Tesla Is Set to Finally Deliver Its First Electric Semi-Truck Tonight, and You Can Follow Along

Tesla is planning to ship its first all-electric semi-trucks to shopper PepsiCo this night—about three years after the automobile maker first indicated the massive rigs could be obtainable. The firm introduced in a tweet that it’ll stream the supply stay through Twitter at 5 p.m. PT (8 p.m. ET) on Thursday, in a mysterious “event”—seemingly making good on an October promise to get the vans to its first purchasers on Dec. 1.

Elon Musk rolled as much as a Tesla press occasion in an electrical semi-truck all the best way again in 2017. That automobile is/was geared up with Tesla’s autonomous driver help know-how, might go from 0 to 60 mph in 5 seconds, had a 500-mile whole vary, and will get to 400 miles of vary with simply half-hour of charging, in line with Musk’s claims on the time—a few of which he not too long ago repeated in an Oct. 6 tweet. “500 mile range & super fun to drive,” the billionaire not too long ago wrote.

Though the 5 second 0-60 declare appears to have been tempered since. The website for Semi (the automobile’s official mannequin title) says such acceleration takes 20 seconds.

And talking of bunk claims— in 2017, Musk also said “If you order the truck now…you’ll get it in two years.” Immediately following the truck reveal 5 years in the past, pre-orders began rolling in from a minimum of 16 completely different firms. Each would-be purchaser paid Tesla a deposit of between $5,000 and $20,000 per reserved automobile, in line with a report from Electrek. And clearly, Tesla didn’t ship as initially deliberate.

Now, half a decade post-reveal and 3-years late, we’ll presumably lastly learn how these avowed specs maintain up beneath precise use. Tesla started low-level manufacturing of its Semis on the firm’s Nevada Gigafactory about two months ago. And PepsiCo expects to obtain the Tesla vans at this time at two of its vegetation in California, the soda maker beforehand instructed Gizmodo. “We are looking forward to this next step in our PepsiCo Positive journey and will provide more details once we have taken delivery,” the beverage behemoth wrote in an October e-mail.

During Tesla’s final earnings name, CEO Musk mentioned the corporate was planning to fabricate 50,000 semi-trucks for North America by 2024. Though, as we’ve already gone over, the world’s richest individual is not excellent at assembly his personal deadlines. But if all these Tesla Semis do materialize, they’ll be tapping right into a market ripe for electrification. Freight transport is a notoriously polluting and carbon intensive trade—it makes up nearly 10% of all world greenhouse gasoline emissions, by some estimates. 

Companies like Amazon and Walmart have already begun to affect their supply fleets with smaller, EV vans. Even the U.S. Postal Service has been dealing with authorized strain to shift away from gasoline guzzling autos. And Penske and Daimler Truck have been collaborating on their very own electrical 18-wheelers.