{"id":16623,"date":"2017-11-18T05:05:32","date_gmt":"2017-11-17T18:35:32","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.solarquotes.com.au\/blog\/?p=16623"},"modified":"2024-01-25T07:24:47","modified_gmt":"2024-01-24T21:54:47","slug":"elon-musk-says-teslas-electric-truck-will-beat-diesels-total-cost-may-telling-truth","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.solarquotes.com.au\/blog\/elon-musk-says-teslas-electric-truck-will-beat-diesels-total-cost-may-telling-truth\/","title":{"rendered":"Elon Musk Says Tesla’s Electric Truck Will Beat Diesels On Total Cost – He May Be Telling The Truth"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Elon

Elon Musk with a semi.<\/p><\/div>\n

Elon Musk’s Latest Announcement Is A Big Trucking Deal<\/b><\/p>\n

Elon Musk has revealed Tesla’s impressive looking electric truck in a live streaming event seen around the world.\u00a0 But not by me.\u00a0 Tesla’s live streaming technology was clearly too advanced for my bandwidth to handle.\u00a0 I was only able to see a stuttery version of the final third.\u00a0 Because of this, I have something to say and that is…<\/p>\n

Goddammit Malcolm!\u00a0 Fix the internet like Tony told you to!1<\/a><\/sup>\u00a0 This is getting embarrassing!\u00a0 It’s not like I’m in the middle of nowhere!\u00a0 And no, Adelaide is not in the middle of nowhere!\u00a0 It’s only at its edge!<\/p>\n

Fortunately, I didn’t have to wait too long for electric trucking with Elon to appear on Youtube.<\/p>\n

Now that I’m done complaining, I’ll tell you about the presentation.<\/p>\n

First off, it looks awesome.\u00a0 This was a surprise because Tesla is well known for its incredibly ugly products.<\/p>\n

\"Ugly

Avert your eyes or risk being turned to stone by this cavalcade of ugly!!!<\/p><\/div>\n

The driver sits in a central position like on a lawn mower, a zamboni<\/a>, or a horse.\u00a0 (Unless the horse is drunk and you need to compensate.)\u00a0 I like this a lot because it means Australia won’t need to wait for a version to come out with the steering wheel on the right side.\u00a0 There is room for a single passenger on a folding jump seat to the right and behind the driver.<\/p>\n

Elon said it would outperform any diesel truck on the road and when fully loaded, will go from zero to 60 miles an hour in 20 seconds.\u00a0 This means it can out drag a classic Datsun<\/a>.\u00a0 When it comes to its performance, I have no trouble at all believing what Elon says.\u00a0 This is because electric motors have plenty of torque and diesel trucks can have up to 18 gears to work through while the Tesla truck has zero.\u00a0 You just put your foot down and go.<\/p>\n

Elon says it comes in 480 km and 800 km range versions and they’ll do those distances with a full load in a worse case scenario.\u00a0 And now I’ve stopped believing Elon Musk.\u00a0 That didn’t take long, did it?\u00a0 I’ll go into why I have doubts later.<\/p>\n

We were not told the capacity of its battery, but if you believe the Tesla site where it says it uses less than 1.25 kilowatt-hours per kilometer then a battery that provides 800 kilometers would be around one megawatt-hour in capacity.\u00a0 No mention was made of battery swapping so I am sure that’s not available, but what it will have is MEGACHARGING!!! which Elon says can provide 640 kilometers of range in 30 minutes.\u00a0 That’s a lot of MEGACHARGING!!! and with losses these MEGACHARGERS!!! would have to provide over 1.6 megawatts of electrical power.<\/p>\n

No mention of price was made, but Elon did say its total cost of operation would be 20% less than a diesel truck.\u00a0 Even if you assume that Elon is fibbing 20% and it will only break even, in Australia diesel costs 50% more than in the US, so the economics of electric trucking will be better here.<\/p>\n

\"Tesla<\/p>\n

The truck will apparently go into production in 2019.\u00a0 Hopefully it won’t be plagued with the problems of their Model 3 passenger car which has had a glacially slow roll out and is months behind schedule<\/a>.\u00a0 Apparently they decided to skip the months of testing every manufacturer carries out before before putting a completely new car model into mass production.\u00a0 This decision was very\u00a0courageous<\/a> and did not turn out well for them.\u00a0 But this is Tesla we are talking about, a company that does things at ludicrous speed and I’m sure that in a few month’s time the model 3 will be ready for launch.\u00a0 Half a year after it was.\u00a0 Hopefully things will go more smoothly for their big truck.<\/p>\n

Its Range Does Not Live Up To Promises<\/h2>\n

Six months ago, at a TED Talk, Elon Musk said:<\/p>\n

“So this is a heavy duty, long range, semi truck.\u00a0 So it’s like the highest weight capability, and with long range.\u00a0 So essentially it’s meant to alleviate the heavy duty trucking loads.\u00a0 And this is something people today do not think is possible.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

That’s 32 words and he manages to say it’s long range twice.\u00a0 If you check the video you’ll see he says it’s long range two times within 8 seconds:<\/p>\n