually used the product in the real world. I can't believe anyone would consider this an unreasonable stance.

> The opinion of someone who has actually driven a Tesla Semi through a weigh station would be infinitely more relevant than anything you, I or the OP have to say.

---

> I didn't say shut up, and I didn't say your opinion is invalid. Your opinion is valid.

Yes, that's what I said. Do I seriously need to explain words?

I think you need to reexamine the phrasing you're using, because it's coming off as extremely dismissive of people with significant knowledge of the industry.

> it's coming off as extremely dismissive of people with significant knowledge of the industry.

Nah, it's coming off as dismissive of people who haven't used a product.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pragmatics

All of these factors can have the infrastructure updated to the 21st century. We don't need coins for tolls, or paperwork.

That's hilarious. Okay, go tell every warehouse and factory with a loading dock out there that their systems are out of date and they need to use RFID for everything. And if they don't -- well, we won't send this truck to your facility!

A little bit of humility when it comes to appreciating how sectors of the economy you have zero experience with would go a long way.

Maybe, but trucking is a low-margin industry. If the "fuel" savings are even half as big as Tesla claims, there is going to be a strong incentive to switch to this truck.

Suddenly, the warehouses that refuse to switch are paying more for shipping via ICE truck... that is their choice of course, but I don't want to hear any whining about how unfair it is.

That only really works if Tesla has a monopoly on electric trucks, though. They do not.

It's not that I don't understand the challenge of changing not just infrastructure but the way people do things, but it can be done.

Either climate change is a real problem and society is going to have to fundamentally shift and do lots of little things like change how warehouses and factory loading docks work for increased efficiency. Don't you think these challenges will be solved before we have robo trucks on the roads, which will need the same changes?

I wasn't a trucker, but I did do LTL shipping in addition to FedEx, so I've signed enough manifests to know that having a good excuse to update the industry wouldn't be resisted as much as you think, because the costs would pay for themselves eventually.

Coins and paperwork will not be gone by the time this truck is on the market, just as coins and paperwork aren't the only reasons the seat placement is flawed.

"This design is fine provided that you change all the infrastructure in the world" isn't a _great_ argument, honestly.

> We can only assume they overlooked it.

I don’t think they overlooked it. I think they designed the cab to be as aerodynamic as possible, so as to squeeze out every bit of range they could … and this dictated the driver position.

So ignored key usability requirements for an arbitrary product management goal. :thumbs-up:

I think it’s more that this truck is at the edge of viability as a long haul commercial vehicle. They don’t do things like this, and this truck doesn’t exist.

Then it shouldn’t exist.

If you want an electric semi that doesn’t suck, get a Freightliner eCascadia.

OK - I'm personally not really torn up about it. Either this truck is viable in the market, or it isn't. If it isn't, then it won't do well.

A microphone and a speaker allows customers to talk to bank clerks sitting far behind thick bulletproof glass. They could implement that on a truck.

Handing papers over is harder, but I wonder if making a small window that can be opened would be really hard. The driver would need to stand up, though.

Just ship an Optimus along with the truck so it can walk out with the papers and hand them over. Problem solved, more profits!

The Semi should ship with a trash grabber to hand over papers with. It could even have the microphone built in, just point it at the checkpoint clerk.

inspection points, hell, weigh stations, is important.

FWIW, a lot of US weigh stations are automated now.

I know very little about it, but from what I've observed, it seems that the truck drives through, and the information is transmitted from the truck to the station, and computers handle fuel tax and that sort of thing.

I don't know if this is the future, or how widespread it is, but it's at least a step in the right direction.

How much do you think the total absence of engine noise compensates for the additional distance? Also there could be less attenuation inside the cab if there aren't many soft surfaces to absorb the sound.

The most damning in that they obviously didn't consult any real truck drivers or truck manufacturing companies to figure out why things are the way they are, before setting out to try improving them.

We see this a lot with smart inexperienced developers taking on entire industries with hopes of "disruption" - but lack even the most basic understanding of that industry and it's problems. The hubris necessary to assume everyone in the industry are dumb and just haven't thought about these novel improvements is very high...

The project was originally lead by the former lead of the Cascadia program.

Perhaps you are talking about Feightliner's eCascadia truck? If so, I think we're only making this case stronger. The eCascadia is a traditional semi, but electric and technology improvements here and there. It's not a "throw everything out and start from scratch" thing. Perhaps there's a reason he is the former lead...

The Tesla Semi is a fantasy semi that no one asked for and I suspect no one will buy. There's plenty of electric semi's already available...

I'm not sure that I understand your point here. He was there for the Cascadia program almost 20 years ago. It had plenty of problems on its own, but I don't think there's doubt that he worked with a traditional trucking company. They had plenty of relevant experience on hand.

You should probably be more clear in what specifically you are talking about. Names and links would be helpful...

Regardless, just because he was part of some team at some truck manufacturer doesn't mean he knows what he's doing. The Tesla Semi isn't a "Trucker's Truck" by any stretch of the imagination. It was designed to look cool and get good PR...

I dunno. I get annoyed just having to unbuckle and get out of my seat for parking tickets that are out of reach.

I can't imagine having to do repeatedly do this while maneuvering a big rig around a stockyard. Or did you mean it was one of the most valid criticisms?

Indeed, I wonder if they will be able to address this fast enough because it does seem serious. Same goes for the mirrors that are out of reach of the driver for easy cleaning. It could be a pain point.

I guess the author wanted the pile-on a bit, but the rest feels a bit more like "this isn't how we are currently doing it so it's just wrong", especially when it comes to the shape of the truck. Being aerodynamic seems like a good way to increase the range.

Mirrors this big can have sweepers, like the windshield.

Which can still freeze or gunk up, especially when regularly travelling tens of thousands of kilometres.

> I guess the author wanted the pile-on a bit, but the rest feels a bit more like "this isn't how we are currently doing it so it's just wrong", especially when it comes to the shape of the truck.

I got that impression, too, but in more ways.

1. The interior shots I've seen show blind spot cameras (on the tablets that he doesn't like). That seems like it would address the problem with visibility from the center driver position, and probably goes a long way to addressing the mirror-cleaning issue he mentioned.

2. Why couldn't Tesla just have a little wiper-fluid squirter on each mirror to clean it off remotely? (and do we know they don't already have that?)

3. Tesla already coats their glass roofs with something that blocks lots of IR and UV, but little visible light (and makes the roof of older Teslas a very strange color when viewed from outside). I would assume they are aware of the HVAC issue and apply a similar treatment to the Semi windscreen.

Tesla has been testing these things for like 5 years now, and the Semis have been seen at Pepsi warehouses for about a year. It seems unlikely that Pepsi would take delivery of a truck with such obviously fatal flaws after a year of acceptance tests... so I bet there are mitigations for most or all of the issues identified.

Do these front windows even roll down? Might be a moot point

Its not a problem in the states, but in the EU/country with cyclists, you'll never see the 20/30 of them that are sneaking down the inside of you at a junction.

The displays have downward-facing cameras covering what looks like the blind spots next to the cab

A narrowing tool fixing what bending tool has screwed up...

I understand and partly agree with your sentiment, but "offsetting" technologies/components are all over the place. E.g. combustion engines also need mufflers, catalytic converters, etc.

Look, here in the EU we have plenty cyclists getting killed daily by trucks of the current “benchmark” design. Just the other week https://www.adnkronos.com/e-morto-davide-rebellin-ex-ciclist... so meh, these arguments about dead spots are just pearl clutching. The truck has more cameras than a bank, it’ll probably do better than what we have today

I wonder how this cab design would affect interactions with the police. I did not realize that you enter via a corridor behind the driver seat. US officers do not respond well to people getting out of the vehicle during stops.

True, but I don't think police are as worried about long-haul truckers behaving well, versus someone in a civilian car. The trucker needs to keep their CDL, and they do trucking professionally.

I can assure you from personal experience there are plenty of truckers that don't act that way (they are minority but a sizeable one).

Fair enough, from customer complaints I've probably hired one or two of them for deliveries...

ya maybe we should check with the police before doing anything. Or not.

It's still got windows. Why would someone need to leave the vehicle to interact with police? I must be missing something.

It's almost as if Musk and his "designers" have never seen a weigh/inspection station.

I highly doubt it, but unless it's some crafty scheme to sell the same cabs to both the UK/Australia/Japan and the USA without modification.

Doubt it though, the simplest explanation in this case is probably design ignorance.

> This one seems like the worst one of all these criticisms.

Weird that so many people can't figure out what was meant here.

I know the literal English is ambiguous but it should be obvious what was the intended reading.

Good, we can go paperless and minimize human contact and viral exposure with digital paperwork and authorization systems and intercoms. No need to roll down the windows and let the climate controlled air get dirty and hot/cold.

You do realize that there are literally thousands of weigh stations in the US that would need to be upgraded? They're run individually by the states, who will have minimal incentive to cooperate.

I'd say one of the worst things about this truck is you cant bail out of the thing as the door is behind the seat. Ever see that video where the tow truck driver bails out after the truck he is towing slides off the icy road and down a steep hill and takes the tow truck with it? You don't have time to walk around the seat.

The driver sitting in the middle makes it clear no on at Tesla ever drove a truck. I have and the driver sitting in the middle does will not help with visibility. You want to be able to stick your head out and look right down the side of the truck. This is important as you cant see everything from the mirrors and in addition they can be broken, missing, iced up, fogged, etc. Same with cameras in case you thought they are solutions.

Ye. Looking around the corner when cornering is the main problem with centre seat. Not opening gates with a keypad.

It's because in the future, you won't talk to anyone, it will be Teslsa botz doing everything! Duh?

> "Drivers sits in the middle. This makes overtaking or looking ahead more difficult.

> This one seems like the worst one of all these criticisms.

Seems like it would be a feature if the driver couldn't see over cars and trucks. Maybe they would actually keep to a safer distance.

I love how many comments here are, "I have no domain expertise, but these seem like nitpicks".

If a user provides feedback like this, listen. Getting this sort of detail from a user about design decisions is invaluable. They know the ergonomic setup they need, what works and doesn't, and they will have insights a non domain expert simply can't.

A truck driver who isn't the intended audience for the vehicle and doesn't understand the engineering decisions that went into the product. For every con he lists there's a con to the opposite approach. There isn't clear cut right and wrong here. It's just different use cases.

^ case in point.

Who is the intended audience if not a truck driver?

The company that buys it.

In times of worker shortages, if your workers hate your equipment, they will simply leave for a competitor who values them more.

I actually think this is a very good analysis. A lot of Tesla vehicles feel like they value form over function.

What really was interesting for me, was the fact that electric trucks from more established players exist already, but haven't really taken off.

Maybe the Musk x-factor will allow Tesla to sell their truck where others have failed.

> A lot of Tesla vehicles feel like they value form over function.

As far as I can tell, that would be all of them. And if rumors are true, Tesla might be about to escalate that to the next level with their bread-and-butter cars. Brave, or stupid, ask in a year.

What rumors are you talking about?

That they're going to put the yoke on the Model 3/Y and remove the gear stalk. Like they did on the Model S.

Oh god. You can’t even turn that wheel all they way around to park, but hey! F1 is cool, and they don’t have a wheel.

Afaik the rumour[0] is a Semi wheel[1], not a Model S wheel.

Would be surprised to see the yoke on TM3/Y, since the only purposes of that thing are to make TMS/X "cooler" and to make it easier to see the the display which TM3/Y lack.

[0] - https://www.notateslaapp.com/news/1084/tesla-s-2023-model-3-...

[1] - https://www.teslarati.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/08/tesla-s...

The 3 is the most functional car I've ever had. It's stripped away all of the repetitive and unnecessary stuff I had to do when I'd sit down in a car. Yes, it's made accessing buttons more difficult, but those are (personally) all buttons for things that I don't need to touch while I'm driving.

That said, I'm not sure I'd buy it again due to (effectively) political bullshit. And the choices for this semi do look like they're the opposite end of usability compared to the 3/Y.

Depends on hat you consider "function". All Tesla vehicles are very aerodynamic. That means of course a bit less "practical" body shapes. Like lower headroom towards the back. So the question is, do you define functional as the most easy to use design, or the most efficient design? Efficiency does mean higher range, which is important for electrical vehicles.

Has nothing to do with the body shape. 2 simple examples:

1. I don't think I've heard anyone (who doesn't work at Tesla) ever say anything positive about the driving yoke.

2. Using touch screens for everything. Obviously touchscreens have the benefit of allowing the UI to be reconfigurable, but other companies have done a much better job of having important physical buttons/controls where it makes sense.

I haven't read many people who actually have a car with the yolk have anything negative to say about it. Most of the comments I've seen are "yeah it was weird to get used to, now I like it" with a couple "I returned the car".

Agreed it could use a few physical buttons (but not many, voice control + the steering wheel controls are the majority of my usage). They also really need a new lead UI designer.

Yoke steering wheel fundamentally interferes with skid recovery.

a few moments in a skid monster or on a skid pad will show you why hand over hand is the only way to maintain control.

It is the same reason steering wheel knobs are a bad idea unless you have physical requirements that require one.

The yoke steering wheel is only a few lawsuits away from being a historical novelty.

I watched the yoke thing pretty closely. The positives that I've heard all center around the turn signals. Apparently a lot of people get used to them and actually like the touch buttons! A surprising number prefer them! TBH, this kind of shocked me, but watching them use it makes it make sense.

The horn button gets universally negative reviews. The yoke shape itself is more mixed, but I don't think I've run into anyone who'd prefer it over a round one. It more mixed between "I hate it" and "its ok". :)

I think its safe to say that the downvoters have never used one, lol.

I've driven a friends Plaid with a yoke, I was surprised that it felt more like a yoke on top of regular steering column rather than a yoke from a kart or something that had progressive steering. Having to do hand over hand in order to turn tightly was very odd to use.

In the context of the discussion, I considered "function" to be referring to the body shape. The points you name are a different discussion. But most Teslas don't have a yoke. That is so far limited to the Model S.

The other electric semis have half the range.

https://twitter.com/TheEVuniverse/status/1599487909156880384

Due to battery size, or aero?

The tweet you're replying to has battery sizes.

I imagine it's primarily driven by battery size.

From that link, it looks like the answer is yes. It’s both.

I mean, a lot of car buyers value form over function

But likely 0 out of 1000 that buy semis.

For the life of me, I can't fathom the EV obsession with touchscreens.

Why?! I can understand one touchscreen for complex functions, but at least retain buttons for core functions. No one wants to tap five different screens to control the AC direction or wiper blades.

maybe one reason is that it's far cheaper to do touchscreens than a bunch of individual parts and circuit boards? And EVs are already pretty expensive and need to be competitive, so maybe they try to cut costs where they can.

Add to that, I'm sure some market research is telling them either touch screens are popular, or that it's not a deal breaker for most people

Hard to buy the cheaper argument when the cheapest cars in the world already have buttons.

Harder to turns vehicles as a SaaS product with physical override features

It's not a good reason, but it cuts down on part count and assembly time (and complexity).

Also let's you change the UI at any time after shipping the product. Basically everything Steve said in the original iPhone keynote applies.

Of course there are significant drawbacks as well.

Except I don't want my car changing its UI. Ever.

I dislike it enough when Microsoft or Apple slip in a UI update with a feature update. For something like a car the driving needs to be instinctual so I can spend my attention on the other vehicles. Changing the UI gets in the way of that instinct.

Then don't buy cars with touchscreens. Some (most) people do want new features added to their devices.

I'm not sure that being in any presumed majority group of humans is something I'd want to be smug about.

That sounds rather misanthropic.

I don't want touchscreens in a car. I don't want my UI to change. That doesn't change the fact that many people do. Companies build for what customers want, not what engineers want. And even then, many (maybe even most) engineers would align with the average customer.

Except touchscreens are a clear danger to the driver due to the attention they pull away from the road.

Controls for the driver need to be physical, full stop.

There's more than just driver preference at play here; there's physical usability and its impact on safety, and that should override expectations people have with tablets.

We're flying around with 2 ton missiles, it's best we treat them with the appropriate respect.

For what it's worth, you can also use voice control.

Or you can put the Tesla on autopilot for the few seconds while fiddling with the touch screen, which (to me) feels much more safer than e.g. messing with a physical radio in a car without such assistence features.

(I'm not arguing with you, in fact I mostly agree with you.)

> Except touchscreens are a clear danger to the driver due to the attention they pull away from the road.

Are there studies proving this?

https://www.wardsauto.com/industry/distraction-study-calls-o...

https://www.thestar.com/autos/2022/05/28/touchscreens-are-co...

"Of the 30 different vehicles tested from 18 different brands, not a single vehicle from the study produced a low level of demand for the driver’s attention. Seven vehicles tested produced moderate demand, while 23 generated a high or very high demand. In fact, the study found drivers distracted, with their eyes completely off the road for as long as 40 seconds at certain times.

The concentration of critical functions being housed within a centre touchscreen becomes even more problematic given the lack of any feedback they offer, forcing drivers to look at the screen to confirm activation. Industry research has shown that it’s significantly easier to locate a physical control than hunting through sub-menus, as tactile or haptic feedback lets drivers develop muscle memory for key controls."

And it's an editorial but I fully agree with its conclusions:

https://www.thedrive.com/tech/39304/why-im-done-pretending-t...

I'm a fan of Mazda's use of a dial for control when the vehicle is moving. Touchscreens are stupid if the driver has to use them.

I understand that part - but why have touchscreens for core functionalities that won't change?

Like switching the AC on/off. You can hide away all the complex thermostat settings in the touchscreen but at least give me a physical AC button.

Saw the new Rivian and it has touchscreen controls for moving the AC vents around! What could ever change in the near future that moving the AC vents needs a feature upgrade?

>touchscreen controls for moving the AC vents around

Tesla has the same and it has changed the UI for AC operation in the past. To be clear, I'm not convincing people that it is a good thing and I understand the frustration. But I personally like how the car changes, the same way I like how iOS changes.

It isn't just EVs, it is all new cars.

> A lot of Tesla vehicles feel like they value form over function.

I generally find Teslas to be pretty unattractive from the form perspective. Body-wise, the Model 3 looks too "tall" to me from the back. The interior doesn't look spartan to me, it looks empty in a cheap sort of way. For the models where the touchscreen is on a mount rather than embedded in the dash, it looks bolted-on rather than designed.

Sure, these things are subjective, but I don't really think Teslas look all that nice, inside or out. My feeling is that much of the drooling over Tesla aesthetics is Musk's version of the Jobs Realty Distortion Field. Sure, early Tesla models had body designs way better than any other EV out there, but other manufacturers are catching up, and IMO the Model 3 is a step back, aesthetics-wise, from the Model S.

The model 3 is designed to be cheap. It's designed to be the first "luxury" car that someone would buy, before they understand what a real car interior for a $40,000+ car is like.

My expectation is that Teslas real play with the Semi is a long term plan for self driving trucks.

It seems to me that "backhaul" routs are the most likely to benefit from self driving, either with a person on board or not. Use a self driving truck, where you aren't paying a driver by the hour. It doesn't need to overtake, can drive at the most economical speed. It can stick to very well controlled and mapped routes. Restrict them to certain lanes on the road. Place depots at the exit/entry points to the backhaul where the cab is swapped out for one with a driver.

They may claim this is "designed around the driver", but the reality is it's designed around (eventually) making the driver redundant.

Why design a cab to be optimised to the driver when you plan to remove them. No, you design around efficiency, that's what they have done here.

That's not to say I believe that Tesla will achieve that, or that this can is well designed. I think it will be companies with a long history in the industry, understanding of their local markets, that will do this.

> It seems to me that "backhaul" routs are the most likely to benefit from self driving, either with a person on board or not. Use a self driving truck, where you aren't paying a driver by the hour. It doesn't need to overtake, can drive at the most economical speed. It can stick to very well controlled and mapped routes. Restrict them to certain lanes on the road. Place depots at the exit/entry points to the backhaul where the cab is swapped out for one with a driver.

Stage one of that is probably "Convoy Mode" as they call it.

> “Convoy Mode,” which optimizes efficiency while allowing several uncrewed trucks to follow a lead, crewed vehicle.

https://techcrunch.com/2017/11/16/tesla-semi-has-the-technic...

NOTE: not talking about feasibility one way or the other, just mentioning that they have claimed similar goals in the past.

My expectation is that Teslas real play with the Semi is a long term plan for self driving trucks.

Then Tesla has a lot of catching up to do.

Other companies have been running driverless big rigs between Dallas, Houston, and San Antonio for at least two years.

I was about to say driving at the most economical speed is a non-starter, as truck drivers in the current regime feel pressured to complete their trips faster. But of course a driverless truck doesn't need to stop to sleep, just to charge, so it can probably drive slower and still complete trips in a shorter overall time.

Product manager here (nothing to do with transportation). It seems like the Tweet thread and some comments here are complaining about the design tradeoffs without considering the use case.

From what I see from comments in this thread, these trucks are meant for pretty specific short haul use cases, with consistent routes and perhaps the origin and destination points being owned by the same company as the truck (eg Pepsi, FedEx)

So for example, if this truck carries packages between two FedEx facilities in the NYC area, its chances of encountering a cash-only toll booth are zero, and the company can use electronic records systems that obviate the need to present paperwork (in fact, I bet FedEx does this already anyway.)

Likewise I believe many if not all weigh stations in this area are electronic as well.

So it may seem superficially that Tesla traded off one thing (driver comfort, by forcing them to get out of the cab more often) for another (energy efficiency due to aerodynamic design) but in reality it maybe that in these use cases, the driver won't be getting out of the cab anyway for reasons above, so it's basically "free mileage."

I can make similar guesses as to why some of the other complaints don't actually hurt anything, or maybe are worth it. Eg: let's say there are 3 times a year the driver has to get out of the cab to clean the mirrors. Maybe doing that 3x a year is well worth the increased energy efficiency of every single mile this truck drives in it's life.

This is the second comment on this thread that I've seen make this argument. It doesn't hold up. Very few of the complaints in this article have anything to do with long-haul drives. The center console seat is a baffling decision, and toll booths --- which happen on short-haul drives! --- are just one of the complaints.

I literally talked about the toll booth case in my post. I don't remember the last time I paid cash toll personally, and I used the specific example of the NYC region where they don't exist.

If you are going to operate the truck in a region with tons of cash toll booths then probably this one isn't for you.

Again: not the only complaint about the center console!

It's the one you brought up, so I responded to it :)

The two major complains about the center position that I recall from the Tweets are having to get out at toll booths and to present paperwork, and the inability to reach the mirrors to clean them. I address both in my post.

I don't recall the other complaints but even assuming they are legitimate minuses, at some point they would be legit tradeoffs vs fuel economy right?

The very first complaint about the center console is neither of those things (and the mirrors are actually about the shape of the cab, not the position of the seat; that makes sense, because the standard position of a driver's seat doesn't make it easy to clean the passengers-side mirror.)

I actually went back to re-read. I see the first complaint is about looking ahead / overtaking. Fair enough, I don't know the thought there.

Center seating is a better option for 99.99% of the time spent in the truck. And the vast majority (nearly all) of toll booths have toll tags. It's baffling that people think the 99.99% of a product's use should be dictated by the 30 seconds of paper handling that occurs a few times a day.

This is a funny argument. I spend less than a fraction of 1% of the time I wear a ski jacket operating the zipper, but if I had a jacket with a fussy zipper that required special attention to operate, I'd absolutely replace the jacket. Or never buy it.

I haven't been through a cash toll booth in the US in 25+ years.

Everything is transponder-based now, especially if you're a commercial truck

Note that the author of this thread is comparing to European-style trucks. I am not a trucker so I would be interested to hear whether American-style trucks have similar flaws, or whether these are specific to the Tesla Semi.

This sounds very much like a "designed in California" problem. Who would have thought about mud, frosted mirrors, border crossings…

Maybe 'designed in the Bay Area'. If you take a look at a map you'll notice that California has significant mountain ranges and shares a border with Mexico.

California is not all sunshine and beaches. They have been driving them over a mountain pass in the Sierra-Nevada between Reno and Fremont for years now. They are willfully ignoring problems, not unaware of them.

I work adjacent to truck drivers in the US and can vouch for a lot of these concerns, especially the placement of the driver in the center. Being able to easily reach out of the window easily is vital to that job.

> I work adjacent to truck drivers in the US...

Likewise. And you're correct.

The first American electric semi has a traditional layout, driver on the left, normal doors, normal ingress and egress. About the same as the European truck except it is not a cabover design and there is a nose in front of the windshield.

At the smaller end of electric trucks, here's a driver evaluation of the Rivian delivery truck made for Amazon.[1] This looks like it was designed by time and motion study people. It's optimized for a very specific job. Door control and access are all really easy as long as you have the key fob on you. The door to the package area opens and closes automatically, so when the driver is out of the vehicle, nothing is stealable. There are big screens, and they're showing the next few stops the driver is expected to make. If you take your foot off the accelerator, you come to a stop. Parking brake is automatic.

It's boring, but useful. Tesla did not go that route.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3TFz1xqp3us

This mirrors some Facebook comments from my trucker buddy that had a few of the same complaints, although his take was a bit more optimistic (he thinks Tesla will fix the flaws in an updated model soon as he doesn't think this will sell.)

Yeah, its not as if a cab redesign would be difficult if that ends up being an obstacle. TBH, though, I'm guessing it works better in practice than they let on. They've had a few years of testing, for better or worse.

I really think the difference is going to be long-haul vs short delivery trucks.

Also remember the people buying the short-haul delivery trucks ain't the ones drivin' them.

TBH, the Semi was designed with that thought in mind, for better and worse. I'm sure its a very different market from the owner operator.

I can't imagine a single case where this would be practical for an owner operator at the moment, but I'd love to be corrected.

I'm always a little skeptical of long form complaints that mix seemingly important things (papers please) with seemingly trivial preferences (he doesn't like where he'd doff his boots?). Its a day cab, not a sleeper, so that whole section of complaints is fairly irrelevant.

OTOH, he makes some good points about the ergonomics of seat and door placement. But are these really the things that will drive or diminish sales?

Put another way, imagine that you were a truck driver and a day cab would be sufficient. Now imagine one saved a few dozen $$ per day in fuel costs. Would you put up with not taking your shoes off where you want to in exchange for a few dollars?

These are good insights, but the framing seems a bit hyperbolic.

Why not just stick to the older, more convenient design?

The older design isn't as aerodynamic. And that's very important for a battery-powered truck.

We shouldn't switch to battery-powered vehicles until they can replace our current ICE vehicles.

That's short-sighted. It's also possible to create a BEV that might not replace ICE vehicles for all use cases, but one that replaces the ICE vehicle in particular circumstances.

A BEV fits into my lifestyle. So much so that I think owning an ICE vehicle would decrease my quality of life. I don't want to go to a gas station every week. I don't want to have to take my car in for tune-ups every year.

>I don't want to go to a gas station every week.

But... you'd rather charge every time you use it? And what if you run out of energy in the middle of a trip?

>I don't want to have to take my car in for tune-ups every year.

What makes you think that electric cars don't need tune-ups?

> But... you'd rather charge every time you use it? And what if you run out of energy in the middle of a trip?

This is no work. You carefully mount the charger so that it‘s right between your car door and the charge port. When you exit the car it‘s a single movement on the way out of the garage.

As for range, you don‘t run out in the middle of a trip. The car finds a supercharger if it‘s really one of those longer trips.

I have not once ran out of energy in the middle of a trip. You need to be an idiot to pull that feat off. And I've taken road trips from LA to Vancouver once a year. It takes longer than an ICE vehicle, but the ADAS features outweigh the time-cost. I should note that the ADAS features are not exclusive to BEV, they just happen to be better than the ICE competition at the moment.

Anyway, the vast majority of the time, my car charges every single night and I have 80% or 90% battery in the morning.

I never said they don't need tune ups. But in my three years of ownership, all I've had to change were air filters and top up windshield fluid. The brakes are never used. The tires get rotated in my driveway by mobile service. Screw going to the local car mechanic or dealership every year.

So I'll pose the question to you. Maybe the answers lead you to sticking with ICE vehicles, and that's fine. But do you want to go to the gas station every time you run out of "energy"? Do you really want to change the oil, brake pads, fluids, etc.?

Yes. I get out of my car, plug in with the charge door right next to the driver door, then go inside. Longer trips, I use a fast charger. Went on a trip just before Thanksgiving that required 7 stops round trip.

I don’t need to change oil, or spark plugs or engine air filter. Stuff will need to get changed, but maintenance is much reduced.

In many cases they can. With the Tesla Semi they can replace some subset of trucks as well.

Maybe electric trucks are not a good idea yet?

Didn't the guy in the video point out that there are already a few electric European trucks? So we don't even really need to speculate about efficiency, cabover design, and all that, we should be able to find real numbers somewhere. At least pretty soon if not already.

Most of the aerodynamic drag is created by the long trailer, the front matters comparably little.

I'm sure keeping the flow as smooth as possible starts with the shape of the nose. A flat brick of a cab will make the effective cross-sectional area larger.

Airplanes are really long. They still have pointy noses.

That may be, but that's exactly the irritating thing about Tesla. They make great drivetrains, but then anchor them to all these "innovations" that most people don't want. These sound like the truck equivalents of falcon wing doors, yoke steering wheels and touchscreen HVAC controls.

I can't speak from the perspective of a truck driver, but I drove CAT vehicles in the military in-country. We lived in them as well. The reason the boots part is important is because if you're living in a vehicle the dirty parts house a lot of nasty stuff that will get you sick. To offset that, you pull everything out of the truck and clean it. If you have to keep doing this then it adds stressful and exhausting repetitious work to your work life. If you ignore it you get sick. It's easier to pick a truck that matches your needs, and frankly, it's usually the small things that matter in big purchases.

Oh, I get it now. This complaint goes back to the whole sleeper cab problem. Its not a sleeper cab, so differentiating a dirty section from a clean section like that seems less important to me.

I get his point if he doesn't want his dirty boots near his bed in the back, but that's impossible with this setup anyway.

Watch Tesla add a boot washer instead of modifying cab layout dramatically!

My father has been a truck driver for about 30 years, Tesla truck was clearly designed by people knowing nothing about heavy transport stuff. Papers are still a thing, drivers like to have a clean cabin, really, but they don't like to waste time, especially when they have to in and out cabin several times in few minues.

Not to be patronizing but it sounds like you don't have much experience with work boots or jobs that actually need them. If a driver spends their time going between relatively clean locations then yes, it's a relatively trivial complaint. The problem is that's often not the case: If they have to visit remote, heavy industrial, or some types of farm locations their boots will constantly end up caked in mud, random chemicals, or various biological debris. As someone who has dealt with all of the above, I find the complaint about door placement to be every bit as big a deal as having to get out of the seat at guardhouses.

Fair enough. TBH, a lot of it is that I just misunderstood him. I get the concern that this will spread the dirt over a larger area, including some of the space that really should have been usable for storage. It looks like a bad tradeoff in several important ways.

The cab forward design that OP prefers is so much more sensible and practical than the "standard" cab design that's so common in the US.

The Tesla Semi is more aerodynamic than its peers though. I wonder how you can improve the aerodynamics without having a narrow front or sloped windshield.

The cab-forward design is driven by Europe having a max length for trucks that includes the tractor, whereas in the US the max length doesn't include the tractor.

For this reason I don't expect to see the Tesla Semi in Europe soon.

Which means more cabin room, which means more comfort for resting/sleeping/relaxing in addition to driving for folks that literally live in these vehicles for days or weeks at a time.

> For this reason I don't expect to see the Tesla Semi in Europe soon

I'm not expecting to see the Tesla Semi in the US soon either... it's a product in search of a problem.

The most "aerodynamic" shape is a teardrop, with a relatively flat front end, so they could probably do something with that.

The "roll down window" thing is relatively easy to solve if they want to; you either make a seat that can slide to the side or redesign the front end.

I expect a redesign of the cab when the truck isn't selling every single one they can make.

Not to mention skirts and tails on the trailer do more to improve aerodynamics than truck modifications. Still, every bit counts I guess.

And the only time I see those tails unfurled is when it's an owner-operator driving at 55 (they know they're getting paid by the mile and so run as fuel efficient as they can).

> make a seat that can slide to the side

I wonder if that would even be sufficient. The sloped sides mean that even if the driver can sit directly next to the window, there's still a hard limit on how close he can get to whatever he is next to.

A teardrop has a "relatively flat front end" just as every rounded shape has a point where its tangent plane is vertical, even a sphere, the "less flat" shape I can think of! It doesn't mean you can place a vertical windscreen in that point and still claim you're copying a teardrop's shape.

Yeah he seems to not understand the importance of aerodynamics, as demonstrated by his complaint that you need extra power to run the AC because of the sloped windshield. The Tesla Semi will be consuming around 100 kW at cruising speed. Air resistance is the largest single contributor to that consumption. AC is likely to take something like 6 kW even at the highest setting. I'd bet that even in worst case heat the difference in AC consumption between vertical and sloped windshield (1 kW? less?) will be totally swamped by the improved aerodynamics. And then in the winter extra heat capture will be an advantage rather than a disadvantage.

There are some good points in here but there's clearly a strong bias.

> you need extra power to run the AC because of the sloped windshield

My impression was the the complaint about the sloped windshield was primarily about snow; the air conditioning complaint had more to do with the enormous size. It's a big glass greenhouse.

> "The angled windscreen means [...] cab overheating [...] You can solve it with A/C of course. Which will use even more power, shortening your range."

He is explicitly claiming that the angled windshield will increase power consumption and shorten range. I think it's pretty clear that the opposite is true even in the worst case.

A larger but well insulated cab could have a lower A/C energy cost than a smaller but less well insulated cab.

More air volume doesn't dramatically change the energy footprint when a stable temperature is being held for a long period of time. With sufficient insulation, the main consequence will be greater hysteresis, i.e. bringing the cab to temperature might consume more energy.

What you say is true but I interpreted his complaint as being about the increased sunlight heating up the cab, rather than changes to insulation or air volume.

It will increase power consumption if you are using the AC to melt accumulated ice or snow.

Melting 2" of accumulated snow from a 2m^2 area would take ~2 kWh which is roughly 1 mile of range or 0.2% of the battery, if my very approximate calculations are correct. Or, exactly 0 miles of range if you are plugged into a charger at the start of your journey.

But I think the original thread is right that you'll need to manually clean ice and snow off the windshield which, unlike the AC thing, definitely seems like a legitimate complaint against sloped windshields (though I have no personal experience on this point).

Snow is a non-issue, you just open the app before the ride and heat up the cabin.

You have never seen much snow if you think it can be removed by heat from inside the cab! You would need a shovel and a broom or a cab heated up at least hours before the ride. Not everywhere is cali.

Well I live in a country where it snows and have been with a Tesla in the mountains when it snowed. It takes only a little while and the snow easily falls off as soon as it's not freezed to the glass. At most you need to give it a nudge.

Have you tried waiting for the heat from a car to melt snow in a cold place on a regular car with a regular car sized windshield? On a cab like that it'll take hours.

Yes I did and it was quick. Even if it took hours, so what? You can automate it. Still saves more energy than having a non-aero cabin.

I think the issue is, they designed a truck being worried about aerodynamics than anything else. They made it aerodynamic and forgot to ask about how it actually should work in practice.

This seems to be a trend with the latest Telsa future products. They don't seem to be engineered for the actual user, but engineered for marketing to people that wont use them.

The Cybertruck is another example of this.

> They don't seem to be engineered for the actual user, but engineered for marketing to people that wont use them.

The original genius of Tesla's approach is exactly that: maximizing form over function to drive the adoption of electric cars. Maximizing desirability, not utility, has been central. In this way, they are really not so different from other luxury carmakers, who also sacrifice daily utility for form in their cars.

As much as the world needs an electric Ford Taurus or Honda Accord, as Nissan discovered with the Leaf, that approach didn't move people to open their wallets to the same degree.

> The Cybertruck is another example of this.

The Cybertruck is an example of applying the above approach to create a caricature of pickup-truck utility that markets well to the Cybertruck's target demographic: faux-survivalist men with lots of disposable income.

An actual utilitarian EV pickup truck would be something smaller like a Ford Maverick or a Toyota Tacoma with a simpler body that works with lots of standard aftermarket parts. I really hope Ford follows the gargantuan expensive F150 Lighting with something smaller and more sensible.

It would be more useful to have the perspective of someone who actually drives one. When people see a different design it’s easy to come up with lots of ways it’s different from what you’re used to but you can’t really see which problems have been solved in a different way than you might assume.

Plus, it’s a day cab so it’s not surprising there’s no obvious place for a bed.

Also, it’s strange that someone would think it’s a “rich boy’s toy” like rich boys are going to be buying semi trucks for fun.

Elon is the rich boy here.

Yes, I understand. But it does not make sense for this to somehow be a toy for him.

It makes sense if you interpret it as a toy he invented, not a toy for him to drive. Like saying this is just a vanity project to build something Elon likes the idea of, but isn't otherwise serious about fitting into the market it is aimed at.

Seems like a strange vanity project then. The new roadster would be a lot more fun!

Not that strange IMO. This is the same guy that wanted his own boring machine. I don't really have the impression that he's a sports car guy.

Elon Musk's image is built on the prestige of creating products that fit a specific niche. The entire product is the toy, not the individual object.

It makes even less sense if you watched the presentation. This was Jerome Guillen and the co-presenter's (Dan Priestly) toy, if anything.

Musk seemed barely interested, compared to some past presentations.

Plenty of “rich” blue collar people in the Midwest have equipment that is much more expensive/luxurious than would be required for the job.

For example, $100k pickup trucks are not necessary for farmers but still very common.

Yeah but it being more luxurious than required doesn't make it ill-suited for the job.

> For example, $100k pickup trucks are not necessary for farmers but still very common.

That’s because they also serve as a daily driver, so that’s not a good comparison.

A pure overpriced utility would be like a luxury combine.

Plenty of over-specced tractors on farms too.

Actually, a luxury combine would be a good idea. You're spending 12+ hours a day in the thing at harvest time; you should be as comfortable as possible.

Same reason a lot of contractors have such comfy trucks: getting up at 5AM to travel 2-3 hours to the job site means you're in the truck at least 4-6 hours a day.

Noise I hear from my non media back channels is people that need trucks for business hate the new trucks.

Every single thing the author said seems like it would apply to drivers who don’t need sleeper cabins, other than the lack of bed space of course.

I love this thread so much. Every issue he mentions is obvious once pointed out.

This is a great example of something I repeat to myself all the time, particularly because I find myself surrounded by people who don’t: I might be clever and perceptive but I do not know better than the user.

> Tablets are simply not designed for use in moving vehicles. You need a physical button, so you can reach for it even without taking your eyes off the road and feel it.

This is generally an issue. I really don't understand how car manufacturers believe that a touchscreen is a good interface in a car where you often need to look at the road and touch the controls in order to feel at which button or knob you are.

I'd rather have high quality resistive touchscreens where the surface can be touched but a good degree of pressure needs to be applied in order to execute a command. Ideally it would have some sort of vibration feedback when I cross a boundary between buttons.

It‘s fine in practice because most things are automatic or only needed when parked and also because the lane keeping and adaptive cruise control aka Autopilot makes a very brief distraction less of a problem in most situations. There are with two exceptions:

- Opening the glove box. This should be possible by pressing the box, it could visually look the same. Instead it requires drilling into a touchscreen menu.

- Music pause/like/seek. The buttons are too small to easily hit them while driving.

Moving the air vents around being 3 menus deep seems like a no go but some designer still made it.

> Moving the air vents around being 3 menus deep seems like a no go but some designer still made it.

What model is that on?

M3/Y at least you literally just swipe up from the bottom and there's your entire cars hvac controls, including air vents.

Most of these flaws are because Tesla optimized for efficiency/range/tco, and not actual driver comfort. After all, the driver is not the one buying the truck.

They probably figured they wanted that shape for maximum efficiency. However maybe that narrow shape forced them to go with the center driver and all the things the author dislikes.

The logistics of just slapping a couple screens are much simpler than designing and manufacturing an interior with physical buttons.

Also they'll surely plan to drop those mirrors anyway, and use the screens as mirrors (which solves his cleaning complain, cheaper truck, more efficient, etc).

There is really no easier path to high engagement on a tweet than dumping on an Elon venture. Not to discredit his opinion as a truck driver but I’m pretty sure his mind was made up when he saw the brand.

> There is really no easier path to high engagement on a tweet than dumping on an Elon venture.

Twitter EULA update incoming...

I’d be far more interested in hearing thoughts from someone who has actually driven the Semi.

> And if you really want an electric truck, then just get Nikola, that uses Iveco Stralis cab, with the design perfected over half of century

I honestly didnt know they are still shipping. Their numbers are very small (under 50 a quarter) which admittedly makes me feel like the rest of that post has some elements of bias/screed to it. Is it really a logical alternative to buy an EV truck from a bespoke manufacturer known for (criminally proven) fraud?

I thought it had been proven beyond doubt Nikola was a scam, I'm honestly surprised it's still active.

I don't know if the whole company was a scam, but they did do 'a' scam, pretending they had a functioning truck when they didn't by rolling it down a hill.

Lot of these are good points but I think we would really need to have the guy actually test one of the Tesla trucks to know. The center position thing, for example, does sound shitty. But how do we know that the driver could not simply lean to the side temporarily to reach out the window? That seems like it would not be THAT hard.

The tablets though I agree - it is ridiculous that all Tesla vehicles rely on them so heavily. If that tablet breaks you now have a fairly useless vehicle. Just lazy design at this point and dangerous. What they really need is the Saab night mode design - that was super cool!

If the touchscreen breaks you get a replacement. What if the break pedal or anything else breaks? Same issue.

Additionally the car drives fine without the touchscreen. You can test this by rebooting. Sure, the speedometer is missing so it‘s not exactly great, but it would be enough to get to a safe position.

The Teamsters union, who represent a big chunk of the truckers in the US, have lobbied against Tesla's self-driving truck efforts in the past.[^1]

I'll be interested to see if the Teamsters intensify their opposition to Tesla with these now hitting the streets -- even if they're lacking any self-driving abilities.

[1]: https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/11/business/dealbook/teamste...

The unions have had Tesla in this sights for far more reasons for a long time. I’m not sure it will make any difference.

After further reading, I've learned that the membership is much smaller than I had thought.

The Teamsters Freight division, which includes other roles like dockworkers and mechanics, seems to only have 75,000 members.[^1] In 2019, the US Census Bureau reported there were 3.5M truckers.

So you're probably right.

[1]: https://www.teamstersjc42.com/about/trades/ [2]: https://www.census.gov/library/stories/2019/06/america-keeps...

That Colani truck was pretty wild so i had to google it. Here is the man, Luigi Colani, "The modern Leonardo"*

https://www.colani.com/

This thing is wild: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/a5/LuigiCol...

* but did he blush when he wrote this?

This is the problem with Tesla in a nutshell.

The underlying tech is great, they just honestly aren’t great at making vehicles because they insist on throwing out everything about making a vehicle that has been learned over the past century. In a few instance this has led to interesting improvements, but a lot of times it has led to compromised vehicles.

The problem Tesla has is everyone is catching up on the tech and in 5-10 years, with diminished tech advantage, how many people are choosing a Tesla?

10 years is a long time. Many of their choices are to drive costs down and that will give Tesla a competitive advantage.

"Also, even those small tablets are annoying as hell at night, as even if you turn them black, they still tend to glow."

Tablet screens in cars and trucks is a staggering thing to me. Just reeks of design for the sake of impressing people and getting sales, with poor judgement of usability.

Give me a basic physical dial or switch any day. Don't make me look away from the road. Allow me to use muscle memory and get physical feedback.

What a nightmare path this has gone down.

I agree with the complaints it’s not built for/around the driver. It’s built for range. Having a vertical windscreen just isn’t going to be efficient. The window deicing problem is worth solving to get the range of a streamlined front. The next iteration of this vehicle will likely solve many of these complaints (of which some seem poorly designed for no obvious reason) but I doubt it will ever have a vertical windscreen.

I'm guessing that this author is European. Just a guess because a lot of the criticism seem more applicable to Europe, as most of the complaints are ones that I have heard comparing a European cab over engine truck versus an American conventional truck. Also, there tend to be fewer situations where American drivers need to get out, except at rest stops and weigh stations. Weigh stations (from what I understand, not an expert in this field) are automated in the USA, while rest stops require disembarking.

Cab over versus "Standard" almost always come down to the maximum length of a truck being determined with the cab in Europe, and without in the USA. The vastly shorter trip duty length is also a factor - you get in and out much more frequently in Europe.

The Tesla cars have strange things in them too where it seems like they were designed by people who don't use the cars for work.

The prime example being the lack of coat hangers in the car. People who use their car for work often have to carry dry cleaning or uniforms or other hanging items in the car. They eventually made one you can buy as an add on, but it was strange that it didn't have them.

Also the whole tablets thing (also mentioned here). The cars have the same problem -- it's really hard to do anything by touch and they are always glowing at you. This sucks for everyone but especially people who use their car for work and most likely are trying to make a call or do other things they probably shouldn't be doing while driving.

What the designers/engineers want (convenience, ease of use) is often sidelined in favor of making money (keeping mfg costs low, dealing with supply chain issues)

They do technically have coat hangers in back but they pop out.

My Model 3 has coat hanger hooks in it. Maybe only older or specific ones lack them?

My OG 2018 Model 3 and my 2022 X both have coat hangers and I use them daily, so my dress shirt doesn't get wrinkled by my seatbelt.

I am a CDL holder who used to do long haul trucking. I haven't had a chance to get behind the wheel of these vehicles yet, but the only criticism that I feel holds weight here is the one about not being able to get the light levels on the tablets to a non-distracting level during night driving. Hopefully that can be addressed with further development. The door being behind the driver's seat is a bit odd, and I anticipate it causing some confusion during traffic stops, but if these vehicles attain any decent market share, people will get used to it.

This reminds me of something like what was written when various other Tesla models came out with tons of people complaining about the design, only for them to go on to sell extremely well.

The vehicle had been in testing with real drivers for years. This is one of the longest development periods for a new Tesla vehicle ever. I’m much more likely to trust that over someone on Twitter who starts his first comment with a clown emoji and makes large parts of the post about Elon. He won’t buy it but plenty others will.

This is a great example of where the buyer is different from the user, and the design was focused on the buyer.

Tesla focused on reducing operating costs and down time for these trucks with features like stronger, possibly break-proof, windows.

In truck fleets, do the drivers care about these things?

I'm sure some of these issues will be addressed in future versions, but for now, Tesla is focused on selling to fleets that will buy hundreds of trucks for their drivers, not the business where the trucker is the owner.

It is not interesting just to see that the design is bad, but that it is getting worse over time. Model S was relatively normal car. Model X added crazy doors. Model 3 has tablet in the middle and no physical controls and bunch of other stupid decisions (but normal doors). The Semi has all these issues. And the Cybertruck is just entirely plain idiotic as a whole.

It is as if the Tesla designers (or Musk micromanaging them) are getting more and more detached from reality.

The Model 3/Y have many physical controls and is great to drive! The doors on the X are pretty silly though.

The Model 3 today is alright. Would be significantly better with auto presenting door handles, a normal latch for the glovebox, an infrared sensor for rain, and the option to use old school cruise control.

The thought that they might do something silly like a yoke and "automatic" gear selection in the Model 3 is a bit horrifying. That will push away a lot of the regular folks who just want their car to be a car. Hell, I'd like to be able to turn OFF autopilot on my model 3 altogether, because I'd happily give up lane keeping just for the ability to use old-school cruise control.

The door handles don't bug me, but they do confuse people the first few times.

Couldn't care less about the glovebox. I don't keep anything I regularly use in there and I like that it has a PIN for secure storage and is otherwise invisible.

Haven't tried the yoke so who the hell knows.

I would never want to use cruise control instead of Autopilot (though it does have it, sort of). I assume by "old school" you mean not using the Autopilot speed logic?

> Model 3 has tablet in the middle and no physical controls and bunch of other stupid decisions (but normal doors).

Which is a dealbreaker for me as well, but people seem to accept and/or like it. The number of orders speak for themselves and, while I hear a lot of complaints from owners, the tablet is usually not one of them.

The "hallway to a door" is one of the worst mistakes in living space layouts. They really designed the cab to turn heads rather than be functional.

Isn’t the point of the semi that the driver isn’t really necessary? They’re there for compliance until full self driving on interstates doesn’t need them?

Even things like passing paperwork - isn’t the idea that the truck will communicate with another system?

There’s been a lot of “Musk is such an idiot” content recently when his track record clearly shows he’s not. Many mocked the Model S until it was obvious it was a hit.

That very last post with the Colani truck https://twitter.com/TOrynski/status/1600978542891630592 - is too similar to the Simpsons episode where Homer designs a car.

Somewhat related is the new Janus electric truck retrofitting system rolling out now in Australia https://www.januselectric.com.au/

It needs a narrow "nose" for aero and range, which necessitates a center position seat.

Also the author should be aware that Nikola trucks are vaporware, and the video they showed of their truck was just rolling downill.

This seems to assume the Tesla semi should meet every demand from every kind of trucker, but it’s simply not meant to and no truck is perfect for every trip.

The Tesla semi seems geared towards short haul rather than long. It’s range may sound somewhat long, but I suspect many of these will “return to dock” in the same day, charging in the same warehouse yard each day, and if not, within a small network of warehouses. It’s not meant to go interstate and roam far and wide, charge multiple times, then return to home base.

Well, maybe it is. I just don’t have that impression. If Tesla’s not aware of how impractical that would be then the whole world is crazy. It seems like they do know though and these are intended to operate in relatively small networks where conditions are easier to control and anticipate.

Valid points until he brought up Nikola as an example. A terrible example.

Why?

He only brought it up for the cab shape. Is their cab problematic as well?

I think the point is that if you want to showcase the alternatives that work, don't pick the company whose founder has been convicted of fraud.

Works great as long as your warehouses are all downhill from eachother.

Until this month, the primary mode of criticizing the Tesla Semi was demonstrating infeasibility of electric trucks with misunderstood high school physics.

Now, it is just about driver convenience.

What’s next? Upholstery perhaps?

I'm no trucker, but I've been doing design analysis for decades. I love this guy's takedown because when I studied the Tesla Semi cab design I also had about 5 of these damning observation points too.

I hoped they had some Expert in charge at Tesla and simply Knew Better. I suspect instead they fell prey to the trap of min-maxing some set of goal metrics. Where they make design choices to hit their target numbers, no matter what it takes, even if it causes other qualities to go to hell.

Shame on Musk.

Because its the sort of thing his time would have been better focused on, than his (also erratic and bumbling) Twitter takeover. As CEO the buck stops with him.

Sounds like this person has never used a conventional (non cabover) truck and most of his points (minus the tablet) also apply to them?

I do really wonder what the Euro-style Semi will look like. Will it be complete redesign or will the just replace the cabin?

I genuinely had the same thoughts. Just the fact that it was so clearly different showed that Tesla hadn't even talked to actual truckers about it. It's significantly more cramped than a roomy American style cab, and has very little room for the things a trucker might bring with them.

Truckers also occasionally bring family with them on some trips, and this cab makes that kind of thing impossible.

This may be a well informed take (or not), but it's hard to think he doesn't have an axe to grind when the first sentence is an information-free put down ending in a clown emoji. Would love to see a more neutral analysis.

Bike shedding gone wild here. Move along.

That makes an alarming amount of sense

I love this article so much.

"What's the point of these complaints when the driver will be replaced by FSD in one year" - Elon

One hopes that between boondoggles like this, the roadster, cybertruck, yoke, FSD, not to mention Twitter, that people will become more skeptical and realistic instead of swallowing everything Elon says without any critical thought.

These criticisms all miss the point, assuming that this vehicle was designed for drivers to use to ship actual goods instead of investors to view and throw money at.

I suspect this design is quite good at that.

"Build around driver" - Tesla

Loves public transport and hates driving? Not awfully likely in the US. Our public transport is fairly abysmal outside a few large cities.

Did you upgrade OP's words from "uses" to "loves" or did someone edit their comment?

I can't remember now, sorry; I might have upgraded it mentally as a parallel to his use of the word hates. My bad!

Driver in the middle gives better visibility and command and control of the road. I don't understand the negativity here when the guy presumably a truck driver's tweet 1. ends up on top of hacker news! 2. complains about something he hasn't test driven or experienced.

Look at McLaren F1 driver seating position [1] probably the best car ever made in terms of maneuverability, control and command of the road.

I can't stop wondering if these are coordinated attacks on Musk, let's give the truck a chance before piling on. If other Tesla cars are a guide it will be a game changer.

[1] https://www.roadandtrack.com/car-culture/classic-cars/a12019...

You're here dismissing competent design critiques with the claim that this guy doesn't have the right experiences, therefore opinion = null.

Can you describe your experience driving F1 cars in a mixed-traffic highway environment?

McLaren F1 != F1 cars

I don't have experience with that and neither does he with the Semi, that's the point. He hasn't been in that truck, all these armchair theorizing are just that and kinda bizarre as most car reviewers typically drive the car/truck before giving their opinion as no one would take them seriously otherwise. It's doubly bizarre to see this on top of Hackernews.

> Look at McLaren F1 driver seating position [1] probably the best car ever made in terms of maneuverability, control and command of the road.

How often does a F1 driver stop at a mandatory weigh station and need to hand over paperwork for his load?

In case you are unaware, this is actually rather common for truck drivers. All along the highway systems there are mandatory truck stop weigh stations.

I'd say the points he raises are valid, while your comparison to the "f1" is meaningless.

Wait, so stopping at a station and needing to get up and walk over to the window in a very comfortably tall and spacious cabin after sitting possibly for hours is what you're complaining about?

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