- Tesla showcased the Semi at the IAA Transport trade show in Germany.
- The Semi fleet, which has roughly 100 units, has covered over 4.6 million miles in less than two years.
- The truck cab is reportedly designed to be easily converted into a sleeper cab.
The Tesla Semi made an appearance at this year’s IAA Transportation trade show in Hannover, Germany this week, and thanks to a presentation from Dan Priestley, the head of the Semi program, we get to learn some interesting new details about the big electric rig.
For starters, the roughly 100 Semis made to date have covered over 4.6 million miles on the roads of the United States in the last two years or so. On average, this means that each one of them covered roughly 46,000 miles, which isn’t anything to write home about in the trucking world, but there is one particular unit that has over 248,000 miles on the clock after a year and a half.
The American EV maker claims in its presentation that the Semi has an energy efficiency of 100 kilowatt-hours per 100 kilometers, which comes out at 1.6 kWh/mile–a 20% improvement over the 2 kWh/mile advertised on the company’s website.
In the video embedded below, Priestly claims that Tesla is seeing 95% uptime with the Semi–including downtime for service and maintenance–and that the electric big rig can replace a diesel Class 8 truck one-for-one, considering it’s capable of traveling 1,000 miles in a day with several high-speed charging sessions.
Another interesting piece of information is that the Semi is ready for the European market. Priestly said that the truck was adapted for European regulation and that it is street legal there. However, Tesla’s rep didn’t say anything about when the Semi would be sold in Europe and only mentioned that the company plans to reach an annual production of 50,000 units in 2026.
The truck cab has storage compartments on its sides that can be opened from the touchscreen inside. There is no front trunk, according to @TheEVuniverse, but the side storage makes up for that. Moreover, the body was reportedly designed to integrate a sleeper cab from the get-to, with a metal structure placed at the rear to keep the panels in place for now.
It’s worth noting that just about every Semi-related goal has been delayed or postponed. It was unveiled as a concept in 2017 and the initial production start was slated for 2019. That didn’t happen, though, and the rigs went on the assembly line in limited quantities at the end of 2022, with the first fleet deliveries going to PepsiCo. Tesla also has several units in its own fleet for testing and development purposes.
