- On November 16th, I'll be attending the
Tesla semi truck unveil in Hawthorne, California
at their design studio.
There've been a lot of rumors about it so far
so here are the things that I'm most looking forward to.
The first thing I want to find out is the range.
Now, Reuters reported that it's somewhere
between two and 300 miles, which is about
320 to 480 kilometers of range.
This puts it in the mid to long haul range, just barely.
But I think it would be smarter for Tesla
to stay on the shorter end of this
because in that case they won't have a sleeper cabin.
Which means that it will actually reduce labor costs.
Which would be really great if they want to capture,
which is still a ginormous segment of the trucking industry.
Speaking of labor costs, auto pilot.
Auto pilot is going to be a must for the Tesla semi.
And it seems like a no brainer,
but it might be more difficult than you think.
So first off, this will improve driver safety.
Which is great for all of us drivers,
as well as for the truckers themselves.
And the company's using them to ship stuff.
Now, it's not going to be perfect,
and even the Model S has it's issues.
So I am curious at what level
they'll actually be able to do this.
The next thing is how much power this semi will have.
So, famously Elon said that it would tow
a regular semi truck in a tug of war uphill.
So we'll see, now the test mule
that people had the spy shot of
did look like it had some power behind it.
And I think that this could be really helpful
in kind of proving how efficient and how useful
these electric trucks are going to be.
Now, other manufacturers like Cummins and Daimler
are also releasing these trucks,
so I think we're going to see a big shift
toward electric trucking in the future.
And hopefully Tesla can do what they did
for the consumer space by making it seem
like the best truck out there that happens to be electric.
Instead of the other way around.
Now the next thing is price.
So, the way this is gonna work, I believe
is that if they don't make a compelling argument
on the economics of their truck,
this styling and other tech
isn't really going to go anywhere.
You know, in the consumer space,
you can make a sexy, beautiful, amazing, fast car
and people will buy it regardless of the price.
In the trucking industry, these are just tools
that they use, right, so whether or not it looks cool
kind of doesn't matter.
It's more about how it performs
and if it actually delivers.
And so, in order for that to really add up,
a trucking company will only do it, I believe,
if the numbers make sense, so
whatever the pricing they come out with
is really in my mind going to be the biggest thing
to watch for at the event.
And the last thing I'm hoping to learn about at the event
is what their plans if for full self- driving
or full autonomy for the trucking industry.
So, even in a sedan, in the Model S,
auto pilot isn't perfect.
Where I live, in San Diego, we have
some roads of mixed quality and the result is
it often doesn't work, it often fails.
And in fact, I'm shooting a video about that
in the coming days, so stay tuned for that.
But the point being, it's going to be a ways out
before a truck is going to drive itself without a driver.
Now when they do, they'll be saving upwards of
25 plus percent of the overall cost,
which would be tremendous,
but I'm guessing that's at least
five to seven years out at best.
So, it'd be curious what their plan is
and what the time horizon is for them implementing it.
So that's it guys, I just wanted to share with you
what I'm looking forward to
at this event in the coming week here.
And I hope you stay tuned because
I'm going to have a couple more videos out
and then a first impressions immediately after the event.
And I'll probably do a little bit of
vlogging while I'm there as well.
Thanks for joining me yet again.
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