Tesla Semi Recalled Already, Parking Brake May Fail
thedrive.com
thedrive.com
Of course, the one I saw was done up in Lays colors so it could just be one of the 5-6 they had already built when it was unveiled.
Making 4k semis a quarter would demand 10% extra batteries for them, which is very feasible, and I'm not taking into account all the batteries they use for Megapacks.
Finally, there's no way they'll be able to make or sell 4k semis any time soon, even if they had infinite batteries. So I wouldn't worry about battery bottlenecks.
As far as economic sense, it could most certainly make a ton of sense compared to diesel for consumers. But sure, Tesla would probably make more margin on cars than on Semi.
But 0 other cars.
> it could most certainly make a ton of sense compared to diesel for consumers
Not in most cases when you factor in reduced cargo load due to the 10,000 pound battery and recharging time. You need megawatt charging to get charging time to less than an hour. You won't be able to charge many at the same time with that much current draw. You might even have to warn the power company that you are going to start charging one.
https://youtu.be/o3dCDNIRM34?t=567
Tesla has been very reluctant to reveal how much the truck can haul but they seem to have accidentally revealed when bragging about how fast the truck can go up hill in the video timestamp I linked to. Tesla said that a truck carrying only 11 jersey barriers on a flat bed weighs 82,000 pounds. This means that the truck is incredibly heavy.
The Megawatt charging is not a huge deal as Tesla already deploys supercharging stations with dozens of 250kW chargers (they’re started to build some with over 100 chargers, so even with shared capacity, you’d be able to charge a dozen Semis at once). With 500 miles range, you can easily hit your 13 hour daily limit with the regulation-mandated rest (while charging) at mid-day or dinner time.
Neglecting the fact that not every electric truck needs to do long-haul. The short haul market alone will be plenty big enough for a while as Tesla and others ramp up.
If a Tesla Semi carrying 11 Jersey barriers on a flatbed weighs 82,000 pounds then their absolutely is a reduced payload. There HAS to be a reduced payload because lithium ion batteries have a MUCH lower energy density by mass than diesel fuel.
> The Megawatt charging is not a huge deal as Tesla already deploys supercharging stations with dozens of 250kW chargers
Absolutely NONE of these can actually charge a Tesla Semi AND 250kW is 1/4 of 1000kW.
There’s nothing particularly difficult about 1MW charging, there are already standards for this. (Tesla is part of the standards body, and they’ll either use the standard themselves or improve and adapt it to their purposes like they did with Chademo…) Tesla Semi prototypes in the past have used multiple 250kW connections. This is not some big gotcha, and honestly thinking there’s something impossible about 1MW just shows ignorance of the state of vehicle electrification. Your concern about grid connection literally is addressed by pointing out existing Tesla supercharging stations provide far greater aggregate power already.
> There’s nothing particularly difficult about 1MW charging
Other than, you know, actually supplying a freaking million watts of electricity. And what if you need to charge ten at once? You really don't seem to grasp just how much electricity that is.
“You really don't seem to grasp just how much electricity that is.” What kind of argument even is this, considering Tesla supplies this much electricity to their charging stations today?
It costs money, but Tesla is pretty good at building these things out affordably, sometimes including on-site buffering of the power using Megapack grid storage and on-site generation of solar.
About one-fifth the price of their competition in building out DC fast charging: https://electrek.co/2022/04/15/tesla-cost-deploy-supercharge... (Although I suspect and hope their competition will catch up here.)
It is truly amazing that Tesla has managed to fuck up what is (and must be) the simplest and most reliable part of a semi truck.
Wanna bet that instead of the thing on the dash being a mechanical valve, it's actually a button that actuates an electronic valve elsewhere, because some idiot Tesla engineer thought it would be smarter?
Wanna bet that instead of the thing on the dash being a mechanical valve, it's actually a button that actuates an electronic valve elsewhere, because some idiot Tesla engineer thought it would be smarter
Replace Tesla with Bendix and that would be closer to the truth. Search "Bendix Intellipark" for some more information. It does replace the mechanical valve with an electronic switch.
(Bendix was a good brand and they made a lot of brake stuff, but my experience with them is decades old.)
https://api.nhtsa.gov/vehicles/bySearch?productDetail=all&da...
So you could iterate through that for all of 2020, then for 2019, then 2018 etc.
Looks like you can get detailed recall information for a specific make/model/year from this API: https://api.nhtsa.gov/recalls/recallsByVehicle?modelYear=202...