Tesla officially released their semi earlier this month and while some people are really
excited about it a lot of people are skeptical and one of the more prominent Skeptics at least here
on YouTube is a guy called thunderfoot he's made several videos about why he thinks the Tesla semi
is a scam and a failure and given that those videos are getting millions of views there's
clearly an interest in that type of information here's the thing based on my calculations he gets
quite a few things wrong to make Tesla look worse they could be honest mistakes I'm totally open to
that idea but they also could be that he already has a slant that he needs to ride and he needs to
make reality fit into that narrative so we're going to do a reality check on the Tesla semi
do some rough calculations and see if thunderfoot is right in the assumptions he's making it seems
the most controversial part of the Tesla semi isn't its range which is kind of surprising
but it's because they gave us a pretty telling demonstration of the max range which is 500mph
files but when people are skeptical about is the weight the reason that weight matters more for a
semi than for a regular car is that semis have a maximum total weight that's set by the government
at 80 000 pounds EVS get an extra 20 000 to make them more competitive with diesel which means the
most that you can load an electric semi is 82 000 pounds at least here in the US the controversy
here is that if the cab itself or the motors and batteries are housed are super heavy that means
you have less available weight for your cargo and if you can't haul that much cargo that's less
efficient in a move that annoys basically everyone Tesla didn't release the weight of the semi to the
public and as a Tesla fan and Tesla investor I really wish they would have publicly announced
the official weight then we wouldn't have to do all this estimating but they didn't so here we
are the good news is they gave us enough clues that we should be able to calculate it and get
a ballpark number that'll at least be reasonable this is the Tesla Sam I and they told us on stage
this is loaded fully at 82 000 pounds so all we have to do is calculate the weight of those
barriers and that trailer then we should be able to figure out the weight of the cab itself here's
the Tesla skeptic thunderfoot in his estimates at about half a ton a piece means that it's
carrying about five tons of cargo so that that truck's clocking in at 82. that's weighing 82
000 pounds where is your typical flatbed wood haul about 20 tons so his estimate is about five or six
tons of cargo or about 11 to 13 000 pounds if he's right about that estimate it would be absolutely
terrible for Tesla and their semi because that means the semi itself is so heavy that you hardly
have any weight available for the cargo itself which kind of defeats the purpose of hauling Cargo
in the first place here's the thing though I think his calculations are wrong and let's go into why
but before we do I want to talk about the steel demand of the automotive industry and the need
for that to change while driving Vehicles creates loads of carbon emissions creating the steel that
goes into those cards creates a shocking amount of carbon on average around 900 kilograms of Steel is
used to make a single car which creates the same amount of carbon as driving that car nearly 5
000 miles and and that number is significantly worse when you look at semi trucks that's why I've
partnered with the small Swedish Steel company named ssab whose mission is to decarbonize the
steel industry which is one of the largest contributors to global warming and represents
around seven percent of global CO2 emissions just for some reference the amount of CO2 emitted each
year for making steel is nearly as much as all passenger cars combined ssab is aiming to be the
first to offer fossil free steel to the market in 2026 and largely eliminate carbon dioxide
emissions from their own operations around 2030. it's all centered around their soon to be patented
hybrid technology which fundamentally changes the requirements to manufacturing steel they
use hydrogen instead of coking coal in a process called hydrogen-based direct reduction instead
of emitting carbon dioxide like when you burn coal they emit water that can be reused in their
process ssab has gone step farther to help raise awareness about these Innovations by bottling
that water which they're calling pure waste as proof that this technology is effective and to
inspire people to make the change to Fossil free steel but they don't stop at inspiration they're
also focused on sharing information with everyone and if you want to get more information on this
revolutionary company and be a part of reducing Global CO2 emissions check out the link in my
description below alright now back to the video obviously we can see that there are 11 concrete
barriers on the flatbed he estimates that each barrier weighs about a thousand pounds standard
unit half a meter tall two meters long that weighs 500 kilos the thing is concrete barriers come in
all sorts of shapes and sizes there are more common ones but we don't know what the ones
on the semi exactly are even still I think he's wrong in choosing the ones that he did he thinks
that they're two meter or six foot versions but I don't think that's right if we look at the trailer
itself we can see that it can fit four barriers long and still have a few feet on each end plus
maybe a foot in between some of the barriers so first let's see how long the trailer is we
don't know exactly how long but standard trailers are between 48 and 52 feet long and in the video
we can see the Tesla semi passing the regular semi and if we line it up just right it looks
like they're almost exactly the same length or at least pretty close so I'm going to guess that the
trailer is around 50 feet long but let's double check that because this is a really important
point to get right another way we can check that length of the trailer is because we actually know
how long the Tesla semi is according to schematics it's nearly 21 feet long so if we pull up a little
Photoshop magic while we can't see exactly how long the trailer is we can pretty well
guess it's maybe between 48 and 52 feet that's a problem for thunderfoot because his estimates
are very different if those concrete barriers were six feet like thunderfoot is saying then
four of them would be 24 feet long and then add some extra room on the side that would still only
be less than 30 feet based off the estimates we just made that is nowhere near long enough because
the trailer is more like 50 feet so what I think is that those barriers are probably the 10 foot
versions which as you can guess weigh a whole lot more if they are the 10 foot variety that would
mean four barrier stacked lengthwise would be 40 feet then add some extra length on the top and
bottom and maybe a foot or two in between some of the barriers and that seems about right to me the
other size they could possibly be is 12 Footers but that would only fit if the trailer was 52 feet
and even then it seems like a little bit too tight of the fit for me so I don't think they're 12. my
best estimate is that those are 10 foot concrete barriers and those 10 foot barriers weigh about 4
000 pounds a piece which means the 11 on the Tesla semi would weigh somewhere around 44
000 pounds or 20 tons which even thunderfoot admits that 20 tons is a regular semis capacity so
if my calculations are correct or at least close at least they're in the right ballpark that means
the Tesla semi's cargo capacity is at least in the ballpark of a regular semi truck all right so we
know the cargo weight but what about the trailer well if it's a 50-ish foot flatbed trailer the
weight varies but they seem to weigh anywhere from 12 to 14 000 pounds completely empty we'll take
the conservative which would be sort of the worst case scenario for Tesla and say it weighs 12 000
pounds although like I said it could be lighter or heavier so if the concrete blocks are 44 000
pounds and the trailer itself weighs 12 000 pounds and the total load is 82 000 pounds that means the
semi itself weighs around 26 000 pounds that might sound heavy but it's really not that much heavier
than a typical diesel semi which generally weigh between 15 and 25 000 pounds and for some sanity
check X Nicola Motors fully electric Nikola tray weighs 29 500 pounds freightliner's maximum range
e Cascadia fully electric semi has a weight of about 22 000 pounds which is quite a bit lighter
but it only has a range of 230 miles I'm not trying to compare features or range or anything
between these trucks this is just a sanity check to make sure our weight is somewhere in the right
ballpark if you're doing napkin math it is always a good idea to do sanity checks so based on these
rough estimations it looks like the Tesla semi will be a bit heavier than its diesel counterparts
but not significantly heavier and considering it gets an extra 2 000 pounds extra Max load because
it's an EV it should be pretty similar as far as cargo capacity is concerned but here's something
people don't seem to be talking about how often do semis actually haul their maximum allowed
weight well real world data shows that ninety percent of semi trucks weigh in at less than 73
000 pounds with their loads so while everyone is making a huge deal about the semi's maximum
cargo capacity truth is it probably isn't gonna matter very much for the majority of truckers
and companies based on these calculations I don't think Tesla's semi's cabway is going to
be a problem whatsoever but as always I could be wrong let me know if you think I made any mistakes
in these estimates or just if you would have calculated things differently what's frustrating
to me is that thunderfoot's calculations don't seem to be done in good faith or maybe he's
just really not checking his work very carefully but on that note who do you think will be closer
to reality me or thunderfoot let me know in the comment section below if you like this video and
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is down below alright that's going to do it for this video see you on the next one peace [Music]