Is this what the industry needs right now?
The Tesla Semi has officially arrived. The company recently released a photo of the first vehicle rolling off its new full-scale production line.
This moment has been nearly a decade in the making: The company first announced the Tesla Semi in late 2017. And now we’ve got final battery specs, official prices, and big news about big orders.
The Semi is a relatively affordable electric semitruck with pretty impressive performance. It also comes at a moment when Tesla has lost its grip on the global electric vehicle market. Let’s talk about what’s new with the Tesla Semi and why this could be a breakout moment for electric trucking.
Medium- and heavy-duty vehicles, like buses and semitrucks, make up a small fraction of vehicles on the road but contribute an outsize fraction of pollution, including both carbon dioxide emissions and other pollutants like nitrogen oxides (NOx) and small particles. Globally, trucks and buses represent about 8% of total vehicles on the road, but they create 35% of carbon dioxide emissions from road transport.
