Tesla Semi: The Sequel I Meant to Make

[00:00:20] Hello everyone and welcome to Kilowatt, a podcast about electric vehicles, renewable energy, autonomous driving, and much, much more. Oh, and huge mistakes. Huge mistakes. So last night, well, we'll start with this. I'm in Tucson for training. Last week I had a very busy week at work. I had some other outside training for work that I had to do. Came to Tucson on Sunday. A little sleep deprived.

[00:00:49] I had a lot of sleep dead. Anyway, this class that I'm at is fantastic, but it's long and by the time I get out of class my brain is full. And let's just say I'm not working at full capacity.

[00:01:07] But anyway, last night on Thursday night, I felt great. I went to had dinner with a friend, came home, saw that Tesla had their event on YouTube. I just briefly looked and it said three and then something. I didn't like to see what the something was. Downloaded it, did an entire podcast on it, and then found out later at midnight that it was three years ago.

[00:01:34] So this was the Tesla had the event in 2020 or 2017 to unveil this, the Tesla Semi. And then they had the event in 2023 to hand over keys to Pepsi.

[00:01:50] And then they had the event yesterday. And I did the one in 2023. And I'm going to make comments that make me sound like an absolute insane person based on what we know today. But that's my alarm. Let's turn that off. But anyway, the reason I'm going to release that episode.

[00:02:13] And the reason why is if you ignore all of my nonsense, it gives you an idea of where Tesla thought the Semi was going to be in 2023 and then 2026.

[00:02:27] So in that 2023 event, Elon said, and deliveries start now. And technically they did and they delivered to Pepsi. But in reality, we know that they didn't. Right. So I think listening with that year. So listen to that episode first and you can, you know, just hit 10, 10 seconds, 10 seconds. Skip if you don't want to, if you don't want to hear me sound like a complete moron.

[00:02:57] So listen to that episode first and then come back and listen to this one with that information from Tesla in your head. But I have not listened to this episode yet. I don't know what it's going to say. I haven't listened to this event yet. So I don't know what it's going to say. So we're going to find out together. All right. Now I'm going to give you a second to go switch over to that other episode.

[00:03:26] Everybody who's here has either decided to not listen to that episode, which is totally fine, or listen to that episode with the fresh information in their head about the 2023 event. And let's go ahead and dig into this Tesla Semi rollout. The other one was called the Tesla Semi event. This one's called the Tesla Semi rollout. I should say Elon wasn't there. Elon was at a dinner with the president of the United States in China.

[00:03:55] So he had a little video. I didn't know this much. And then Lars, man, what is Lars's last name? Hold on one second. Lars Moravi and Dan Priestley. They're the two that are presenting at this event. Elon did do a intro video, and that's one we're going to start off with.

[00:04:21] But which he didn't do as far as I know at the CyberCab event. So, anyway, keep that in the back of your head. Let's go ahead and start with Elon's, I guess, opening remarks. Welcome to the Tesla Semi event. We're super excited to start production with the Tesla Semi truck. And this is really going to be a revolutionary truck that is capable of carrying the heaviest loads

[00:04:48] over very long distances with ease of recharge, mega charger that's capable of megawatt of power. This is really going to be a phenomenal truck. And it's going to be really also a driver's truck. Drivers are going to love driving this truck because it just has so much acceleration. It's almost like a sports car in truck form. So it's going to be the funnest truck to drive. In the very near future, we'll be adding in the self-driving features.

[00:05:15] So these will be incredibly important for safety. So if somebody's on a long truck journey, they can engage the Tesla self-driving and greatly improve safety and comfort of driving. So that the driver arrives at the destination and still feels refreshed. Otherwise, driving for many hours straight can be quite exhausting. So this is really going to be a game changer truck. And also, it's going to make a ton of sense economically

[00:05:43] because the cost of electricity per mile is much less than the cost of diesel, especially in these crazy times. So I think this is really going to be something that works on every level. Yeah, I'd recommend placing more orders if you haven't already. The waiting list is already pretty significant. And this is really going to be a breakthrough product for heavy shipping. Thank you. And thank you for coming. And congratulations to the Tesla semi-engineering team and production team. You guys have done incredible work to bring us to this point.

[00:06:13] So well done. Thank you. Okie doke. I got nothing to add there. So let's go ahead and dive right into the event. Well, it certainly has been a journey to get here. Yeah, it's been a long time coming. Yeah. And the history is not just about the semi. We'll talk plenty about it. But it's really about our presence and commitment to this campus here in Nevada. Because it was back in 2013 that we realized to meet our ambitious goals of Model 3 and to build everything that we wanted, we needed the largest battery factory in the world.

[00:06:42] And that's eventually what became Giga Nevada. Literally, we had to double the world's lithium-ion battery production. And we do that over here. And we shipped millions of cars worth of cells. Yeah. And the thing that's really neat about this is that this is also the impetus for semi. Because we picked this site and then immediately became clear, like, why are we shipping parts for electric cars on diesel trucks? This doesn't feel right. And we knew we had to do something about it. That's when JB emailed you. Right. And he said, we should build a semi.

[00:07:12] Yep. And then you called me and you said, Lars, if I have to support like 3,000 kilograms of batteries on the back of a semi, how would I do it? Yeah. And Lars then quickly took me to school and did the hand calcs right in front of me, showing off his first principles engineering skills about complementary spring rates. And, you know, he's really contributed a lot there. But yeah, definitely a true engineer at heart. So we've done a lot since then. We definitely built, you know, the biggest battery factory in the world. But also we've continued our investment here in Reno.

[00:07:42] Back then we committed a lot. And actually we're sitting here on our 10-year anniversary of Giga Nevada opening. Yeah. Yeah. And super exciting to be celebrating that here. And, you know, this factory is then the next step and that stage of that investment where we're planning to build 50,000 trucks a year out of this facility, 1,000 a week, and bring on more than 3,000 jobs during that ramp period. All right. Let's see if they can hit that.

[00:08:06] But that doesn't, for Tesla, that doesn't seem like too ambitious of a goal, honestly. I would imagine that there's a number of people who want to buy a Tesla Semi simply because, you know, they want to save money on maintenance and fuel costs, especially right now. So it's, you know, not a bad deal that the diesel prices are $6 and $7 for companies like Tesla.

[00:08:35] Not necessarily for like you and me. It sucks for you and me. But so I can kind of see where the demand would be there for that many semis because there's a lot of, you know, manufacturers of semi trucks. So, all right, let's go ahead and move on to the next clip. You know, Nevada, yeah. Just cheer for that. That's fine. You know, we're committed in Nevada because of their attitude.

[00:09:04] You know, Nevada's motto is willing and able. And that's really what Tesla has done. It's not about who should do it, but about who can do it and who's ready to do it. Nevada has always been there for us and we're there for them. And, you know, I think in that way, it's really kind of, you know, serendipitous that we build the semi here because it has been a project of perseverance. Yeah. 1.7 million square feet. We can fit about 20,000 ocean containers that we figured out in this facility. You know, I live in Oakland for reference for anyone who doesn't count.

[00:09:31] That's about how many shipping containers go through the port of Oakland every day. So it's a big place. Big space. So what do we actually do with all that space? And it starts with the amount of vertical integration we have. You know, this is not just a general assembly facility. It is as close as we can to get to raw material in, finished product out. And for those of you who had a chance to go through it, you saw it. We bring raw coils in. We do cut to length. We do stamping on site. We take all of that through all the way to final assembly. But it's also, we bring in cells. And this is a cool project.

[00:10:01] We bring in cells, our in-house made battery cells from Gigafactory Texas. And the plan is to unload them automatically, automated, from the trailer. They get stationed. And then they get consumed by the line. Again, fully automated. All the way to the point that then they drive off the line. And at no point is there any human intervention or touchpoint. Yeah. And a lot of you may be wondering, why do we do all this? Like at Tesla, since the beginning, we believed if someone can't do it, we need to do it. Because no one else will solve the problem better.

[00:10:28] And really, that whole effort is about driving down the total cost of ownership. The reason we vertically integrate, the reason we make our own cells, we make our own packs, we make our own drive units, cooling modules, seats, plastics, everything, is because we want to lower the cost for you. It's also a great way to control quality and reliability. Yeah. One of the things I'm really proud of, in addition to what you just said about that automated trailer unload, is this EMS back here. The electric monorail system that you guys walked around when you saw the skateboard moving

[00:10:57] around is the biggest one in the world. And we had to reinvent how to do that. Yeah. And all of these things are thought about from day one. And one of the things that I'm super proud of at Tesla is that the construction team works right alongside the manufacturing team, who works right alongside the vehicle design team, who then also incorporates everything with our in-house software and firmware team. And so all of that allows us to optimize and drive to the lowest cost. This facility is super efficient in terms of its construction costs, and we're able to land this capability.

[00:11:24] And ultimately, what that does is drive down the cost of the vehicles that we produce here. And so it's all holistic, and I think you're going to sense that throughout the rest of our little chat here, too. I think in a lot of ways, the work that Tesla puts in gets lost because all of much of the media coverage outside of people who are actually talking about electric cars, but much of the

[00:11:49] media coverage that don't look at EV news on a daily basis is mostly about Elon. And whether you love them or whether you hate them, that tends to cloud people's view on the company itself. And it's a large company of like 100,000 now.

[00:12:11] There are a lot of smart people putting a lot of work into creating new ways of doing things. And, you know, they've been successful in that regard. And when you look at like, you know, Elon as a leader, again, a lot of opinions, but he has made a lot of mistakes as a leader.

[00:12:40] But one of the things is the company tries something. And if it doesn't work, you know, they go through that pain and then they're either able to overcome or they find a different way. I'm not a person who thinks that failing is a bad thing. I think failing is a great thing. It helps with creativity. It, you know, helps with resiliency. As long as you don't fail and quit.

[00:13:07] Because to me, failing and quit, quitting, that's, that's real failure. If you fail at something and then you take whatever you learned and you apply it to something else, it doesn't even have to be to that thing that you, you did that the new one. And I'm certain that a lot of principals when they were building the roadster and they learned, and then they were building the Model S and the X with the, the gold wing doors or the Falcon wing doors.

[00:13:33] And then the Model 3 production hell, all of that stuff, all of that, uh, those learned experiences go into something like this. So I think it's pretty cool. You know, a few other, yeah, a few other firsts here. Um, you know, we always start with the first principle approach, but the battery line is the most automated line we've ever made. As Dan said, the cells don't get touched all the way through, but even to that.

[00:14:01] Um, and, and also this is the first time we've done a powder coated a surface. So you can get a semi and other, any color you want, as long as it's white. For now. For now. But this did not start with this factory. It started again, we had some history, but we also knew that we needed to get some real field data, some real learnings. And we started a pilot fleet just under 200 vehicles to improve and learn. And I cannot thank those.

[00:14:30] Many of you are here tonight that helped make that effort possible and went along that journey with us as we introduced the first round of our class eight truck. And we had been taking all of your feedback and learning that fleet's been out there running, hauling freight every day has now done 17 and a half million miles. And we're super proud of everything that it has done. And it wouldn't have been possible with all of our customers that have helped go along that journey, but we've really listened to try to make some improvements along the way. That's right.

[00:14:54] I mean, as an engineer, nothing more is information is nothing more than the best knowledge you can have. And those, you know, 180 some trucks that you guys had and we had, we took all the learnings from that and the variety of conditions you see here in the snow, in the rain, in the desert, climbing up Donner Pass, and we turned it all into what is now a better truck. You know, we have demonstrated over 500 miles on a single charge. We've demonstrated the reliability in the cold and everything.

[00:15:22] And we're putting that all into the improvements we've made here. Okay. So the love to hear all of this stuff. So next up, they're going to talk about what they changed from that 2023, which is, which is why I'm still releasing that episode that makes me look like an idiot, what they changed from 2023 to now. And this actually makes the comparison much easier because we're 10 or so minutes into

[00:15:49] the presentation and I was like, oh no, are they not going to talk about what they changed at that event from that event? But they are. So crisis averted. Let's listen. Ready for volume. What is it? What is this truck? And it really is designed for that. And we've changed. It's a lot easier to talk about the things that we didn't change, but we're going to talk about things that we did change because we've really touched a lot. And at the end of the day, it is more efficient.

[00:16:14] It is more reliable, more manufacturable, and ultimately set up to deliver the lowest total cost of ownership. And that's done through a variety of means. One of which is that we've transitioned from our purchased 2170s to our in-house made 4680s. That allows us to do a lot of things with the battery. The battery is a heart of any electric vehicle and certainly the truck. It's allowed us to make the battery lower mass, lower kilowatt hours, which means lower costs. But we also did that by improving efficiency around the entire vehicle.

[00:16:43] So even though we have less battery in the pack, we have the same range. Yeah. And that's right. And that's 500 real world miles. Our customers have validated it. We've demonstrated it. These are 82K fully loaded miles, not diminishing load. We're not trying to cheat the numbers here. No, for sure. I mean, and you can go, maybe if you're half loaded, 60,000 pounds, you can go 600 miles. So we want to make sure that you guys understand this is no joke. This is the real deal and we've proven it. Yeah.

[00:17:11] And the other thing is that range is great, but you don't just need range. You also need charging to go with that. We still charging? Oh yeah. The whole thing that was live outside. Did we leave that truck plugged in? Yep. Oh, hey. Still 1.2 kilowatts. So we're like 12. Yeah. Still ripping 1.2 megawatts. Yeah. Yeah. And that's really because of the work we did with the battery and the whole HV chain to make sure that the power can be there the whole time. So we're at 27%. All right.

[00:17:41] So we also, the other thing is that for those who have had a chance to review the vehicle over the years, you have mostly been familiar with long range. But we're super excited to also be building out of this factory multiple variants, including standard range, 325 miles of capability, lower mass, great fit for a variety of applications. And that means, you know, range anxiety really shouldn't be a problem. But we've done that with a drive train as well. Yep. It's all about, again, improving efficiency and going back and making a improvement upon

[00:18:11] the previous design. And we were very fortunate to borrow the Plaid powertrain from before. I mean, that thing absolutely rips. But we also realized that we could make it even better. Yeah. A carbon fiber sleeved rotor is not exactly the technology you want to put into a mass market thing. So we were able to take the rotor, which you guys see here, put a steel cage around that. And we found a way using this new steel to improve efficiency, improve reliability, and

[00:18:37] improve mass, which is all great for the end customer, but also the performance of the vehicle. So we've also taken new technology that we've developed and put into our automotive products over the years, such as the bar wound stator, which is about to come in now on the screen, to improve the same thing. This actually has allowed us to make a motor that is not only cheaper, lighter, and better. We've lost about 80 kilograms on the drive axle, but actually provides more reliability than we ever have before.

[00:19:03] And another thing on lowering cost is that stator is shared with Cybertruck. And so we got to reuse that design and engineering, but we also got to reuse that line and save even more money to avoid that investment. You know, and it comes down to every detail at Tesla. You know, when we're designing something, we always want it to be super bespoke and super like engineered for the product. You see the cutaways here and they're very, very detailed. One of the things that I was always frustrated with in the old semi was we had three different oils just in the drive axle itself.

[00:19:33] Yeah. I mean, our engineers do amazing work and they look to optimize everything. And occasionally we get a little too far out there and we ended up with three oils in the first round of the truck. We had a motor oil, we had a gear oil, and we had a hub oil. And we've changed that. Now we have on the hub side, fully integrated hub and no oil whatsoever, which is more reliable and lower rolling resistance. And then we've gone on the gearbox and motor to one common oil.

[00:20:01] Thanks to our lubricants team who really came through there. Yeah. And I mean, the thing I hate about old cars, I love old cars and old trucks and diesel trucks is you got to change the oil every so often, but this oil is going to last over a quarter million miles. So hopefully you never have to touch it. So I think this is all fantastic. Just goes back to my previous comment about we need to actually start thinking these companies as more than just one person, but a quarter of a million miles, 250,000 miles.

[00:20:32] Semi-treks on the road typically stay on the road for longer than 250,000 miles. Like it's not uncommon for a semi-truck to go 100,000 a year, 100,000 miles a year. So I'm guessing they're going to have to change it and just off the top of my head. But still very cool. I love hearing about how these companies are doing new things and innovating and making changes once they see a problem. And this is this cool stuff.

[00:21:01] We're going to continue on with that. Let's go ahead and continue on. The thing that if you spend one day at Tesla, you will probably hear time and time again is the best part is no part. And we took this on not just with the oil side, but also with the steering. And this was a big revelation. We've gone away from one of the things that I know absolutely irks Lars to the nth degree, which is energy conversion. And we went to full electric power steering. I've hated it since day one. When we made Model S, we had a vacuum pump that powered the brake system.

[00:21:31] And it drove me crazy because you take a vacuum and then you turn it into hydraulic power and then you turn it into friction. You just have losses over losses over losses. And I literally lose sleep over that kind of stuff. Same thing happened here. We started with the truck. We had a hydraulic power steering system. And you know, electric power steering is great. It does a lot of things. We've got it here now in the truck. It's fully redundant. We actually use the technology that we first developed with Cybertruck for a full steer by wire system to make it autonomous ready, but also to give

[00:22:01] the driver something that they don't normally get, which is immensely quick response. You know, one of the things when you're driving a truck is you want to be able to put it where, you know, you got 80,000 pounds in the back there. You want to be able to put it where you want it to go. And with the electric power steering system we have, if you guys have got a chance to drive it, or if you haven't, your drivers are going to be super happy because it is the most precise steering system I've ever seen on a Class A truck. Yeah, it's pretty incredible. You can really put the thing where you want to.

[00:22:28] You couple that with precise throttle control, as well as then a wheel cut that actually lets the truck have nearly the same turning radius as our Model Y. And it is a dream to maneuver in those tight situations, whether you're talking urban or you're like doing loading dock maneuvers, like you can really put the truck where you want to and get it down to that last little bit and squeak everything out. You know, and that makes your driver's pre-drive checklist easier too. Because it's all on the screen and it's all there, but, you know, you don't have to worry about the leaks from the hydraulic system.

[00:22:58] So I'm super excited about this. It's one of my favorite parts. I literally lifted it up one time to show Elon. I was so excited about it. Yeah. And we stayed under the hood here and went to another system that we decided to optimize. And I remember the first time that we were reviewing the thermal system with the team, they just kind of looked at me and they're like, all right, you know, that three Y, uh, thermal system we've got, we're going to put two of them in the truck, which was a little bit of a shock, but, uh, we've come a long way since then. Yeah.

[00:23:26] You know, I mean, I think back then we're trying to do the, what we want to do, which is take our high volume products that have mass reliability that we built, you know, over 10 million cars and we've run billions and billions of miles on and say, we're going to take that reliability and put it into the semi because that's really important to our customers. But actually what we realized in this case was it wasn't really capable. So we developed an all new, um, ITS system, which is our, uh, indirect thermal system.

[00:23:54] And we put it, we designed it at the same time we designed the cyber cab. And we said, okay, we're going to take our most efficient vehicle and our biggest vehicle. And we're going to take one thermal system and make it work for both. And we actually did that with some small modifications to the actual like cooling loop side of it. But that means what you get in this vehicle is a compressor and a thermal system that has been already proven millions and millions of miles over, which means you're getting reliability from day one. Yeah.

[00:24:22] We have a bigger radiator than cyber cab, for example, but slightly, slightly, but the core componentry pumps, compressor exchangers, they're the same. And that means we get to leverage that over and over again. There's what, like two or three coolant pumps in every vehicle we make? Yeah. Roughly speaking? 10 million. So like 25, 30 million coolant pumps. So, you know, we have a handful of them up front. You can easily access them for service and reliability from the front hood of the trunk. But those pumps are the same pumps we have all over the world.

[00:24:50] And that means not only do you get a very reliable part, a very available part, but you get to leverage that distribution system as well. Yeah. And one thing you might notice about this thermal system is that there's no AC lines. There's no refrigerant lines. And that's the beauty of the indirect thermal system is it comes from the factory, fully charged, sealed with refrigerant. And it just exchanges coolant. It doesn't actually run refrigerant up to the front of the vehicle. So there's no AC lines to worry about damaging or leaking or having to do any work in the shop.

[00:25:18] It's a great, tight, integrated system straight out of the factory. And the heat pump is, as it is defined, is allowed to move heat from one area of the vehicle to another. And because we've integrated the system to include the battery, the drive unit, and the cabin, we take the heat where it is, we scavenge it, and we put it where it needs to go. And the way I think about heat as an engineer is not like, is my body hot or is it hot? But it's like every degree of heat energy. So if you need to cool the cabin by two degrees, we can take that heat out of the air that's

[00:25:47] going into the cabin using the heat pump and the indirect thermal system and put it to the battery and the drive where you need it, which means it's more efficient. Yeah. And if you can't tell, we're kind of ruthless about every watt hour that we chase in these things because there's this wonderful compounding effect is that if you make the vehicle more efficient, that means it's less battery you need to do the same amount of work, which means that you can take battery out of the vehicle, which is lower cost and lower mass. Faster charging. Yes.

[00:26:14] And the cool thing about all that is I remember when we started this project, we were doing some quick math and, you know, JB and Elon said, hey, you know, if we can get to about, you know, 2000 watt hours a mile, this could work. And then we had some naysayers, names shall not be mentioned. But pretty well-known names. Yeah. We said that's impossible. And at Tesla, we love when people tell us something's impossible. So we took that challenge. Yeah. What are we on now? 1.6? 1.7? We're familiar with 1.6. Yeah, right.

[00:26:44] 1.7 fully loaded, just under. Yeah. So we took that down about 25%. So that's what's under the hood. And there's plenty more changes. I mean, if you can't tell, Lars and I could go on and on and on about all the awesome work the team has done to get us. I think, I mean, this is, in my opinion, this is a fantastic presentation. We're learning. If you listen to the first episode that I did where I mistakenly thought it was this event

[00:27:10] and not the event three years ago, that presentation was kind of all over the place. And there was a lot of, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, back and forth. Not very well put together. This is great. We're getting fantastic information. It is useful. It is nutritious. And there's not a lot of like wooing in the crowd, which drives me up the wall. But I know I've already said that. But this is cool stuff. I love hearing about this stuff.

[00:27:37] I don't know about everybody else out there, but this is super, super awesome, in my opinion. The person that they're talking about, the naysayer, I believe was Bill Gates. I'm not sure there were other famous naysayers, but Bill Gates said you can't do that with a semi. So I think that's who they're aiming that at. All right, let's go ahead and dive into our next clip. But it's not just about what we can build. It's what it's like to actually drive.

[00:28:04] And we've really tried to refine this, again, leveraging all the feedback from that fleet. The customer feedback, we really value it. It's really amazing with these relationships. We can talk directly and get that feedback and incorporate it in. And we've done a lot to make it what was a great driving truck to an even better driving truck. You know, obviously at Tesla, we care a lot about our customers. We care a lot about the people that are in our vehicles, not just from a safety standpoint and how they feel and how they operate, but like what kind of emotions they get when they're driving.

[00:28:32] And we wanted to make a truck that you don't have to sell someone to drive, that they want to drive. And I always say to my team, if you make something that you want to drive, that people will follow you and want to drive. And this truck is no exception to that. Since the last truck, which is only four years old, we've reduced the road noise orders. Well, not orders of magnitude, but some levels of percentage by adding acoustic glass and reducing cabin noise through extra insulation. And, you know, sometimes when we do all that, we look back and we say, man, did we get everything right?

[00:29:02] Yeah, we don't always do that. We definitely, and this is where our customers said, nope, you're wrong. And we fully admit we were wrong about the window for anybody that interface with our old truck and tried the little pop-out window. Not sufficient. We're totally willing to challenge the spec and try something brand new. Turns out there's a lot of infrastructure in the world, whether it's a badge reader or your toll booth or you're talking to somebody on a call box. There's all kinds of stuff right at that height. And it became evident that we needed a roll-down window in order to make that infrastructure easier to interface with. Totally owned it.

[00:29:31] So we put one in. It's okay to be wrong, Dan. Yes. No, absolutely. Love to be wrong. But the other things you'll notice with our drivers here is that you'll see them, they're incorporating a lot of features from our Tesla vehicles. You know, Luis, when he gets into the truck, clicks his own driver profile. And so if you buy a fleet of semis, you're going to actually be able to take every individual semi and make it that driver's semi right when they get in. Yeah. And this is like a nice visual where he clicks on his name.

[00:29:57] But in actuality, it's way more seamless than that because it's tied to their driver profile that's on their phone. So when they walk up to that cab, when they open that door, the truck immediately says, I am that driver's truck. It adjusts the seat settings, which is electronic. And so it knows exactly what your seating position wants to be. Any other mirror memory, it's there. If you have any other profile settings in the UI, anything that you've tweaked to your liking, it follows you truck to truck. Huge enabler for a fleet environment. Our firmware team's been doing that for years and it was no exception here.

[00:30:26] We're bringing in everything we've had in the automotive fleet to the semi. We have trip planners so you can get updates on the fly. That means when you're driving, you don't have to worry about range anxiety because we take into account weather, traffic. If you do need to charge, we'll link you to a charger. And it doesn't just change based on weather and traffic, but because the semi has constantly varying loads, if you have an application where you're picking up new load or you're dropping it off, it adjusts dynamically based on your load to give you more accurate range estimates.

[00:30:56] But it's out in the road. How does it do? Right? And we really put a high emphasis on maintenance and we really emphasize again, best part is no part. Best maintenance is no maintenance. But ultimately the uptime is what really matters and electric does provide that, but it's about proving it. And this year we've been able to demonstrate it with our existing fleet of a fleet uptime of more than 98%. And that's huge for a fleet or any owner, operator, driver. Yeah.

[00:31:26] You know, early on, I remember talking to a lot of you about like uptime and fleet and like what you needed and what you expected. And I was honestly appalled at the numbers that came out of the VOR amount, the vehicle off-road amounts from everyone. We didn't think that was good enough and we've tried to exceed that. And that's what's showing in the uptime. And really like it's all about maintenance. You know, planned maintenance is okay. Unscheduled maintenance is a tragedy. And I think we have you covered. Yeah. The plan is that for wherever we put trucks in the world, there will be a maintenance solution for you.

[00:31:55] And that can come in a variety of flavors. We're setting up a bespoke semi-service network where we can bring trucks in to do the maintenance that we need. But that's not always necessary. And sometimes the more efficient thing is to send technicians out to the truck. And we already do this on the car side, but we're bringing it over for trucks as well with mobile service. And then there's the fact that the truck is fully connected. And so over the air, diagnostics and updates are totally possible to help alleviate the service and make that even more seamless.

[00:32:23] You know, the other thing you get to take advantage of with the Tesla Semi is our parts distribution system. Yeah, all that carryover. You know, there's 10, 20 times as many cars on the road as there are class 8 trucks. But that means we have to distribute parts for those vehicles all the time. And we're going to use those same distribution centers to make sure if you do need a part, we can get it there right away. Yeah. And we're leveraging all of the things that we've done over the years to train technicians.

[00:32:48] I mean, this is more than a decade in the making where we've been working on training technicians for high voltage service and being able to take care of these vehicles. And we're taking those same practices and there's the same back-end knowledge base that's constantly being shared. And again, if there's something that we find that's a field failure on the car side, the truck side immediately knows about it. So the two learn from each other. These are not siloed entities, even though the physical service centers are different. The knowledge share is common. Okay. So I'm quickly running out of time. Let's get this going. It's not your fault.

[00:33:18] It's mine. Driver profiles are awesome. Shared across the fleet. Love that. Wish that was in fire trucks. The, you know, the ability for the truck to have little to no maintenance can't tell you how many times fire trucks or how much maintenance fire trucks receive. So I'm guessing semis are roughly the same. It's a lot. There's a lot that can go wrong. And there's a lot that can go wrong.

[00:33:45] And you kind of know like, oh, was that a glitch in the system? Or was that, is that going to be a problem later? Because sometimes they'll just do weird things, right? And they'll be like, hmm, I'm not sure what to do with this. Do I write this up or do I turn it off and turn it back on again and see if everything works itself out? So having that ability to look and see, hey, this sensor's popping or that, amazing. Great. The parts distribution is huge.

[00:34:15] One simple inexpensive part can keep you off the road. Now for a fire truck, that's problematic because you got to run calls, right? But we usually have backup trucks for that kind of thing. If you're hauling freight and you're in the middle of hauling freight and you have a problem and you have like a $200 part that you can't get your hands on, that's a big problem.

[00:34:39] Even, you know, I use a small number because it seems like you should be able to get that part. But, you know, it's weird. Sometimes parts are in stock, sometimes they're not. So that's big. Mobile services always existed in the semi world or the heavy duty truck world. So that's not necessarily new, but I'm sure the way Tesla's going to do it, it's going to be innovative. All right, let's go on to our next clip. Between everything. But it's not just about service in the field.

[00:35:08] You kind of need something else to keep the truck going. You got to charge it. Charging. And so wherever we're going to put trucks, we will also have chargers. And we're putting mega chargers in the major regions and along major routes. And by the end of the year, we'll have about more than 30 stations coming online with represent more than 200 megawatt capable posts. And in case you didn't think we could do this, we have over 80,000 super chargers worldwide. We know that when you're going to change an industry, you got to bring the ease to that industry.

[00:35:37] And we're putting these in already. And, you know, it's not just about our mega chargers that are going everywhere. It's also about, you know, private charging, overnight charging. And we're willing to do that too. Yeah. And many of our customers are very interested in deploying charging at their home base. It's the equivalent of home charging. That's great. Just like you have in your car. Plug in at home at the end of your day, end of your shift. And so we're really excited because a number of players have already started ordering charge equipment. Either Tesla can help the install or you can order it yourself. It's available on the website right now.

[00:36:06] And it comes in a couple different varieties. We have the mega charger, which is great for a number of fleets, particularly if you're slip seating or if you're trying to cycle trucks through. But often a off shift overnight charger is a better fit. And for that, we have our base charging product that's around 125 kilowatts. And so that's great for an overnight charge where you plug truck, walk away. Yeah.

[00:36:29] And I think, you know, if we talk forward about like charging and the experience, it's really about what that provides to our customers from a service side as well. Yeah. And I think that if any of you have had the privilege of interfacing with the charging network, the reliability is 99.7, something like that. It just works. This is not something you ever have to worry about. The semi or the supercharging system just works. And we're using that same service and support network again, technicians, but also the parts distribution network.

[00:36:59] It's the same hardware. I mean, the handle is different because we have a different interface. These are MCS equipped handles. And yes, we're designing for full interoperability. So we know that it's important. We did this on the car side where we opened up the network. We're doing it on the truck side. We're fully committed to this where we want the semi to plug into other equipment providers. And we want other OEMs that are making MCS equipped trucks to be able to plug into the Tesla network. Part of the mission. Yeah. It's that uptime is super, super important.

[00:37:29] And we're bringing that exact same experience where you just plug in and walk away. And you can do the preconditioning and charging during the route. That whole experience is exactly the way it is on the car side. And we've just brought it over to the semi side. By the way. Are we still charging? Wait, are we still charging? Can we check in on that? Hey, what do you know? Yeah, so one of the things we forgot to mention is you can get in about the 25 minutes we've been talking, 25, 30 minutes. Almost 30, yeah. You can get about 60% of your charge back.

[00:37:57] You see, we're still pulling a lot of power, about 800 kilowatts. And so that's so if you need to get on the road, you can. Yep. I think that's great. That's awesome. So it sounds like they're, I mean, it's not like they're being sold in super high volumes. And I'm sure they're talking with these folks who are buying the trucks and they're asking, what's the route going to be? I'm just curious. What's the route going to be so we can make sure we have chargers there?

[00:38:24] And I'm sure that these companies are motivated to tell them what the routes are going to be so that they can have chargers there. Lars, I think, or Dan mentioned slip seating. That means you share a truck. You don't have a dedicated truck. So one person gets in when the other person is getting out, basically. So probably more for the standard range semi than it is for the long range. But I don't know. I might be wrong.

[00:38:53] Anyway, that's where we're going to end it today, simply because I've been doing a lot of podcasting. Some productive, some not so much. I was on Live With It on the latest episode of Live With It. So I'll put a link in the show notes for that. And in that episode, I talked about what it's like to live with fire trucks.

[00:39:15] So if you're interested in learning kind of more about fire truck technology and the good and bad about operating a fire truck, go check out Live With It. It's a good episode. And I always enjoy just sitting down and yakking it up with Sarah and Roger. So, all right, everybody. That was the whole episode. If you want to support me on Kilowatt, or you want to support me on Kilowatt.

[00:39:38] If you want to support the show, you can go to supportkilowatt.com and you can become a patron or a, you can, it's a patron either way, but you can support on Patreon or Supercast. Thank you all so much for listening to this episode. Thank you all so much for, if you listened to the other episode where I sound like a complete moron. Thank you for that as well. All right, everybody. Oh, I think I teed up a clip of Lap Out.

[00:40:07] Let's find out how much this is going to cost. They didn't say. So I didn't put it in because they didn't say. They did say it's going to save you money on maintenance. It's going to save you money on this. It's going to save you money on that. Diesel prices are high, but they didn't say how much the semi was going to cost. So I think it was like $190 to $260, depending on the variant you got, is the last bit of information that we had publicly. All right, everybody. Thank you so much.

[00:40:37] I will talk to you all soon. Thank you. Thank you.