Posted on 12/02/2022 11:08:05 AM PST by Yo-Yo
It's official: the first electric Tesla Semi has been delivered to PepsiCo and Frito-Lay. Tesla held a delivery event Thursday in Sparks, Nevada, to commemorate the event, complete with a load of snacks carried by one of the Semis. Even though I wasn’t there in person, the show still gave me something to chew on.
During the event, Tesla CEO Elon Musk revealed that the Semi is rated for 500 miles of range with a fully loaded trailer, which meant that the battery pack inside the truck would have to be absolutely ginormous. How big, exactly, is unknown; however, Musk took to Twitter early Friday morning to reveal roughly how efficient the truck is, which helps me make estimations about capacity and weight.
PaulK 🇮🇪 ☘️
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Dec 2, 2022
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Replying to @M3Marcel @WholeMarsBlog and @elonmusk
Well, let’s do some math. Range, 500 miles. Efficiency is 2kWh/mile so let’s estimate around 1000kWh
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Current efficiency is 1.7kWh/mile, but there is a clear path to 1.6, possibly 1.5
5:52 AM · Dec 2, 2022
Based on those efficiency numbers, a bit of napkin math shows just how large the battery pack might be. A rating of 1.7 kilowatt-hours per mile equates to a pack size of around 850 kWh, or around 8.5 times the size of a Tesla Model S Plaid's battery.
Multiple sources claim the 100-kWh battery pack you'll find in a Model S weighs around 1,300 pounds. While it's unclear how much the Tesla Semi weighs without a trailer, the truck's battery pack alone could weigh as much as 11,000 pounds—a figure that can quickly eat into a loaded Class 8 truck's maximum gross weight of 80,000 pounds. For comparison, the GMC Hummer EV weighs 9,000 pounds, and an unladen semi-truck can weigh as much as 25,000 pounds, according to JD Power.
Now, it's important to note that the total weight of the battery pack could vary depending on the type of cells used in production as well as the number of components in a battery pack. Still, a rough weight of 11,000 pounds for the pack alone shows just how heavy battery-powered vehicles can be.
Tesla believes it can further increase the efficiency of the Semi, according to Musk. At 1.6 kWh per mile, the Semi would be able to travel around 530 miles with a full load, and at a potential 1.5 kWh-per-mile rating, that would mean 566 miles on a full charge. It's unclear if the efficiency optimizations would be delivered via an over-the-air update or through future hardware improvements.
PepsiCo's deliveries mark the very first production Semis in the wild. The snack company pre-ordered 100 trucks five years ago when the Semi was first announced in 2017, which unofficially represents around 10 percent of the total number of reservations tracked by the public. Tesla says that it will also be using these Semis to haul freight in its own supply chain, meaning that it expects to produce a number of trucks for its own use in the coming months.
Subtract 3,000 lbs for the elimination of the diesel engine.
They’ll need to have a fire station every 10 miles along the roads these things ride on.
Still 4 tons less cargo they can haul, and unlike diesel, those batteries weigh the same regardless of how full they are.
Another solution absent a problem.
The Federal Railroad Administration has hot bearing detectors along sections of track. The are present to alert a train crew of a bearing burn-off. A lower tech approach uses embedded stink bombs on the bearing that light off when the bearing burns. If you don't detect and stop, the bearing burn off can cause a derailment.
My research project put bearing temperature detection on each bearing adapter and used an 802.11b network with an OLSR mesh network to send a warning to the locomotive engineer. Continuous monitoring instead of fixed locations that often miss the burn off before it causes a derailment. My program evaporated the morning after Obama was inaugurated in January 2009.
I’m betting all range calculations are based on straight and level runs across desert southwest. Put that sucker in the hilly parts of the country and those astronomical range claims will shrink down just like the recent reports of the all electric Ford pick-ups did in real world working conditions.
Subtract 3,000 lbs for the elimination of the diesel engine.
—
and diesel fuel weight?
Not exactly. Battery weight changes based on charge. Try it with a AA or 9V. When it's new, it'll weight more than when it's exhausted. The same goes for these batteries.
Oh, dear. An electric truck that could violate Interstate Highway weight limits.
The roads can prolly take it.
The bridges, however..........
Where will these OTR truckers sleep at night?
Well, looks like they are going to have some comfortable arrangements.
Weight:
Little Boy 9,700lbs
Fat Man 10,300lbs
THAT’S gonna chew up the roads in no time when a few fleets of those hit the pavement. How much road use tax is that gonna cost?
So it’s a 18650 wheeler...
What? Aren’t you concerned about saving our precious Earth?
A typical over the road tractor with a sleeper weighs between 17K and 19K. An older long wheelbase truck like a Peterbilt 389 or a Kenworth W900 might weigh 21K. I've never seen a road truck weigh 25K.
A typical 53 foot dry van trailer weight about 15K.
Soft drink warehouses typically load very heavy 45K loads.
A typical driving day for an over an road trip is 500 to 700 miles.
The Tesla looks like it might only be economically suited for local deliveries. Local deliveries involve the hardest navigation problems, i.e. narrow city roads and tight corners as opposed to open interstate travel.
I'm not seeing this as a smart move for Pepsi. I think they ordered these things sight unseen because they thought it would be cool.
Greta’s cracking the whip.
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