Early last month Tesla CEO Elon Musk said his company would finally kick off deliveries of its oft-delayed all electric Semi. We've heard that claim more than once before, but this time his declaration came with a date – Dec. 1.
We don't know how many Semis Tesla is going to build and deliver this year – hell, Tesla might not even know – but we know where they're going: to PepsiCo. On Tesla's earnings call Oct. 19, Musk said he expects to ramp production to about 50,000 units annually by 2024, which should be enough to put Tesla in the Top 3 for trucking marketshare that year.
I was in Fremont, California, in 2017 when Musk rolled out two prototype Semis. Over the last decade I have been to and sat through scads of new truck announcements. This spectacle was unlike anything I've ever seen before or since; part stunt driving exhibition (Roadster 2 was also unveiled at the same event) and part corporate infomercial (But wait! There's more!).
I started my journalism career in newspapers and covered college football for a while. In the press box at the University of Alabama there used to be a sign that read, "no cheering in the press box." This was pre-Nick Saban and before everyone with a social media channel was considered a "journalist," so there might be more than one sign up there now.
There was some full-on cheering from the press box going on at the Semi debut, and I'm talking "David Lee Roth walking on stage as the intro to Jump begins to play" kind of cheering. I guess that's driven by a changing of the guard in new media and "kids today."
Semi's launch was less about the truck and more about the fanfare. We weren't even allowed inside it. We were, however, able to walk through a cutaway version.
Musk claims his Semi has a range of 500 miles, a calculation that is based on an 82,000-pound gross.
