The Tesla Semi could be a big deal for electric trucking
Why this matters: a development in AI with implications for how people work, create, and decide.
The Tesla Semi has officially arrived. The company recently released a photo of the first vehicle rolling off its new full-scale production line. This moment has been nearly a decade in the making: The company first announced the Tesla Semi in late 2017. And now we’ve got final battery specs, official prices, and big news about big orders. The Semi is a relatively affordable electric semitruck with pretty impressive performance. It also comes at a moment when Tesla has lost its grip on the global electric vehicle market. Let’s talk about what’s new with the Tesla Semi and why this could be a breakout moment for electric trucking. Medium- and heavy-duty vehicles, like buses and semitrucks, make up a small fraction of vehicles on the road but contribute an outsize fraction of pollution, including both carbon dioxide emissions and other pollutants like nitrogen oxides (NOx) and small particles. Globally, trucks and buses represent about 8% of total vehicles on the road, but they create 35% of carbon dioxide emissions from road transport. Tesla’s latest addition to its vehicle lineup, the Class 8 Semi, could be part of the solution to cleaning up this polluting sector. (I’ll note here that I briefly interned at Tesla in 2016. I don’t have any ties to or financial interest in the company today.) In November 2017, Elon Musk took to the stage at a lavish event in LA to announce the Semi. At that event, Musk promised a truck that could go from zero to 60 miles per hour in five seconds, could achieve a range of 500 miles, and would come with thermonuclear-explosion-proof glass. (Remember the era before the Twitter takeover and DOGE, when this was what Musk was known for? A simpler time.) Soon after the unveiling, major corporations including Walmart put in early orders for Tesla Semis. Deliveries were expected in 2019. That deadline obviously didn’t work out. The date was pushed back several times, and Tesla did start delivering a small number of pilot trucks, beginning in 2