Tesla Semi: The Accidental Prequel

[00:00:01] Hey everybody, before we start this episode, I do need to let you know that I made a huge mistake. So there's the Tesla Semi event and there's the Tesla Semi rollout. I will explain this all in the next episode, but I accidentally covered the Tesla Semi event which happened in 2023, which was really dumb.

[00:00:28] So I'm going to, I'm uploading it anyway because I think there's value in learning what Tesla was talking about in 2023 versus this rollout. So it's a comparison. But you're going to hear me say things like, I don't think this is anything new. We already knew this because we did because it happened in 2023. So all of my commentary is nonsense. So just so you know, it's all nonsense.

[00:00:56] Uh, yeah, I, I looked, I went to YouTube. I looked, I don't know. I explained it in the next episode. So there's two episodes. There's this one. This is the 2023 episode and the next episodes, the 2026 episode. So if you want to hear what Tesla was doing in 2023 or what they're talking, saying about the semi truck in 2023, and you want to compare that to 2026,

[00:01:20] this is a good episode to listen to. If you just want to go listen to what happened in 2026 yesterday, then go listen to that one. I do think there's value in hearing what they have to say. I also think there's value in just skipping past my parts. So you don't have to listen to me say, I don't know why they're talking about this. I'm pretty sure we already knew it. Yeah, that was, uh, that was, that one's on me, folks. That one's on me. All right, everybody, let's go ahead and get to the episode.

[00:02:12] Hello, everyone, and welcome to Kilowatt, a podcast about electric vehicles, renewable energy, autonomous driving, and much, much more. My name is Bodhi, and I am your host, and today's much, much more is the Tesla Semi Event. We are going to cut out the fluff. I'm only going to put in the good stuff, and that includes, you know, some of, I don't know, there's, there was a lot of banter between Elon and Dan on stage,

[00:02:37] and I was like, eh, we don't really need this for the show. You can go and watch it if you want. Yeah, it's on YouTube, and I'll put a link in the show notes as well. But, uh, yeah, we'll get to the good parts. And honestly, it's not a whole lot different than, uh, we don't, there's not a lot more that we, we learned here, I don't think.

[00:03:01] I, at least I didn't feel like it was groundbreaking, but it is noteworthy and newsworthy. One of the things is Elon is going to take the stage, and he said, you know, we unveiled this truck five years ago. Well, they initially unveiled the truck in 2017. Then there was another event where we thought that, you know, deliveries were going to start sooner, but it was kind of like a pilot program event.

[00:03:24] And now we are officially handing over the Tesla Semi. So, yes. So I would say 2017 is the unveil. Whenever they did the pilot program was in the middle there, and then this is the deliveries. So let's go ahead and get to what Elon has to say. All right. Welcome to Sparks Nevada, a set of the Tesla Gigafactory and our Tesla Semi truck factory as well.

[00:03:54] So, uh, yeah, I can't believe it's been five years. Um, so we, we, we unveiled the Tesla Semi, uh, five years ago. Um, it's been a lot that's happened since then, to say the least. Um, so we were incredibly excited tonight to actually deliver our first production Tesla Semi trucks.

[00:04:16] And it's, it's right next door to the, uh, uh, uh, giga Nevada, uh, our gigafactory here, which produces the, uh, most number of battery cells in North America. Uh, it produces our, uh, drive units, um, and, uh, battery packs. And, uh, yeah. So, uh, I just like to just start off by giving a big hand to the Tesla Gigafactory team and the Tesla Semi truck team.

[00:04:41] All right. So a couple of different things. One, this is, I know I said this in the beginning, but I really want to clarify it. This isn't the entire Tesla Semi event. I am presenting things to you in order. I'm not taking, trying not to take anything out of context. However, there was just a lot of like talking for no reason that didn't progress the event along.

[00:05:16] Much like this show. So I cut that out so that I could do it. But with that, I also cut out the woos. I can't handle the woos. I know Apple events. There's a lot of woos. It's like, it's like, uh, somebody at the company's up there on the stage talking and it's, you know, fact, fact, fact, and then pause and then manufactured woo.

[00:05:40] Woo. And then it goes back into a repetitive state of fact, fact, fact, woo drives me up the wall. Cannot stand it. Anyway. So I cut most of that out. If you notice though, Elon thinks the Tesla team, the Semi truck team, I left that in there. Cause I think that's appropriate. Those are appropriate woos.

[00:05:59] The other woos are not appropriate. Those are lies. Um, they're not lies. I'm sure these people are super excited. They've worked very hard. I just can't, I can see it in the waveform when I'm looking at the, at my, uh, at logic pro when I'm editing, like I can, I know when they're coming up and it, they come up at a fairly regular pace, almost like it was planned.

[00:06:28] Anyway, um, Elon next is going to talk a little bit about the advantages of having a Tesla Semi. And I do think this part is important. So let's listen. So, uh, people might wonder why I build a Semi truck. Um, cause if you look at the actual unit volume, it's, it's small compared to passenger vehicles. So for passenger vehicles, you know, there's on the order of, uh, almost a hundred million that are sold every year.

[00:06:57] And whereas Semi trucks, it's, uh, like four, four or 500,000. Not even yet. It's a couple of hundred thousand classic trucks here. Globally. Yeah. Oh, no, no, no. Sorry. That's us. Yeah. Yeah. So it's, it's, so there's, it, in the, so the U S is called like 15 million passenger vehicles and a couple hundred thousand Semi trucks. So it seems like a small percentage, but, uh, it's actually 20% of us vehicle emissions because you've got a huge vehicle and it's being driven.

[00:07:25] Uh, all the time. So when you factor in the, the number of hours driven and the weight that it's carrying, it's actually, although it's only 1% of vehicle production, it's 20% of vehicle emissions. Uh, and it's over a third of, of all the particulate emissions. So from a sort of health standpoint, particularly in like cities, this is a huge, uh, impact. Like it's gigantic. So, um, that's why we're doing it, you know? So.

[00:07:53] Yeah, this is, this is really core to our mission. And to Elon's point, there's a lot of heavy trucks that are deployed in dense urban areas. And so the communities that are around freeways, a lot of where these trucks are domiciled are going to really benefit, particularly from the particular emissions reductions. And then, you know, just trying to reduce emissions globally. Every truck that we put on the road that replaces a diesel truck is a huge amount of leverage. And so that's, that is why we're doing this and makes a huge difference towards driving us towards our total mission of sustainable energy and transportation.

[00:08:21] Yeah, I think maybe a lot of people don't realize it's actually like, you know, quite unhealthy to be living next to a highway with, with diesel trucks. FYI. So, um, so being able to make them electric is just going to be, uh, just in addition to sort of climate change and, and, uh, global warming matters.

[00:08:43] Um, it's, it's, it's also quiet and it's, it's going to improve the quality of your air and it will actually just fundamentally improve the health of people living near freeways, which is obviously a super big deal. So if anybody's been woken up at a noisy truck delivering in the morning, you know, the quiet will definitely be very welcome. I know I will appreciate that.

[00:09:00] Yeah. All right. So I do think this is super important, honestly, because if I get cancer, right, as a firefighter, and that's just one of the occupational hazards of, of being a firefighter is cancer. One of the most likely places that I would have gotten it from is not necessarily from a fire because those are little cancer, uh, ovens.

[00:09:24] But it's more, not more, there is a high exposure to diesel exhaust because we're standing next to fire trucks. The exhausts are three to four inches and we're checking them out while they're running. Now we've learned over time to turn them off, but you can't as an engineer and you're operating the truck, you're almost always going to be operating near the exhaust.

[00:09:49] Um, you're also going to be inhaling the smoke from the house if it blows onto you. So it, you know, any, in either case, it's all, it's all bad. But, uh, this, this idea of a healthier world, because we cut diesel, uh, exhaust emissions, I think I'm on board with it. All right. So the next part that I skipped, it was basically Elon and Dan and Dan is Dan.

[00:10:18] And, um, Presley, he's the Tesla semi program director. I should have said that. Um, when they're on stage, they're talking about what a beast it is, how fast it is, how efficient it is and how, um, maneuverable it is. But other than throwing out basically what I just told you over about a two minute little spiel, um, nothing of substance was said.

[00:10:45] So I'm just going to go ahead and, and put that out there just to save a little bit of time, but don't worry. There are, they are going to talk about how the truck is actually, you know, what makes it efficient and what makes it powerful and what makes it cool. It is a thousand volt architecture. Uh, that's, that's something that I think we already knew, but they, they mentioned it. All right, let's move on to the next clip. Yeah. So we're obviously leveraging, leveraging a ton of stuff that we've already done.

[00:11:15] So we've got, uh, well, it's not probably 51 billion miles driven. I don't know. Cause more every, every day. Um, so we're, we're, we're using our existing drive units, power electronics, uh, import payment, uh, the, our super efficient, uh, heat pump, uh, HVAC system, uh, and, uh, state of the art inverters.

[00:11:34] So we're able to leverage, uh, the existing, uh, powertrain and, uh, elements that are already made at volume, uh, in order to, uh, achieve extreme efficiency of, of, of, uh, cost and capability. So, yeah. And it also means we get to leverage all the reliability that the active car fleet is doing. So we're accumulating all these miles, getting a ton of demonstrated learnings into the field. And we're going to go and put all these trucks into the world and get a lot of learnings as well.

[00:12:02] But we're coming off of a great launching pad with everything that's done in the rest of our products already. And it's also enabled because, you know, Tesla's got this full vertical integration on the software and the hardware side. So the teams that are working together to put all that together into one package, this is a huge win, you know, for all of our products, but particularly some might. Yeah. I don't really have much to add on this as I agree. I think that it's awesome. Tesla's got great engineers and they build, in my opinion, great products. All right.

[00:12:31] Next up, they're going to talk about the, some of the testing processes and they don't get really in depth, but I thought it was interesting anyway. Lots of hard core testing. So, I mean, one of the things about a commercial truck is that the reliability has to be extremely high. So it's got to be running continuously, can't break down. It's got to handle every kind of weather. Uptime is super important for any kind of semi-truck. So we've, we've tested durability in every kind of weather, every kind of environment.

[00:12:59] Um, I mean, you could, yeah. Yeah. I mean, we, so even just, we've driven Donner. We'll talk a little bit more about that in a moment, but we've been through hot, cold snow, rain. We've been putting this thing through all its paces in the lab, as well as in the real world. The simulation team has been doing an incredible job of being able to scale all of that, you know, in the virtual side. And the other thing is that we're going to take these and we're going to put our money where our mouth is, and we're going to put these on into our own fleet, into our own supply chain.

[00:13:28] And we're going to use this to transport goods between our factories and our suppliers, because we believe in it, not just from a mission perspective and a cost perspective, but because we want to close that feedback loop. We got to get that learning as fast as we can. We want it straight from the drivers. We want it straight from the service techs that are working on it. We're going to take all that data that's coming in and continue to find the product to make it better, just like we do on the car side. Yeah, exactly.

[00:13:51] So to be clear, like these semi-trucks are running 24-7 between Sparks, technically in Sparks, not Reno, but most people will think of it as Reno. Reno Sparks and Tahoe. And yeah, this is technically called the Tahoe-Reno Industrial Complex or TREC. There's an interesting backstory about why it's called that, Barry. Yeah.

[00:14:24] So anyway, Tesla using the trucks continuously day and night between here and Fremont and back again is going to be, is a great test of the vehicle and will give us a great feedback loop for continuing to improve the product. I don't have a lot to add to that, although I think it's interesting. It doesn't surprise me what they're doing. That makes total sense.

[00:14:52] I do want to say, though, if you're not familiar with Donner Pass, Donner Pass connects Reno and, well, basically Sacramento, Nevada and California. But Reno and Sacramento kind of together where you go up a steep grade and then you come down a steep grade. When I lived in Reno, I used to go across that all the time to get to California to go hang out in San Francisco or in, you know, San Mateo County, that kind of thing. In the wintertime, it gets pretty snowy. You got to make sure you have your snow chains.

[00:15:22] So it is a challenge. Like that is no easy thing to pass, whether you're in a passenger car or a semi truck. All right. Let's go ahead and move on to our next clip. We've got a tri-motor powertrain system, and we're using the Kovno-wrapped sleeve.

[00:15:41] So essentially, we're using the plaid Model S, Model X powertrain, but we're actually enabling two of the drive units to actually disconnect so that they're not free-spinning. So the efficiency is actually much greater in crews. Yeah, this is really unique. I mean, we're going with a tri-motor system. One of them is constantly engaged. So that's for maximum efficiency. You're getting on a highway.

[00:16:08] That's doing the bulk of the work, and it's operating at the peak efficiency point of the entire drivetrain. And then the other two units are for torque and acceleration. So when the driver needs it to get their job done, whether that's getting out of a loading dock or it's on the road they need to pass somebody, you're tackling a grade, you have the torque and power to do it. And the cool thing is that these are clutched automatically. So no driver input needed, but it's also seamless. So the highway efficiency unit is cruising along doing its thing.

[00:16:34] And if the driver puts their foot to the floor, the torque unit spin up, clutch engages, and takes over. And it does all of that before we've maxed out the torque on the efficiency unit. So it's completely smooth. There's no turbo lag or jerkiness or anything like that. No driver input needed. It's smooth, both in terms of acceleration and deceleration for regen. It's really cool happening all behind the scenes.

[00:16:56] What I find actually really wild about this is that you can have a truck which is 82,000 pounds. And by the way, the reason we can actually do 82,000 pounds is that there's a 2,000 pound extra that's allowed by law for electric trucks. So you get a little bit of an advantage on the weight side.

[00:17:18] But you can basically pull 82,000 pounds at cruise using – and the only thing that's doing that is a tiny little motor on one axle. Oh, that big. About a football size maybe. Yeah, you can carry it. Yeah. Like, it's like a, you know, Maryland. You can check it in your luggage. Good luck doing that with a diesel engine. And one of those is more powerful than a diesel. Yeah, just that one little guy is more powerful than a regular diesel engine on a semi-truck.

[00:17:47] But it's just – I find it, like, amazing that this enormous thing can be pulled by something that you could carry in your hands. It's like, wow. That's power density. Yep. That is really impressive. And, you know, taking nothing away from that, but it works similarly in a diesel truck, right? Once you get the truck up to speed, it doesn't work that hard to keep the truck moving.

[00:18:13] So in my ladder truck, for instance, getting it from 0 to 15 is painful. 15 to 30, we'll say, is excruciating. But then once it kind of gets up to speed, then everything's fine.

[00:18:28] So what I have to do as an engineer, when we go to fire calls in the ladder truck, which is 48 feet long and weighs 78,000 pounds, what I have to do is when we are routing to the call, I have to be like, I know that if I take this road, this road, and this road, I will come across less stop signs or stop lights, which we have to stop at. Or at least make sure the intersection is clear.

[00:18:54] So we have to slow way down and trying to get that truck back up to speed is painful, especially when you have, if I get out of the barn first and you have an engine and a battalion chief behind me because fire trucks can't pass each other. So they have to just sit behind and suffer through my slowness.

[00:19:16] One of the other things they talk about, and they show a little video, it's better in video than it is in audio, but they show a little video of the truck going up Donner Pass. And as the truck's going up, it shows that it's passing another semi-truck. It's weighed, the weight of the truck and load is 82,000 pounds. And they get an extra 2,000 pounds because it's electric. So I can't remember if he said that or not. So I'm just going to say it here.

[00:19:44] But anyway, it's going upgrade and it is accelerating. It is going, you know, able to go faster. If you've ever driven anything upgrade, once it gets to a certain point, it's kind of hard for it to accelerate. Like it kind of bogs, not bogs down, it just kind of slows down a little bit. But so they make that point, which is a valid point. And the other thing that they make a point on is the, oh man, the regenerative braking.

[00:20:14] So when they get to the other side of the mountain and they're coming down, all of that energy is going to be put back into the battery. So that's great. One of the other things that they talk about is they don't need a jake brake. I don't know many modern trucks that use a jake brake anymore. Our trucks use something called a Telma, which is a, like, it's basically magnets in the transmission. This is all very basic.

[00:20:42] So if you look it up and you're like, that's not what it is, I'm trying to explain it on audio. But it's basically magnets in the transmission and this, it kind of spins backwards and it slows the truck down. And it's still loud when it's slowing down, but it's not as loud as a jake brake, which is the, you know, convoy. Did you hear that? That's what a jake brake sounds like.

[00:21:10] This is a great A podcast, folks. One of the other things about the regenerative braking is they don't actually have to use the actual brakes. So, you know, that's a huge positive. Let's see. One of the other, okay, last thing and then we'll get to the next clip. They did talk about, like, not, the driver not having to, like, hit gears, although a lot of semi-trucks now are automatic.

[00:21:39] So some of them are manual still. But they're talking about, you know, the driver having to hit gears as they come down. Because as you're coming down a grade, if you're using a manual, you're going to be using your gears to slow you down as well as the jake brake. And you really don't want to, as much as possible, use your actual brakes to slow down. With the Tesla Simway, you don't have to do that because it does it for you automatically, which is fantastic.

[00:22:08] I think in a lot of ways that takes a little bit of the cognitive load off drivers. Even for automatic, you know, people who are driving semi-trucks that are automatic, it takes some of that cognitive load off. And because they take some of that cognitive load off, it probably helps the drivers be more alert after, you know, they've been driving for a while. So that's another advantage. All right, let's jump to our next clip.

[00:22:33] We also have excellent traction control because the precision of an electric motor is vastly better than a diesel engine. You know, it's sort of got like the, I'm trying to think of the right analogy here, but it's got the precision of like a laser printer. It's not great. It's like really precise. That's what I'm saying. And the reaction is, so it's like, you don't have to worry about, like traction control is awesome.

[00:23:01] It's got, it's automatically stopping the truck from jackknifing. It's doing all this safety stuff in the background that just isn't possible with regular diesel trucks. It's a step change in technology in so many ways. Yeah. And the tight integration with the software team that we have here really makes that happen because it means that we could take all that, the precision and actually put it to use. You know, it's not some tie-in of some third-party powertrain. No, this is all in-house.

[00:23:31] As we do this really neat, you know, chassis control work at the brake level, the traction control level. We integrate with our total stability control system and make sure that the driver, you know, has a lot of confidence, but also has everything they need to stay on the road. It's going to be, it's a really nice, neat, integrated package overall in terms of, you know, software and control. And it's totally seamless to the driver and it'll be a game changer in terms of safety. I think I've pretty much beat this to death, so I don't have anything to add. Let's move to our next clip. We talked power.

[00:24:01] You want to talk efficiency? Yeah, absolutely. So, you know, some people out there say it can't be done. And I don't know who might say that, but I've heard rumors. And so we just did it. Yeah. And we're going to post the whole video unedited on YouTube.

[00:24:31] Yeah. No jump cuts. Yeah. And this wasn't, you know, some ultra clean, precise test track simulation or something where we, you know, shut down a road. Nope. This is real world. You know, this is over grapevine. This is with traffic. This is true 500 miles. You know, we were loaded just under 82K. You know, we didn't, no special aero treatments. Yeah. Came off the line, shook it down, made it run. That's it. Yeah. There was like no fast moves here. Nope.

[00:24:57] To be clear, it's not like, oh, what tricks did they pull? Were there actually a whole bunch of tricks we could have pulled? Yeah. And didn't. Uh, uh, uh, so, uh, you know, like as Dan said, like no, no special aero treatment. Uh, the, oh, and by the way, we should mention there was no charging. Like we, we charged. Yeah. We didn't stop to charge. Single, single driver. Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Good point. Um, so. Minor. Yeah. Yeah.

[00:25:23] So it's not like 500 miles, like with no load, with special aero and special everything. It's like fully loaded going from the Bay area. We actually had to like go a bit North to get to, you know, actually add to get to 500 miles cause you can't, you know, LA to the Bay area is less than that. Well, we went all the way to San Diego here. So we, we stress out on the Southern end. Okay. So real quick here. The reason why they are making comments like they are is because when they did that middle

[00:25:52] event, so they did the, the unveil in 2017 and whatever the middle event was, whenever that was, who cares? They had a video going from, I think Fremont to LA and there were cuts in it cause it takes time to drive that far. And people were like, well, this video is doctored and Tesla was like, no, it's not. And it probably wasn't. I mean, it was probably cut for time, but it probably wasn't doctored, but who knows?

[00:26:20] But the thing is, is Tesla has been caught doing that before. And because they've been caught doing that before, it's hard to trust when you, when you, when you've done those things. So that's kind of on you. All right. Let's move on to our next clip, which is talking about efficiency. And in this clip, I'm just, I just put just a little bit in here. I didn't put the whole clip. I kind of cut some things together.

[00:26:46] Dan talks a lot about, you know, spending time in the wind tunnel to get the efficiency. And, you know, I didn't think we needed to go over that again. So here's just a little clip, short clip of that piece. So aerodynamic efficiency obviously matters a lot. And you can see it's, it's a shape like a bullet. It's really aerodynamic. And that, that helps a lot. It's, we get less than two kilowatt hours. Two kilowatt hours a mile. Yep. All right.

[00:27:16] So efficiency sounds dialed in. I don't know that that's all that new from what we've known before. Maybe the numbers are a little bit better, but it sounds pretty close. Let's go ahead and move on to our next clip. As I said, it's, it's as easy to drive as a Model 3. So it's like, like with basically no training, you can drive this. Um, you know, you have to think bigger when you're driving it. Uh, but it's not like, uh, it's not hard to drive. It's really easy.

[00:27:42] And we put the center, it put the seat in the center for max visibility, low flow. You can stand up in the cabin. Yeah. And that's actually like a really big deal. I mean, and I mean, you're tall guy, Elon, like you're able to stand up just fine. And, you know, the nice thing is, is that if you're a truck driver and you're out during the day and it's, you know, it's cold, it's snowy, whatever you can get in. And this isn't a sleeper cab. This is a day cab. You can still stand up and you can shed your jacket, put it on the wall, all in the comfort. You can put your coveralls on while in the cab. So if you have to go do a dirty job, you can do that comfortably as opposed to being out in the elements.

[00:28:13] So that's, you know, that level of space is unheard of. And we were able to do that with some pretty innovative packaging. And on top of it, there's plenty of cargo storage, you know, for drivers need to bring any tools, other equipment along. And not to mention, you know, we've got the plugins, the wireless charging, everything they need on the electronic side as well. Being able to stand up and put your, you know, your cold weather clothes on in the nice warm confines of the truck is maximum luxury.

[00:28:40] In my opinion, I have lived in some pretty cold climates. And, you know, when you get out and you're in the snow and you got your car hearts on and you're all snuggled up and you got your hat and your gloves and your boots and they're all muddy and gross, and then you get in your car, you're effectively, you know, maybe you take your coat off, but you keep your bibs on. You keep your boots on typically. Being able to get in the truck and be comfortable for however long you got to drive it. I think that's a big deal. I think that's super cool.

[00:29:11] So next up, we're going to hear about some other cool features of the truck. Yeah. So I've got efficiency in every aspect of the vehicle. I've got one touch suspension dump. So it's very easy to attach to the trailer. It saves time and money. It's the fleet's more efficient. The driver's home sooner. Yeah. I mean, really, we're trying to extend the idea of this efficiency from not just while you're on the road, but into the yard as well. That's before and after, you know, the truck has done its job on the road.

[00:29:38] Because that means that, you know, drivers at the end of the day are spending less time at the yard and they're getting home earlier. It makes their lives easier. You know, we've got a light test that's easy to execute, helps with compliance. There's all these little things that the design team really spent their time, you know, researching. They did ride-alongs. They studied. They did all this work. It was really cool to watch them put it. I mean, I think they even took like a bunch of like the various cups and put them in CAD and you'll see them like put them in various cup holder sizes and places. They'll like mock up a bag.

[00:30:08] They'll do all kinds of neat stuff to understand how a driver works throughout the day. And it means that they'll have a more efficient experience overall. I think all those features that they listed there, you know, being able to drop the truck down when you're loading it on, loading the trailer on and all that stuff. I think all that's really neat. What I'm curious about is they mentioned the light test. So there are several things that an over-the-road truck driver or just truck driver in general,

[00:30:37] somebody with a commercial driver's license needs to do to check their truck. I wonder if the Tesla software, you know, you have to go through and you got to do a brake check and that's largely manual. Like you got to, you got to, I don't even know if they, honestly, I don't even know if the cyber truck has air brakes, but there's like seven or eight things that you need to do in an air brake check. And, uh, normally they just happen when I'm in the truck.

[00:31:07] So sitting here in front of a microphone, I'm blanking on some of the things, but I wonder if the cyber truck kind of can do some of that stuff for you. I wonder if it has air brakes again, I don't even know if it has air brakes. And the other thing is, is I wonder if when you're doing your pre-truck inspection, if the cyber truck will not cyber truck, Tesla semi, sorry, will log that you did that test.

[00:31:34] And that way, if you get in an accident, that's an easy log to pull. Now there is like a black box in most modern, uh, semis and stuff. And from what I understand, it will log if you actually ran those tests, but it would be nice to be able to just look and say, Oh yeah, I forgot to do like, there's a little checklist on the screen. And I did my brake test. I did my light test that I do these other tests that I need to do. Oh, nope. I didn't.

[00:32:01] Now my, uh, the tests that I have to do for fire truck is less than what an over the road truck driver has to do. So I don't know what all of them are. I just have to do some of them. All right. Uh, next up, they're going to talk about the charging. Obviously to charge a truck like this quickly, you need a high power charger. So we developed a megawatt class charger as it's capable of charging at a megawatt to DC.

[00:32:28] Um, and it's our next generation immersive cooling. So it's, it's liquid cooled. Uh, so you don't need like a gigantic elephant trunk of a cable. You can actually have a small, small cable and that cable delivers a megawatt. Um, and, uh, yeah, we've three X, the current density. I mean, this is really cool stuff. I mean, we took, you're actually immersing the conductor in the coolant, this water-based coolant that we have.

[00:32:56] And we're then doing some really neat isolation monitoring on the backend to ensure that it's safe and delivering that it needs to. But it means that we can really shove a lot of current in a very, very small place. So, you know, for those that have worked, uh, and charge their cars on a V3 supercharger and the cable is nice and, you know, maneuverable, it's the same thing here, but now we're just shoving a megawatt through it instead. So, you know, this is key for high power applications like semi, but you want to tell them or do you want me to tell them? Yeah.

[00:33:25] I mean, it's, uh, going to be used for Cybertruck too. Yeah. Okay. So that's coming at some point in time to supercharger stations. I think we already knew this. I'm pretty sure they already said this. I felt like when they said it, I was like, that's not new news. But the other thing is Elon saying that the cord is small. It is probably small compared to the sizes that it would normally have to be to deliver that much energy, but it's not that small.

[00:33:53] It's, it's not, it's not slightly bigger or at least in the video, it didn't look slightly bigger than what you find at the supercharger station. It looked bigger than that. Not a lot bigger, but not small. So relatively speaking, it's probably small. All right. So since this is, you know, the Tesla semi event there, they did deliver to one customer

[00:34:22] and that was Pepsi, which seems obvious. So we're going to end this with Pepsi, um, you know, their comments. So that'll be our last clip. And then I'll come in and we'll wrap up the show. Nothing like this happens without amazing people. And so I just want to thank the people that spent countless hours to make this a reality. That's it. The people. Yeah. That's it. I, I just want to echo.

[00:34:50] I know a lot of work went into it and this is fantastic. We're thrilled, uh, about delivery today. So thank you. Yeah. Thanks for letting us be a part of this. Thank you so much. Appreciate you. Thank you. Yeah. Thank you, Dan. Thank you so much. Okay. So obviously big moment. And this is exciting. Pepsi's getting their trucks today. Everybody else deliveries start in December of 2026.

[00:35:16] And, uh, yeah, I mean, I, I haven't seen a Tesla semi on the road yet. I'm looking forward to seeing one in real life. And, you know, that's, I've been up to Northern California a couple of times since Tesla has been doing the semi event. I do not understand why the five year thing, other than maybe they're counting it from the last time they did an event, but really 2017, uh, I don't know the five, they hit five years.

[00:35:42] They said five years, a lot that it's been a long five years, a long five years, five years. Well, it's a bit longer than that. I wonder if it'll be, you know, five years for the roadster too. I don't know. Cause they announced them on the same day in 2017, November, 2017. But anyway, uh, cool event, cool truck, cool technology. I'm looking forward to seeing how Tesla is able to make it better. All right, everybody.

[00:36:10] If you want to email me, it's Bodie B O D I E at 918 digital.com. I am fully aware that this podcast lasted longer than the actual Tesla event. And that's on me. Um, if you want to support the show, it's support kilowatt.com and you can find me on LinkedIn. LinkedIn it's Bodie Grimm, G R I M M at, well, no, not ad. That's just, that's what you search on LinkedIn, Bodie Grimm. Sorry. It's been a long day. All right, everybody.

[00:36:40] Thanks so much. I will talk to y'all soon. Yep. Uh, thank you all. Thank you all for coming. Uh, it's, it's been a long, long journey along for five years.

[00:37:05] Uh, but, uh, this is going to really revolutionize the roads and I think make the world a better place and in a meaningful way. Um, so thank you for your support through all the years. Um, so thank you for your support through all the years.