oxplot

Sorry I should have been more specific. I'm referring to economics from the viewpoint of the business operating a fleet. Given almost all business do not hold back from whatever incentive and subsidies are available to them, it's fairly reasonable boundary to confine the comparison to.

> Why not ?

As in, we run out of fossil fuels (or it gets prohibitively expensive) and your truck becomes brick because its internal battery and electric drivetrain is pretty much useless without the ICE part.

Solar, wind and thermal are practically unlimited for duration of the planet's existence.

No obstacles to do the math yourself!

What a disingenuous analogy to make, between Tesla that has delivered time and time again and surpassed expectations, led the market for the past 10 years and continues to outsell all of its century old competitors, with Theranos which burnt investor money and never produced a working machine, ever.

I don't know what your situation is, but here's mine:

Got a Model 3 back in 2020. The service I've had to get done to date has been what's in the user manual: tire rotation, cabin air filter replacement and brake fluid check. That's it! No down time other than the few hours per service visit (for which they paid me equivalent of $50 USD to travel from and to the service center on each visit).

And I've used 90% Superchargers to charge and despite that, saved a lot on gas.

> Yes, but: Tesla omitted crucial information, including the truck's empty weight — an important consideration for measuring its efficiency. A Tesla Semi "fully loaded" with Doritos can go farther than a truck packed with cases of Pepsi. "Not very impressive — moving a cargo of chips (average weight per pack 52 grams) cannot in any way be said to be definitive proof of concept," said Oliver Dixon, senior analyst at consultancy Guidehouse, per Reuters.

Garbage. Tesla published uncut video of its Semi carrying at least 44000lbs worth of concrete blocks 500 miles going up and down 6 degree grade, in traffic and ending up on the same elevation as the starting point, with charge left in the battery. Pack of doritors my ass.

EDIT: oh and thanks for mentioning Reuters — they published news about Musk and Cook fued days after they had settled their conflict.

Not sure what you're implying with this. Specs have remained exactly the same and now, they've actually delivered on the spec they advertised in 2017.

It's all about economics. Whatever's cheaper wins. To that end, Tesla has mentioned in their presentations that a Tesla Semi convoy of only 3 trucks can be cheaper than a train for the same load.

> I always assumed the future of electric trucking would involve little battery trailers that could be quickly swapped out on a rolling basis by fleets of trucks.

Maybe the future, but right now, I suspect the battery energy density is not forgiving enough for the battery to just be a carry load. Increasingly, the battery module is part of the structure of the vehicle and further works as weight to increase traction close to the drivetrain. There is also a lot of nitty-gritty details to do with safety, efficiency and cooling that makes moving the battery away from the Semi itself not a viable option ATM.

Also keep in mind that at least for consumer cars, Tesla did try battery swap stations but nobody seemed to show any interest so they canned it.

Sounds like a case of needing to read up on history of innovation and how you don't get overnight mass adoption. I suggest picking up a book on advent of internal combustion engine and the five decades that followed.

The problem with hybrid vehicles in general is that they still rely on fossil fuels to some extent, so they're not a truly sustainable solution. And they have all the maintenance and reliability baggage of their fully ICE counterparts, something BEVs do away with.

The time and money being spent on developing hybrid technology could be better spent on making fully electric vehicles more affordable and accessible.

EDIT: and keep in mind, trucks are purchased with a long service life in mind (decades)

Intrigued so did a bunch of searches for commercial machines and can't find any mention of "fix it or take it back and pay me for my time" terms anywhere.

Care to share one?

TL;DR they sell solar+battery backed Megachargers to go with the trucks.

Actually, Tesla talked a bit about how a Semi convoy can even beat trains in cost.

Hard to tell, but given Tesla's historic record, demand for their products has only ever increased (discounting the current China situation which most likely has nothing to do with disparity between PR and actual product perf).

First off, it's almost 2023. He didn't "just" call that person a pedophile.

Also, the dude went to court - court found he wasted everyone's time, didn't pay him a cent.

Turns out you can't just charge people for defamation because of angry remark they may make.

> I would want the '1 million miles' warranty to mean 'if the truck stops working and can't be repaired by Tesla within a week

I want this for everything I buy that if out of order, would cost me time or money. My home coffee machine included.

> Why is Elon held to such an impossibly high standard when he makes obviously-speculative projections about what he thinks will happen in the future?

It's because he actually makes these projections while all the other CEOs are tight lipped. Elon is also right on Twitter, loud and center. It takes rational thinking to understand that what he says are speculative projections.

The only thing that matters is the percentage of those failures before the 1mil miles. And that'll be a while.

If Teslas had nearly any concerningly significant number of drivetrain failures, nobody would buy them and they've been around long enough for people to catch up. I did plenty of research before buying mine and I follow Tesla quite closely. Haven't heard any concerns in this regard.

I expect Tesla to only get better for the time being.

Outcomes speak for themselves. Tesla has had their timelines set back years and they're still ahead of everyone else in every category and their products sell like hot cakes. People who actually care about innovation and progress aren't pedantic about slipped timelines, panel gaps or hiccups, ESPECIALLY on projects that are on the cutting edge. If you think investors, most of whom worked their ass off to build their capital, are so gullible, over so many years, then you're not giving them enough credit (unless you think Tesla is misleading investors Theranos style - at which point, I'm off).

As for the whole Apple situation. If all companies tried to do what Apple does all the time, we'd be living in the stone age. Apple is an exception to the rule in that they're perfectionists in their tiny little bubble. Perhaps you didn't catch Apple's abondoned plan to build their own car. Did you hear about Dyson? Making an EV you can actually sell for profit is something even Apple, with all their money and talent, can't do and Tesla does like it's child play. Tesla has has the highest per unit margin of any automaker out there by factors of 3x and more. Apple does not hold a single candle to Tesla.

> Basically none of them are operationally able to go from 15 minute diesel fill ups on any corner to the infrastructure and load planning EVs require. Like they literally don’t have the software or expertise to plan the loads around electric needs without losing money on every load.

I understand you saying this is largely a software problem. Taking this at face value, I trust no other transportation related company but Tesla to deliver the best possible software for route planning (or anything really given they're just as big a software company as are in hardware -- see AI day presentations to get a feel of just how large a software effort they're running) if that is indeed a barrier to companies putting orders in for the Semi. I may even have heard them mention something about that in the presentation.

> These trucks are more expensive, require infrastructure that doesn’t exist, charge slower, and don’t go anywhere near as far as diesel trucks. And no fleets in North America are ready to figure out converting a 2000 mile long haul over the road route into 5 400 mile EV relays.

I see this all or nothing argument when discussing new stuff. Same thing was said about passenger cars and quoted as one of the main reasons EVs would never catch on. It looks like a chicken and egg problem until you look at it less idealistically and more pragmatically. If you watch the presentation (and I hope everyone commenting here did that first), it's most likely that the charging infra is part of the package fleet operators buy. They showed battery+solar backed Megachargers that the fleet operators are likely to be using for the near term. With this in mind, those companies that are currently buying these trucks in high numbers, are also definitely buying the charging infra with it. So with this context in mind, charging infra isn't a problem right now. And just like Superchargers for passenger cars, they will only ever increase in numbers.

Slow charging is only a temporary problem and as evolution of Superchargers has made quote evident to date.

From my understanding of US laws and human biology, no one can drive 2000 miles non-stop without taking multiple breaks in tens of minutes each. In fact, Tesla Semi's range is 500 miles because it's right at the edge of how long a driver can safely drive non-stop and right before they are legally required to take a break, during which time they can charge the truck.

Those whose opinion actually matter have done the math and put orders in to save them cost in the long run.

Of course, if right now, the load capacity or the range isn't applicable to one's business requirements, then Tesla Semi doesn't make sense. However, cost is often the biggest driver in any business. If a business can change things around to fit within the current constraints of the Semi, then they can do a cost-benefit analysis and Tesla Semi may then make economical sense.

While it is theoretically possible to use overhead electric lines to power vehicles on highways, there are a few challenges that would need to be overcome in order to make this a practical solution. For one, the infrastructure required to support such a system would be quite extensive, and would likely be expensive to install and maintain. Furthermore, the system would only be able to provide power to vehicles while they are on the highway, so they would still need some form of on-board power source for use when they are off the road. Overall, while this idea has some potential, there are currently more practical and cost-effective solutions for reducing the weight of vehicles, such as the use of lightweight materials and more efficient batteries.

To add to this, for AC, there is a conversion stage (ie inverter) that needs to convert it to DC to charge the batteries. This unit, at the currents that the Semi requires to be charged in a reasonable amount of time will be wasting too much energy in conversion losses.

Due to its inpracticality, AC charging is unlikely to be an option, but maybe they include it for those exceptional circumstances.

> Tesla is dead as a company.

Oh one of you. Would be great if you spread this as far as you can and get the Tesla share prices to drop so I can buy them cheap. Cheerio ;)

> I wonder if they did some studies to convince themselves that it's a good idea.

They explicitly call out the research they did in collaboration with the industry and the drivers that informed this decision. All in the presentation.

> You’re assuming that range is actually useful.

I'm not assuming that. The entire trucking industry keeps talking about how they won't buy low range stuff. Also, while batteries are still slow to charge, any extra minute spent waiting to charge multiple times on a trip is money lost.

EDIT: instead of speculating, get hold of someone in those companies that put order down for Tesla Semi and ask them why in their right mind they would do that. Then come back and enlighten us with their response.

The best metric I can think of is expected lifetime miles driven over total cost of ownership.

But I don't get why you think it's backwards! You want kwh/mile to be low. Basically, you want to use as little amount of energy stored in your battery to drive a mile. That's what that is.

> Elon's word is worth very little these days

His words are worth fine. Articles and second hand mangled version of what he actually says is worth nothing - I agree.

As far as this topic is concerned, demand for Tesla Semi is enough evidence.