Tesla continues to promise reliability of Semi that few have used
The big question was never really whether Tesla could engineer a machine to push the upper limits of efficiency. It was always whether they could make a lot of them that could consistently stand up to the rigors of trucking and be available when needed.
Priestley noted that many powertrain hardware and software efforts have been made to “ensure the vehicle is not just capable but also predictable and reliable.”
For example, the high-efficiency heat pump system “gives us huge amounts of confidence and reliability.”
Priestly noted the Semi has shown “uptime greater than 95%—this includes both preventative and unscheduled maintenance.”
Apparently, this is across a diverse range of temperatures and topography. Priestley explained that Tesla uses Semis to haul batteries from their Nevada Gigafactory in Sparks to the plant in Fremont, California, a 260-mile trip that stretches over mountains, with variations in climate and weather, on highways, and in cities.
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Through it all, the Semi also averages 1.7 kWh per mile, he said.
At a later discussion, Priestley noted the Semi had been tested at negative-35 degrees F in Alaska and 120 degrees F in Death Valley.
“We really like to push the vehicle to its absolute limit,” Priestley said. “And it sweated, but it did really well.”
A key to the uptime is Tesla’s select group of service technicians and tools developed in-house, along with leveraging the company’s vertical integration and supply network, as well as vast amounts of experience in maintaining and servicing nearly 5 million light-duty EVs for over 15 years.
“We do our own training, and we developed physical as well as virtual information to allow the technicians to do their job effectively and ultimately get the product back into the world earning money as quickly as possible,” Priestley said.
Later on the stage, Priestley offered that, unlike many car dealers, Telsa does not target service as a major profit center for the company.
He said that light-duty dealers try to extract profit from lifetime vehicle service deals on the equipment they sell. But Tesla’s focus, which does not include a traditional dealer network, is “not looking to do everything ourselves on the heavy-duty side,” he said.
Instead, fleets and third-party providers can share the maintenance load. This is already being done at Pepsi, and Priestly noted any shop can do wheels and tires. For proprietary technology, Priestley suggested Tesla could even send mobile maintenance trucks out.
“But if your fleet or your business has a service division that you want to empower and enable, we can figure out what that balance is between what you do versus what Tesla does, so we can scale it effectively and provide you with the right tools, physical or virtual, so you can take out those jobs and do so reliably and successfully,” Priestly told fleets.
Infrastructure and beyond
Ultimately, Tesla intends for the Semi to be a general tool, with potential uses including car hauling and refrigerated transport, as the tractor battery can also power the trailer. Truckload, LTL, and drayage are other duty cycles.
The next step is building out a larger charging network.
“This year, we are investing more than $500 million in new supercharger stations, expanding the network,” Priestley said. The Megachargers will not just be “behind the fence” at private locations such as the Gigafactory and Pepsi, but eventually, at public areas, Priestley likened to retail truck stops.
“We’ve deployed more than 50,000 DC fast chargers worldwide today, and we have really refined the way that we can do this quickly as well as cheaply,” stated Priestley, explaining this was done by driving cost down with prefabricated units, streamlined engineering and construction.
While the current cost for heavy-duty charging is $1,000/kW, if and when Telsa achieves economies of scale, they can slash that to $500/kW.
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