Tesla delivered its first official production vehicle to Pepsi on Thursday during its “Semi Delivery Event” held at Tesla’s Nevada Gigafactory, five years after CEO Elon Musk unveiled his Semi, the electrified tractor trailer. 100 of the vehicles have been ordered by the beverage manufacturer.
The Tesla Semi was first shown off in 2017 and was supposed to cost $150,000 for the 300-mile and $180,000 for the 500-mile versions, respectively. Although Tesla estimates that its vehicles can operate 20 percent more efficiently (two kWh per mile, as Musk revealed on Thursday) and save up to $250,000 over the Semi’s million-mile lifespan, those costs are significantly higher than the $60k that a standard diesel cab costs.
Musk said at the vehicle’s unveiling that each rig would have a massive 1MW battery pack and be “designed like a bullet.” Given that these vehicles are towing up to 80,000 pounds at a time, this reportedly provides a 20-second 0-60 time and a spent-to-80% charge time of just 30 minutes. In addition, the Semis are equipped with Enhanced Autopilot, jackknife-mitigation systems, blind-spot sensors, and fleet management data logging.
Musk stated at the time that deliveries would begin in 2019 just two short years after reservations opened in 2017. Due to production delays and supply chain issues brought on by the COVID-19 pandemic, Tesla had officially pushed that delivery date back to 2021 by April 2020. However, in May of 2020, only two months after that, Musk sent an email to the entire organization that read, “It’s time to go all out and bring the Tesla Semi to volume production.” As can be seen, its limited production has enabled us to enhance numerous design aspects. He confirmed in the same email that Tesla’s Nevada Gigafactory would be the location of production.
The new delivery date has been pushed back again to 2022, this time to July 2021, citing the ongoing global shortage of processors and its own pandemic-limited battery production capacity for the new 4680 style cells.
“We believe we remain on track to build our first Model Y vehicles in Berlin and Austin in 2021,” Musk said during the company’s Q2, 2021 investor call. “The pace of the respective production ramps will be influenced by the successful introduction of many new product and manufacturing technologies, ongoing supply-chain-related challenges and regional permitting.”
“To better focus on these factories, and due to the limited availability of battery cells and global supply chain challenges, we have shifted the launch of the Semi truck program to 2022,” he continued. Beginning in May of this year, Tesla started actively taking reservations again for a $20,000 deposit. “And first deliveries are now,” Musk said on Thursday before welcoming Kirk Tanner, CEO PepsiCo Beverages North America, and Steven Williams, CEO PepsiCo Foods North America, on stage for high fives and handshakes.
