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The Tesla Semi from an Insider's View After One Year: "Hot Mess"

162 points by jojobas 3y ago

candiddevmike 3y ago
> The constant use of the battery pack is unprecedented and is causing reliability problems for Tesla and other EV truck makers I don't understand why this is a surprise and why they think they can muscle through it. I didn't think our current battery technology is built for this scenario. > During the installation process, the Megachargers took down the power grid for a good chunk of the city This is my fear with everyone eventually plugging in their electric vehicles at 5pm
- recursive 3y ago
  > This is my fear with everyone eventually plugging in their electric vehicles at 5pm. If I plug my car in at 5pm, it won't start charging for 7 hours, when it's economically rational for it to do so. Time-of-use pricing seem to solve this. EV load is among the least time-sensitive of all power consumers. Set up your pricing right, and the EV charging will follow.
  - SoftTalker 3y ago
    What if you need to go out again at 9pm?
    - recursive 3y ago
      Then I go out at 9pm. Unless I've driven 200 or 300 miles that day (depending on charge level) there's no issue with any of this. If I'd driven 300 miles earlier in the day, and know I need to drive more in the evening, I'd override the charging schedule. This literally never happens.
- uoaei 3y ago
  > This is my fear with everyone eventually plugging in their electric vehicles at 5pm Household- or neighborhood-scale battery banks make a lot of sense in the near term. Because they are stationary they don't need to emphasize light materials and can focus more on cost efficiency and charge/discharge rate than mass or energy density using more readily available materials and cheap production methods. With relatively simple BMS you can charge your EV now and recharge the battery at off-peak times if you need to use it again in the evening (lots of people do).
  - thinkmassive 3y ago
    Like a Tesla Powerwall
    - uoaei 3y ago
      Aren't those still made with lithium?
- ouiouibaguette 3y ago
  It was "during the installation process", probably due to mucking with high voltage mains and not actual use? BTW my car charges at midnight. Super easy to set up that way. I override if I have to but 99% of the time midnight is just great.
- pdq 3y ago
  1 MW charger per truck, if you need to super charge. Equivalent to approximately 1000 homes. This is a huge burden on the electrical grids, and Tesla or EV's get to hand that problem to someone else. The only way this makes sense at scale is if we had nuclear power, and charging was done at night.
  - _ea1k 3y ago
    > This is a huge burden on the electrical grids, and Tesla or EV's get to hand that problem to someone else. They don't exactly get to push it onto someone else. Large loads like this come with demand charges. In some areas, they might be $5/KW, in others I've heard of >$10. A single megacharger would be $5-10k on top of the actual energy used. It is high enough that I'd expect them to start thinking about battery buffers at charging sites to mitigate the cost. That already happens at a smaller scale, with things like Freewire.
- _ea1k 3y ago
  > This is my fear with everyone eventually plugging in their electric vehicles at 5pm First off, it said during the install. So evidently it wasn't load related anyway. Second, I used to live in a little town of well under 50k people. The local coop gave a couple hundred dollars in rebates for the installation of load management on their water heaters. I'd expect this would get solved in basically the same way. The total gwh isn't a problem, the gw is, and that's fairly easy to solve problem.
  - B1FF_PSUVM 3y ago
    Back in the day everybody watched the same TV programs, there used to be the "simultaneous flush at break time" problem (real or imagined), e.g. https://medium.com/nycwater/the-big-flush-on-super-bowl-sunday-e0050699fa1b https://medium.com/nycwater/the-big-flush-on-super-bowl-sund...
    - thebigjc 3y ago
      And the "TV Pickup" in the UK. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TV_pickup https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TV_pickup
- rootusrootus 3y ago
  > This is my fear with everyone eventually plugging in their electric vehicles at 5pm If every house had a fast charger, that would be a sensible concern. But everybody turning their dryers on simultaneously during off-peak hours isn't something worth worrying about. Especially since it's not going to just happen all at once some day.
- Brian_K_White 3y ago
  Compounded by getting rid of natural gas for cooking and heating. It's fine to say that electric is simpler to deliver and more efficient in theory, but our grid is not even a fraction ready for that, and heat pumps and induction ranges are a whole order of magnitude up the tech ladder from boilers and gas stoves, and by going all electric you lose the multiple sources redundancy which is literally a life saver. I do actually welcome the cleaner future but I hate how people are pretending it's already here and making regular people deal with the discrepency.
  - ReactiveJelly 3y ago
    That's why a carbon tax (pollution tax, I hate calling pollution carbon) would be better than straight outlawing natural gas fuel. Too bad voters hate prices being anything but uniform and cheap. So much backlash even against demand pricing.
    - thebigjc 3y ago
      This is happening in Canada. It's a huge boogie man from the opposition, even if it's revenue neutral.
  - mulmen 3y ago
    My parents just went a week without natural gas. When the power goes out it’s rarely for that long and EVs and generators are alternate sources. Looks to me like electric is more redundant than gas.
    - Brian_K_White 3y ago
      You can't heat a house on backup electricity, unless it's in the form of an entirely separate full fat distribution along side the primary, the way the gas lines or oil trucks are along side the power lines. And this means diffent modes too, one up on poles, the other buried. Not both together and both subject to the same risks at the same time. Anything less, and you are losing something you currently have. Which is what will hapoen of course. And idiots will tell each other "this is better".
- rgmerk 3y ago
  This is a very easily solved problem. Right now people are buying charging systems that do things like only charge when there’s a surplus of self-generated rooftop solar, or offer a big discount on EV charging if you’re prepared to have it interrupted at peak times.
tptacek 3y ago
Why does anybody in the entire world want a semi with a 5 second 0-60?
- reducesuffering 3y ago
  I believe it's just a side effect of getting a BEV to that mileage range. Only the performance oriented Teslas put any thought into the acceleration, because it's already plenty fast by default.
  - jojobas 3y ago
    It's a side effect of decent regen braking. Your petrol car brakes can dissipate many times more power than its engine can put out.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- _ea1k 3y ago
  They don't, but they do want good speeds up steep grades. That was the real purpose there.
- dmix 3y ago
  You dont need a fast 0-60 in a family car either but people buy Tesla sedans for that purpose all the time.
  - adfiogn1i2o 3y ago
    Most family cars don't have limiters installed to deliberately limit performance.
    - dmix 3y ago
      Considering Semi is only doing day-trucking (aka short and predictable routes) automation seems to be a large target. In the Jay Leno interview they said Pepsi actually lets their drivers to go faster when they enable cruise control: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LMKySYs-hCg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LMKySYs-hCg Say what you want about FSD but automation in more controlled enviornments will help exploit performance. They also talk a lot about on ramps and city traffic, situations drivers HATE being behind a slow truck and these you dont have to worry as much about.
Element_ 3y ago
> Tesla uses the the tri-motor system from the Models S/X Plaid on one axle of the Semi, which seems both dangerous and needless, given the lack of concern among Semi users for quick acceleration Jay Leno did an interview with one of the Tesla Truck engineers the other week, I believe he mentioned each axle is geared differently. One specifically for highway speeds and the other one disconnects for optimal efficiency once up to speed. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LMKySYs-hCg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LMKySYs-hCg
- toomuchtodo 3y ago
  That’s standard for Tesla drivetrains on their cars to avoid transmissions: one axle for low speed, one axle for high speed, blending power to the motors and idling one when the other is primary.
  - snek_case 3y ago
    There's an extra trick with the semi where one of the axles can disconnect from the motor once it's up to highway speeds.
- code_runner 3y ago
  I love the assumption here that truck drivers just aren’t interested in better acceleration.
  - itsoktocry 3y ago
    I love the assumption here that everyone all of a sudden cares about acceleration.
_ea1k 3y ago
It seems like the author has combined some fairly credible rumors with a lot of guesswork, some of which doesn't really make sense.
- ShakataGaNai 3y ago
  > great fortune to receive the details below, which were told to a trusted automotive source of mine by a PepsiCo employee who happened to have time for my friend’s questions I believe this is what they call, in the legal industry, "Hearsay". Pepsi person tells friend person who tells the author. A lot can get lost in that chain of telephone. But yea, you're right. A lot of it is kinda nonsense statements. Or it's otherwise meaningless. For example > There is a team of Tesla engineers on call 24 hours a day, ready to fly out and fix anything wrong with the Tesla Semis. No one at PepsiCo is allowed to fix the Semi. Well, duh? These are preproduction units that Pepsi is probably getting for a song, with the understanding that there are going to be teething issues. Of course no one is allowed to "fix" the semi other than Tesla, no one is qualified to fix them. Hell, Tesla Service Centers aren't qualified because the only people who know enough about these machines are the engineers who built them. The author likes to repeat things that are clearly non-sense as well. > The batteries completely burned out What does "burned out" even mean? Driven until failure? That doesn't make sense. Tesla, if nothing else, understands EV's and battery packs (if maybe not Semi's). They know how to build batteries with protection circuits so they can't go too low and permanently damage themselves. So what this probably means is driven until the battery went flat/dead/0% SOC. And that's, once again, not a shock. Drive a vehicle that isn't ready to do 500 miles, more than 500 miles and its going to go dead. There are a total of ZERO megachargers out in the world that the Semi could use, so... of course they are going to die. If you drive a gas vehicle somewhere there are no gas stations it'll also die. > The constant use of the battery pack is unprecedented and is causing reliability problems for Tesla and other EV truck makers There are, what, a half dozen preproduction units out in the world? How can you even come to a statement like this that makes sense? The announcement of the first public delivery of a semi was December 1st, 2022 - so they've not been in fleet hands for even a year yet. I would be shocked if the first unit that rolled off the preprod line WAS reliable overall, if anyone remembers... the roadsters had more than a few issues too. > All Tesla Semis and other electric trucks are subsidized by California state Where are the sources on this? If Tesla was actually getting subsidy to build these, it would be in the news. Easy to prove. I cannot find any articles other than one mentioning the hope to get a federal grant to build a megacharger corridor from CA to TX. Do I think the tesla semi's are the most amazing thing since sliced bread? No. I'm sure they have tons of issues. But shitty writing (I won't even call this article "reporting" since it is basically some dudebro's blog) based on hearsay without any sort of proof or corroboration is just shitty fantasy. Might as well read some of that rule34 fanfiction about Elon that the fanboys write, if you want equal levels of accuracy.
xbmcuser 3y ago
Looks like the design requirement for a heavy duty vehicle were not properly followed. Though that's how tesla builds something like software build find faults then itteriate. For light duty if you can get chinese $2000 truck with a hydraulic lift I think china is going to takeover the world's vehicle manufacturing markets. https://electrek.co/2023/11/14/two-years-after-buying-a-2000-electric-truck-from-china/ https://electrek.co/2023/11/14/two-years-after-buying-a-2000...
- kcb 3y ago
  That's something that's basically equivalent to a golf cart with a bed on it. Hardly an example of anything useful except transporting some stuff around your own property.
  - DamnInteresting 3y ago
    FTA: "It’s fine if people want to call it a “glorified golf cart”, though I’m not sure I’ve seen a golf cart that can tow a boat, haul furniture, dump mulch, and that comes with creature comforts like air-conditioning, infotainment screen, power windows and locks, and a frunk."
    - kcb 3y ago
      Yea, i've read it but the point still stands. And there's all sorts of tricked out golf carts available with most of those features. Being able to bounce around your own property is cool, and there's many types of small vehicles for that, but they're not something you compare to a road worthy vehicle.
      - s5300 3y ago
        [dead]
    - deleted 3y ago
      [deleted]
    - rootusrootus 3y ago
thsksbd 3y ago
Batteries on semis dont make much sense to me. Hybrid systems on heavy inner city vehicles make a lot of sense. As do hybrids in mountainous areas. But long distance hauling? BS. Semi engines are large with very low power to displacement ratio -> they are very fuel efficient. Truck builders' customers are very sensitive to fuel consumption. I find it very hard to believe that marginal grid power (ie thermal plant), through all the transformer and transmission losses can beat a semi's diesel. EDIT: even if the semi's electricity came from magic, the opportunity cost of putting so many batteries on a EV semi vs. a small fleet of hybrid commercial vans more than blows the comparison in favor of hybrids.
- tonmoy 3y ago
  We need to go to net zero somehow. With carbon capture or carbon offset technologies near non existing, we have to make the switch sooner or later
  - jojobas 3y ago
    Trains.
    - DaiPlusPlus 3y ago
      Ideally, yes - but the US is lacking in rail infrastructure, so the US *needs* zero-emission, road-based, logistics solutions. (Disclaimer: Non-expert, but Tesla owner since Q1 2018) I think EV trucks, as a concept is fine, but battery-swapping makes much more sense than using a nonremovable battery-pack that's 5-10x the size of a sedan-sized battery-pack.
      - jojobas 3y ago
        Then rebuild the infrastructure. Wikipedia lists 100+ closed rail lines in the US, so the real count must be in thousands. Long haul should never be by road.
      - nradov 3y ago
        This article is about semi trucks. The US already has pretty much the best freight rail infrastructure in the world. Some further expansion is possible. But freight trains can't run everywhere, or handle highly perishable cargo, so the need for semi trucks can't be reduced much.
favorited 3y ago
I'm really hoping the (not Tesla) USPS electric NGDV doesn't experience this same over-promise-under-deliver rollout. The ICE variants of those new vehicles get only 9 mpg (when the AC is running, 14 when it's not).
- SoftTalker 3y ago
  With the USPS involved, I fully expect a complete and total fiasco.
ajross 3y ago
[Edit: I shouldn't have bothered. The whole blog is a TSLA short seller! They clearly aren't vetting this info, they're trying to drive clicks from forums like this one.] The sourcing here is a bit spun. "An insider" turns out to be a random driver someone found at a truck stop? > This is why it was with great fortune to receive the details below, which were told to a trusted automotive source of mine by a PepsiCo employee who happened to have time for my friend’s questions about the Semi at a charging station the other day Note carefully the weasel phrasing: the actual source is not trusted, just the intermediary! I mean, the details given seem plausible. But would you trust your cab driver as an authoritative source for the business value of their employers rolling stock?
- jojobas 3y ago
  When you're long and leveraged the entire world is short.
  - ajross 3y ago
    No, it's literally the blog of a Tesla short-seller. Read the archives. I love a good Musk pot shot as much as the next guy, but there are trustworthy sources to put on the front page of HN and there are sources we shouldn't be seeing. And this is one of them. "My friend found a driver who knows super-secret business details" my butt, basically. Never trust an opinion site to break news. Ever.
rootusrootus 3y ago
Some interesting thoughts, but a fair amount of obvious FUD too. And I'm not even a Tesla fanboy, far from it.
dolphinsea74 3y ago
[flagged]
stefan_ 3y ago
Well 750kW with a 700kWh pack is only a bit above a 1C charge rate which .. is not terribly much at all. Not sure what this says about the other statements in this article.
ChuckMcM 3y ago
This seems kind of par for the course. What I find strange is that there are busses[1] operating economically with similar time of use (but not top speed) requirements. The whole "car parts scaled up to truck size" is super on brand for their chief technologist. I'm also seeing a bunch of Rivian trucks and Ford E150 lightnings on the roads around the Bay Area which, for me, doesn't bode well for the launch of the Tesla truck either. If the Starship blows up tonight I imagine that's going to add stress too. I really wish Elon would pick cars or rockets and focus, that could really help the world. I'm not holding my breath though. [1] https://evmagazine.com/top10/top-10-electric-bus-companies https://evmagazine.com/top10/top-10-electric-bus-companies
- schneems 3y ago
  The first time I saw a cyber truck on the road in Austin I literally laughed out loud. It was that startling. I’m sure that will fade, but it’s a very comical first impression.
  - metadat 3y ago
    Yes, 100% with you. The cybertruck is the ugliest, most offensive looking car I've ever seen. I also LOL'd. My previous comment at the time: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37935293 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37935293
    - avar 3y ago
      If you're buying a truck as a fashion accessory you'll care about the look, for anyone else being able to weld or bolt stuff to a sturdy stainless steel frame is a feature.
    - mrDmrTmrJ 3y ago
      I saw one driving down El Camino (Palo Alto CA) and thought it looked great. Respectfully, what generation are you? (Approximately how old are you?) I ask as there are really big difference in how it appeals to different demographics. And all the guys who saw the vehicle with me thought it looked really good. (Admittedly we're former engineering students, so your milage may very...)
protastus 3y ago
It's a prototype at the edge of what state of the art battery technology allows. Kudos to Tesla for having the guts and endurance to try. This is relevant for Tesla and for the industry.
- jojobas 3y ago
  Except Musk was all out saying how it was production ready six years ago.
  - fastball 3y ago
    Honestly "Musk always gives timelines that are completely unrealistic" is a pretty tired criticism at this point. Is it true? Absolutely. Does it matter much? Not really. They're clearly making progress. Not sure what more you want in real terms. Not being able to stick to self-imposed deadlines isn't ideal, but its also not a crime.
    - jojobas 3y ago
      It wasn't just the deadlines, he also declared many things as already achieved, including some patently impossible (such as 200kWh Roadster). Perhaps worded so SEC can't get his bum, I don't know. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FZeB7SwmkiQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FZeB7SwmkiQ
      - fastball 3y ago
        Why do you believe a 200kWh battery to be impossible?
        jojobas 3y ago
        A 1.5-ton battery on a sport roadster? You tell me.
        fastball 3y ago
jjulius 3y ago
>Center seating, which looks cool in the Tesla Semi launch video, is actually not practical and not well liked by PepsiCo’s drivers. My work involves direct interaction with truck drivers on a near daily basis and I have been saying this since Tesla debuted the interior design. I am completely unsurprised to hear this The amount of hubris Tesla has when it comes to so many things like this is mind-blowing.
- _ea1k 3y ago
  The thing that baffles me there is that the original group behind this had a semi truck background. And surely its earliest routes were NV<>CA, along with the checkpoint at the border? It seems like either it isn't as big of an issue as it appears to be... or they 100% knew about it and went ahead with it anyway. Given that this is Tesla, it could easily be either.
- LispSporks22 3y ago
  I am curious how the 0-60 performance number Tesla keeps talking about for the Semi is received in practice. Is it important to them? Is it more a case of something designed for an audience Tesla doesn’t understand?
wilg 3y ago
The author clearly has an angle here. Tesla's obviously in some kind of beta mode. They've even said (in the Leno episode) they're going to rev the thing before going into full production. Plus battery degradation is well understood. Plus it's known there are multiple range editions of the Semi, they aren't all the 500mi version. Also obviously the taxpayers aren't paying for this vehicle program somehow. Wait a year and see how it's going. We have to electrify all transport, so someone's got to work on it.
- jjulius 3y ago
  >Tesla's obviously in some kind of beta mode. Then stop marketing yourself as though you're not. I don't care if the little asterisk in the corner of your website makes it clear that "it's just beta mode, bro", they clearly prefer to put out an image that suggests otherwise.
  - ryaneager 3y ago
    I mean car companies have been releasing concept art of future vehicles since like forever so it’s pretty standard.
    - deleted 3y ago
      [deleted]
    - jonathankoren 3y ago
      Concept cars aren't driven, let alone sold/given to actual customers.
      - snek_case 3y ago
        AFAIK the Tesla Semi isn't being sold to general customers. Pepsi is participating in the testing program, but they knew full well that they were early adopters, and they're doing it in part for the positive PR. It's sort of like a closed beta.
      - SoftTalker 3y ago
LeoPanthera 3y ago
I love that the Semi is just about as reliable as my Model X, which has been in for service 10 times, and even just this morning I got in to discover it completely dead with black screens. I can't wait to get rid of the damn thing.
- gumby 3y ago
  Are you in California? There is a lemon law that should apply to what you describe. You’ll get your money back.
  - LeoPanthera 3y ago
    From the other comment: It's three years old, and was only undrivable for a total of about a week. It does not quality for lemon.
    - rootusrootus 3y ago
      The three year part is probably not a problem, if you are in California, because lemon law there applies through the entire factory warranty period. The outage time is 30 days, but maybe you'd count on number of attempts. 4 or more to fix the same problem would do it.
  - bdangubic 3y ago
    Not just in California...
- toomuchtodo 3y ago
  This is a huge bummer to hear. I have over 100k miles on an ‘18 Model S with almost zero problems. Tires and wiper fluid is all she’s had done, almost exclusively supercharged. As sibling comment said, lemon it.
  - LeoPanthera 3y ago
    It's three years old, and was only undrivable for a total of about a week. It does not quality for lemon, and even if it did, I don't have the energy to fight Tesla. I've literally had Tesla service people yelling at me, telling me that I am a liar about the problems my car has been having. There's no way I'm voluntarily talking to anyone from Tesla that I don't have to.
ilrwbwrkhv 3y ago
Its all a hot mess. All of their cars just feel like they are a compromise. From panel gaps to random electronic issues. It's all spin and marketing. I have moved away to the Taycan and it is a much better car. I have a neighbor who doesn't wash his Tesla because the panel gaps make water come in at a car wash. It's so funny to see. Tesla brought electric cars into the zeitgeist and they deserve credit for that but they never made good cars since maybe the first Model Ss.
dinobones 3y ago
How can I have the state of California fund my “research and development?” Can I just make some outlandish claims about my software helping offset climate impact and then I get California tax dollars?
austinkhale 3y ago
Not sure it's worth putting a lot of weight behind an anonymous source when it directly contradicts a lot of what Pepsi has said publicly[1]. There is a whole movement to short Tesla and a lot of blogs & social media purposefully put out a lot of FUD that makes it difficult to understand what are real critiques vs market manipulation. I'm sure the Semi program isn't perfect but the blog post seems... biased. [1] https://vimeo.com/851092605 https://vimeo.com/851092605
- dolphinsea74 3y ago
  [flagged]
jacquesm 3y ago
I think the thing that Tesla misses when it comes to semi construction is that unlike with the roadster and the model-s launches the customers are unlikely to be impressed by the tech-bro bit and will first and foremost look at ergonomics, safety and economics. Image isn't on the front burner at all and I think the number of actual truck drivers at the Tesla design department approaches zero. If they mess up the launch of the semi in terms of early adopter customer satisfaction they may not get a second chance.
- henrikschroder 3y ago
  > If they mess up the launch of the semi in terms of early adopter customer satisfaction Only Tesla thinks of this as a regular consumer product with a "launch". In reality, the competition is already offering electric trucks of various sizes, today, not in beta, not pre-production, but actual products you can buy. And since their competition understands the trucking business, they already know exactly how to slot EV trucks into existing fleets, complete with logistics systems and maintenance contracts and a billion other things that Tesla has zero clue about. They're doing the usual Silicon Valley "winging it", thinking it'll work in this market as well. Pepsi accepted the pilot program because of 1) Free publicity, although with Elon's recent public political statements, the value of that is quickly turning negative, and 2) Free trucks they're not paying for, California taxpayers are. And yet a lot of people still believe Tesla is the market leader and that everyone is just waiting for Tesla to come and disrupt the trucking business. https://www.freightliner.com/trucks/ecascadia/ https://www.freightliner.com/trucks/ecascadia/ https://www.mercedes-benz-trucks.com/en_GB/emobility/world/our-offer/eactros-and-services.html https://www.mercedes-benz-trucks.com/en_GB/emobility/world/o... https://www.volvotrucks.us/trucks/vnr-electric/ https://www.volvotrucks.us/trucks/vnr-electric/
  - jacquesm 3y ago
    > And yet a lot of people still believe Tesla is the market leader and that everyone is just waiting for Tesla to come and disrupt the trucking business. Ironically those are not the people in the trucking business. Another thing that Tesla likely hasn't gained a lot of experience with is the longevity requirements on truck chassis. Those things undergo a ton of harsh treatment with a smile and 750K miles+ between rebuilds isn't all that rare, with 500K or so probably around average depending on whether you look at short-haul or long-haul or a mix. In the diesel world the chassis get two or more engine rebuilds. Total lifetime is crazy, check these out: https://www.commercialtrucktrader.com/Peterbilt/trucks-for-sale?make=PETERBILT%7C2313546&mileage=1000000%3A%2A&sort=year%3Aasc https://www.commercialtrucktrader.com/Peterbilt/trucks-for-s... That's 1 million miles and up.
toddmorey 3y ago
As the article mentions the program might have been a little smoke & mirrors for the stock price, it reminded me the roadster they drove out from inside the semi during the launch took preorders and still has very little chance of ever seeing production.
- sidibe 3y ago
  Smoke and mirrors is very common at Tesla. The funniest one was their battery swap event, I think it actually got them some extra government funding. They supposedly demo'd it on stage... but didn't think to set up cameras at an angle showing the actual swap? Then of course there's the "driver is only there for legal reasons" video attempted over multiple days including an accident. It's interesting how they keep getting away with it compared to Nikola
enragedcacti 3y ago
> During the installation process, the Megachargers took down the power grid for a good chunk of the city [imagine what happens when 100% of ICE vehicles have switched over to BEV in California by 2035]. A little bit tangential, but 2035 marks the ban on new passenger ICE vehicles. Given the average age of cars in the US, California probably won't even be at 50% passenger BEVs by 2035, let alone 100% of ALL vehicles. Kind of a troubling oversight for an automotive long/short manager seemingly specializing in EV companies.
- p1esk 3y ago
  Why is it troubling?
  - lucideer 3y ago
    Because it's obvious enough that those who aren't experts in that field can easily point it out. That a supposed expert in the field missed it raises concerns by proxy about their expertise in general.
    - jjulius 3y ago
      And it's not at all possible that someone making a blog post forgot to put the word "passenger" before "ICE" there?
      - enragedcacti 3y ago
        the big mistake isn't missing "passenger", its claiming that 100% of vehicles on the road will be BEV when the regulation says 100% of sales will be BEV. The average age of cars on the road is about 10 years so a substantial number of vehicles will still be ICE in California in 2035.
        jjulius 3y ago
        Eh, I got the word wrong (switch it to "sales") but it doesn't really change my point.
nblgbg 3y ago
These two are interesting >>>The constant use of the battery pack is unprecedented and is causing reliability problems for Tesla and other EV truck makers [similar claims coming from Uber drivers who use their Teslas over 300 miles per day, i.e., their batteries are dying quickly. Meaning the batteries are not meant to use more than few hours per day because they heat up ? >>>PepsiCo did a 500-mile trip with the Tesla Semi from California to Phoenix, but it was just for PR purposes. The batteries completely burned out, which is why on PR trips like this, they bring three Tesla Semis, with two being towed on a diesel Semi truck, only to be swapped out when the battery dies the other two Semis on the 500-mile drive As usual a demo product like other EV semis ?
- _ea1k 3y ago
  > Meaning the batteries are not meant to use more than few hours per day because they heat up ? TBH, it sounds like it might be temp related... but it could be as simple as overly conservative software. These are in such early stages of development, that I'm sure they are being very conservative about going into limp mode at the first sign of a potential problem.
breadwinner 3y ago
Maybe Bill Gates was right after all? See https://electrek.co/2022/12/02/watch-tesla-semi-500-mile-trip-bill-gates-said-wasnt-possible/ https://electrek.co/2022/12/02/watch-tesla-semi-500-mile-tri...
keyle 3y ago
The article is titled [SCOOP] and might as well be saying "I'm short on Telsa". While there is a lot of damning evidence in this mumbo jumbo of he said therefor I'm right There is something to be said about the advancement in technology. We need alternative to petrol, diesel. And while it might not be purely electric, it might be hydrogen, who knows, the move to Semis is vital. The problem is the baboon leading the pack with lies and deceits, might actually do more harm than good to the industry. And then, there is the the tax payers, who are signing blank cheques to the baboons...
- bayareabadboy 3y ago
  Funny how politics distorts one’s view of reality. Does anyone remember the state of the electric car industry prior to Elon Musk? You don’t have to agree with every (or any) opinion of his to acknowledge this lol
  - jojobas 3y ago
    Yes, he had a 10 year head start, exclusive deals with battery manufacturers and unlimited money. He squandered most of it.
  - rootusrootus 3y ago
    > Does anyone remember the state of the electric car industry prior to Elon Musk? Yep. We had the Nissan Leaf and a couple other minor contenders. And then we got the Bolt just before the Model 3 was released, and the Bolt is still by far the better value. The Model S made EVs sexy for a time, and that's nice, but it's hard to say that it meaningfully accelerated the transition overall. EVs were in the pipeline already, waiting for battery prices to get into the right range, and that's exactly what has happened.
    - darknavi 3y ago
      Well Tesla did prove that EVs can road trip reliably and did design the north American standard (which before was named with great hubris but now is actually accurate against all odds). I love my OG RWD Model 3.
sergiotapia 3y ago
Before you read too deeply into this article and take it at face value, take note of the author, the publication and what agenda they may have. Let me read a review for the RTX 4090 from pc-gaming-sux-cox-n-dix.com lol
Drblessing 3y ago
> All Tesla Semis and other electric trucks are subsidized by California state and the Megacharger station alone cost around $6 million [these mega chargers can power up to 28,000 homes]. The average US household consumes around 10,649 kilowatt-hours (kWh) of electricity per year, according to the US Energy Information Administration (EIA). This translates to an average of about 888 kWh per month, or about 29.6 kWh per day. Can these megacharger stations really output 828 mWh of power per day?
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- datadrivenangel 3y ago
  All you need is 34.5 Megawatts of power delivery, which is a lot of power but doable.
- rootusrootus 3y ago
  I wonder why here on HN, of all places, we think this is some kind of insurmountable issue. Maybe it's just that I'm old. I used to think a gigabyte was an amazing amount of storage and 9600 bps was fast. I wouldn't waste money on a micro SD card that small today, and I'm unhappy when my Internet is getting congested and giving me less than 100 Mbps. Engineering is what humans do pretty well, and given how successful we've been so far at delivering big power for EVs, I don't see why we can't continue that progression into the future.
DennisP 3y ago
So at first glance this is based on an anonymous second-hand source, and written on the substack of a self-described Tesla short seller. How seriously should we take this? I'll note that in another article[1], the author claimed that the delay in GigaMexico would push the next-gen model to 2027 and possibly bankrupt the company. According to Isaacson's Musk bio, Tesla moved initial production of the vehicle to Austin so their new production line and their engineers for the car would be in the same place. [1] https://bradmunchen.substack.com/p/teslas-next-gen-model-may-not-launch https://bradmunchen.substack.com/p/teslas-next-gen-model-may...
- ShakataGaNai 3y ago
  None. It's hearsay without any corroboration or sources, even for the statements that could be fact-checked (like state subsidies).
- pengaru 3y ago
  Just because it's from a self-described short seller doesn't mean it's not factually true. Short sellers obviously are incentivized to be uncharitable and focus on the negatives, but that also serves to bring the negatives to light where they might otherwise stay buried. We benefit from hearing both sides, especially if we're holding TSLA or considering trading.
  - reverse_no 3y ago
    this is mental gymnastics. i really think HN would be better with a reputation system so that posts like these will be checked for accuracy after the fact. accounts that accumulate tons of wrong predictions can be labeled and easily ignored. it would help with this problem where a huge wave of the same wrong opinion floods the comments and everyone else gets greyed out. why do we let wave after wave after wave happen without any accountability? like when half of HN confidently predicted twitter would crash… im not saying it was a bad guess but lets make it mean something to be wrong!
    - pengaru 3y ago
chrisbrandow 3y ago
This report is great. It certainly rules out the, “everything is definitely on track“ scenario. But itoesn’t tell us anything beyond that. It simply comes down to what Tesla is really trying to do. This could either be a “pump”, or it could be the normal shortcuts and growing pains that are part of an ambitious beta product. A couple of years ago I would’ve leaned much further towards beta product scenario, but I’m still not willing to rule it out at this point.
- jtriangle 3y ago
  Anything can be "on track" if you don't know what the track is. It's a meaningless statement to anyone but those that know. All you can really do is smile and nod, which, it's much more useful to spend your time not listening to this sport of speculation, and, if you must speculate, speculate on if the idea of an electric semi is viable in the first place. Personally, I think it is. It's a much harder engineering problem than a car though, so, it's likely to take awhile to become really viable, and longer still to get to a place a reasonable person would call "good". I'd also go sofar as to say, tech wise, we're probably not there yet. We need better batteries, and a means to charge them. That's been slow going so far, and likely needs some significant investment. Something like a billion dollar X-prize, or, make it 2 billion, for inflation reasons, for the first group that can demonstrate a battery tech suitable for mass manufacturing that's 2x current lithium ion cells at 1/2 the cost. That'd probably get us there in the next 5 years or so, give it another 5 to scale out, and the parallel tech developed trying to attain that prize probably sees things developing relatively quickly after that.
- m463 3y ago
  I have worked with prototype computers and the process is WASTEFUL. To the outside it looks like the systems are a mess. For example, proto systems usually don't have power management written, or fan control at the beginning. This means the machines run hot and noisy, consuming extra power and (safely) spinning the fans at full speed. maybe next proto will have a fan controller/firmware. You get prototype memory sticks. software is buggy. given that, I can imagine that batteries are probably ignored by the chassis and software guys. I'm sure the battery guys are in a lab somewhere writing firmware and working on charging/discharging and managing the batteries. also, I remember that tesla is spending a lot of work on the factory that builds the product, not just the product. These trucks are one-offs and probably assembled by hand, or poorly assembled by a prototype factory line. Now, that said I may be giving them too much credit. I remember talking to a guy who had worked at microsoft in the early dos/windows days and I said "the engineers at microsoft probably don't know the new release broke this other software, etc" and he told me I was naive, that ms had meetings where they said "how can we OWN this?" these were the days when starting windows you typed "WIN" at the C: prompt.
_yb2s 3y ago
This is obviously a prototype and not a production vehicle, so issues like this aren't unexpected. That said, I cannot wrap my head around some of these engineering decisions. It does seem like the engineers are fundamentally misunderstanding the problem itself, and this truck simply isn't engineered to work as a truck. If car grade parts are really being used, that is wildly inappropriate and unsafe, for a vehicle that needs to control two orders of magnitude more weight down the road. That said, it could actually be revolutionary to move some car tech into the truck space, if done properly with heavy duty parts. For example, an independent suspension can make the ride much smoother.... which could result in less driver fatigue, and less damage to cargo. For example, traditionally nobody would ever consider a dual wishbone independent suspension for an offroad vehicle, but, many modern purpose engineered offroad vehicles such as the VW Touareg and Porsche Cayenne have proven themselves capable offroad (including winning many famous offroad competitions) with four wheel independent suspension. It is in no way a "car suspension," but a purpose engineered offroad truck dual wishbone suspension, and it works excellent. "Old timers" will dismiss these vehicles as just a lazy attempt to sell passengers cars as offroad vehicles to customers that never go offroad anyway, but the real world reliability and performance shows that to be an incorrect perspective.

162 points by jojobas 3y ago

> The constant use of the battery pack is unprecedented and is causing reliability problems for Tesla and other EV truck makers I don't understand why this is a surprise and why they think they can muscle through it. I didn't think our current battery technology is built for this scenario. > During the installation process, the Megachargers took down the power grid for a good chunk of the city This is my fear with everyone eventually plugging in their electric vehicles at 5pm

recursive 3y ago
> This is my fear with everyone eventually plugging in their electric vehicles at 5pm. If I plug my car in at 5pm, it won't start charging for 7 hours, when it's economically rational for it to do so. Time-of-use pricing seem to solve this. EV load is among the least time-sensitive of all power consumers. Set up your pricing right, and the EV charging will follow.
- SoftTalker 3y ago
  What if you need to go out again at 9pm?
  - recursive 3y ago
    Then I go out at 9pm. Unless I've driven 200 or 300 miles that day (depending on charge level) there's no issue with any of this. If I'd driven 300 miles earlier in the day, and know I need to drive more in the evening, I'd override the charging schedule. This literally never happens.
uoaei 3y ago
> This is my fear with everyone eventually plugging in their electric vehicles at 5pm Household- or neighborhood-scale battery banks make a lot of sense in the near term. Because they are stationary they don't need to emphasize light materials and can focus more on cost efficiency and charge/discharge rate than mass or energy density using more readily available materials and cheap production methods. With relatively simple BMS you can charge your EV now and recharge the battery at off-peak times if you need to use it again in the evening (lots of people do).
- thinkmassive 3y ago
  Like a Tesla Powerwall
  - uoaei 3y ago
    Aren't those still made with lithium?
ouiouibaguette 3y ago
It was "during the installation process", probably due to mucking with high voltage mains and not actual use? BTW my car charges at midnight. Super easy to set up that way. I override if I have to but 99% of the time midnight is just great.
pdq 3y ago
1 MW charger per truck, if you need to super charge. Equivalent to approximately 1000 homes. This is a huge burden on the electrical grids, and Tesla or EV's get to hand that problem to someone else. The only way this makes sense at scale is if we had nuclear power, and charging was done at night.
- _ea1k 3y ago
  > This is a huge burden on the electrical grids, and Tesla or EV's get to hand that problem to someone else. They don't exactly get to push it onto someone else. Large loads like this come with demand charges. In some areas, they might be $5/KW, in others I've heard of >$10. A single megacharger would be $5-10k on top of the actual energy used. It is high enough that I'd expect them to start thinking about battery buffers at charging sites to mitigate the cost. That already happens at a smaller scale, with things like Freewire.
_ea1k 3y ago
> This is my fear with everyone eventually plugging in their electric vehicles at 5pm First off, it said during the install. So evidently it wasn't load related anyway. Second, I used to live in a little town of well under 50k people. The local coop gave a couple hundred dollars in rebates for the installation of load management on their water heaters. I'd expect this would get solved in basically the same way. The total gwh isn't a problem, the gw is, and that's fairly easy to solve problem.
- B1FF_PSUVM 3y ago
  Back in the day everybody watched the same TV programs, there used to be the "simultaneous flush at break time" problem (real or imagined), e.g. https://medium.com/nycwater/the-big-flush-on-super-bowl-sunday-e0050699fa1b https://medium.com/nycwater/the-big-flush-on-super-bowl-sund...
  - thebigjc 3y ago
    And the "TV Pickup" in the UK. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TV_pickup https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TV_pickup
rootusrootus 3y ago
> This is my fear with everyone eventually plugging in their electric vehicles at 5pm If every house had a fast charger, that would be a sensible concern. But everybody turning their dryers on simultaneously during off-peak hours isn't something worth worrying about. Especially since it's not going to just happen all at once some day.
Brian_K_White 3y ago
Compounded by getting rid of natural gas for cooking and heating. It's fine to say that electric is simpler to deliver and more efficient in theory, but our grid is not even a fraction ready for that, and heat pumps and induction ranges are a whole order of magnitude up the tech ladder from boilers and gas stoves, and by going all electric you lose the multiple sources redundancy which is literally a life saver. I do actually welcome the cleaner future but I hate how people are pretending it's already here and making regular people deal with the discrepency.
- ReactiveJelly 3y ago
  That's why a carbon tax (pollution tax, I hate calling pollution carbon) would be better than straight outlawing natural gas fuel. Too bad voters hate prices being anything but uniform and cheap. So much backlash even against demand pricing.
  - thebigjc 3y ago
    This is happening in Canada. It's a huge boogie man from the opposition, even if it's revenue neutral.
- mulmen 3y ago
  My parents just went a week without natural gas. When the power goes out it’s rarely for that long and EVs and generators are alternate sources. Looks to me like electric is more redundant than gas.
  - Brian_K_White 3y ago
    You can't heat a house on backup electricity, unless it's in the form of an entirely separate full fat distribution along side the primary, the way the gas lines or oil trucks are along side the power lines. And this means diffent modes too, one up on poles, the other buried. Not both together and both subject to the same risks at the same time. Anything less, and you are losing something you currently have. Which is what will hapoen of course. And idiots will tell each other "this is better".
rgmerk 3y ago
This is a very easily solved problem. Right now people are buying charging systems that do things like only charge when there’s a surplus of self-generated rooftop solar, or offer a big discount on EV charging if you’re prepared to have it interrupted at peak times.

tptacek 3y ago

Why does anybody in the entire world want a semi with a 5 second 0-60?

reducesuffering 3y ago
I believe it's just a side effect of getting a BEV to that mileage range. Only the performance oriented Teslas put any thought into the acceleration, because it's already plenty fast by default.
- jojobas 3y ago
  It's a side effect of decent regen braking. Your petrol car brakes can dissipate many times more power than its engine can put out.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
_ea1k 3y ago
They don't, but they do want good speeds up steep grades. That was the real purpose there.
dmix 3y ago
You dont need a fast 0-60 in a family car either but people buy Tesla sedans for that purpose all the time.
- adfiogn1i2o 3y ago
  Most family cars don't have limiters installed to deliberately limit performance.
  - dmix 3y ago
    Considering Semi is only doing day-trucking (aka short and predictable routes) automation seems to be a large target. In the Jay Leno interview they said Pepsi actually lets their drivers to go faster when they enable cruise control: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LMKySYs-hCg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LMKySYs-hCg Say what you want about FSD but automation in more controlled enviornments will help exploit performance. They also talk a lot about on ramps and city traffic, situations drivers HATE being behind a slow truck and these you dont have to worry as much about.

Element_ 3y ago

> Tesla uses the the tri-motor system from the Models S/X Plaid on one axle of the Semi, which seems both dangerous and needless, given the lack of concern among Semi users for quick acceleration Jay Leno did an interview with one of the Tesla Truck engineers the other week, I believe he mentioned each axle is geared differently. One specifically for highway speeds and the other one disconnects for optimal efficiency once up to speed. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LMKySYs-hCg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LMKySYs-hCg

toomuchtodo 3y ago
That’s standard for Tesla drivetrains on their cars to avoid transmissions: one axle for low speed, one axle for high speed, blending power to the motors and idling one when the other is primary.
- snek_case 3y ago
  There's an extra trick with the semi where one of the axles can disconnect from the motor once it's up to highway speeds.
code_runner 3y ago
I love the assumption here that truck drivers just aren’t interested in better acceleration.
- itsoktocry 3y ago
  I love the assumption here that everyone all of a sudden cares about acceleration.

_ea1k 3y ago

It seems like the author has combined some fairly credible rumors with a lot of guesswork, some of which doesn't really make sense.

ShakataGaNai 3y ago
> great fortune to receive the details below, which were told to a trusted automotive source of mine by a PepsiCo employee who happened to have time for my friend’s questions I believe this is what they call, in the legal industry, "Hearsay". Pepsi person tells friend person who tells the author. A lot can get lost in that chain of telephone. But yea, you're right. A lot of it is kinda nonsense statements. Or it's otherwise meaningless. For example > There is a team of Tesla engineers on call 24 hours a day, ready to fly out and fix anything wrong with the Tesla Semis. No one at PepsiCo is allowed to fix the Semi. Well, duh? These are preproduction units that Pepsi is probably getting for a song, with the understanding that there are going to be teething issues. Of course no one is allowed to "fix" the semi other than Tesla, no one is qualified to fix them. Hell, Tesla Service Centers aren't qualified because the only people who know enough about these machines are the engineers who built them. The author likes to repeat things that are clearly non-sense as well. > The batteries completely burned out What does "burned out" even mean? Driven until failure? That doesn't make sense. Tesla, if nothing else, understands EV's and battery packs (if maybe not Semi's). They know how to build batteries with protection circuits so they can't go too low and permanently damage themselves. So what this probably means is driven until the battery went flat/dead/0% SOC. And that's, once again, not a shock. Drive a vehicle that isn't ready to do 500 miles, more than 500 miles and its going to go dead. There are a total of ZERO megachargers out in the world that the Semi could use, so... of course they are going to die. If you drive a gas vehicle somewhere there are no gas stations it'll also die. > The constant use of the battery pack is unprecedented and is causing reliability problems for Tesla and other EV truck makers There are, what, a half dozen preproduction units out in the world? How can you even come to a statement like this that makes sense? The announcement of the first public delivery of a semi was December 1st, 2022 - so they've not been in fleet hands for even a year yet. I would be shocked if the first unit that rolled off the preprod line WAS reliable overall, if anyone remembers... the roadsters had more than a few issues too. > All Tesla Semis and other electric trucks are subsidized by California state Where are the sources on this? If Tesla was actually getting subsidy to build these, it would be in the news. Easy to prove. I cannot find any articles other than one mentioning the hope to get a federal grant to build a megacharger corridor from CA to TX. Do I think the tesla semi's are the most amazing thing since sliced bread? No. I'm sure they have tons of issues. But shitty writing (I won't even call this article "reporting" since it is basically some dudebro's blog) based on hearsay without any sort of proof or corroboration is just shitty fantasy. Might as well read some of that rule34 fanfiction about Elon that the fanboys write, if you want equal levels of accuracy.

xbmcuser 3y ago

Looks like the design requirement for a heavy duty vehicle were not properly followed. Though that's how tesla builds something like software build find faults then itteriate. For light duty if you can get chinese $2000 truck with a hydraulic lift I think china is going to takeover the world's vehicle manufacturing markets. https://electrek.co/2023/11/14/two-years-after-buying-a-2000-electric-truck-from-china/ https://electrek.co/2023/11/14/two-years-after-buying-a-2000...

kcb 3y ago
That's something that's basically equivalent to a golf cart with a bed on it. Hardly an example of anything useful except transporting some stuff around your own property.
- DamnInteresting 3y ago
  FTA: "It’s fine if people want to call it a “glorified golf cart”, though I’m not sure I’ve seen a golf cart that can tow a boat, haul furniture, dump mulch, and that comes with creature comforts like air-conditioning, infotainment screen, power windows and locks, and a frunk."
  - kcb 3y ago
    Yea, i've read it but the point still stands. And there's all sorts of tricked out golf carts available with most of those features. Being able to bounce around your own property is cool, and there's many types of small vehicles for that, but they're not something you compare to a road worthy vehicle.
    - s5300 3y ago
      [dead]
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
  - rootusrootus 3y ago

thsksbd 3y ago

Batteries on semis dont make much sense to me. Hybrid systems on heavy inner city vehicles make a lot of sense. As do hybrids in mountainous areas. But long distance hauling? BS. Semi engines are large with very low power to displacement ratio -> they are very fuel efficient. Truck builders' customers are very sensitive to fuel consumption. I find it very hard to believe that marginal grid power (ie thermal plant), through all the transformer and transmission losses can beat a semi's diesel. EDIT: even if the semi's electricity came from magic, the opportunity cost of putting so many batteries on a EV semi vs. a small fleet of hybrid commercial vans more than blows the comparison in favor of hybrids.

tonmoy 3y ago
We need to go to net zero somehow. With carbon capture or carbon offset technologies near non existing, we have to make the switch sooner or later
- jojobas 3y ago
  Trains.
  - DaiPlusPlus 3y ago
    Ideally, yes - but the US is lacking in rail infrastructure, so the US *needs* zero-emission, road-based, logistics solutions. (Disclaimer: Non-expert, but Tesla owner since Q1 2018) I think EV trucks, as a concept is fine, but battery-swapping makes much more sense than using a nonremovable battery-pack that's 5-10x the size of a sedan-sized battery-pack.
    - jojobas 3y ago
      Then rebuild the infrastructure. Wikipedia lists 100+ closed rail lines in the US, so the real count must be in thousands. Long haul should never be by road.
    - nradov 3y ago
      This article is about semi trucks. The US already has pretty much the best freight rail infrastructure in the world. Some further expansion is possible. But freight trains can't run everywhere, or handle highly perishable cargo, so the need for semi trucks can't be reduced much.

favorited 3y ago

I'm really hoping the (not Tesla) USPS electric NGDV doesn't experience this same over-promise-under-deliver rollout. The ICE variants of those new vehicles get only 9 mpg (when the AC is running, 14 when it's not).

SoftTalker 3y ago
With the USPS involved, I fully expect a complete and total fiasco.

ajross 3y ago

[Edit: I shouldn't have bothered. The whole blog is a TSLA short seller! They clearly aren't vetting this info, they're trying to drive clicks from forums like this one.] The sourcing here is a bit spun. "An insider" turns out to be a random driver someone found at a truck stop? > This is why it was with great fortune to receive the details below, which were told to a trusted automotive source of mine by a PepsiCo employee who happened to have time for my friend’s questions about the Semi at a charging station the other day Note carefully the weasel phrasing: the actual source is not trusted, just the intermediary! I mean, the details given seem plausible. But would you trust your cab driver as an authoritative source for the business value of their employers rolling stock?

jojobas 3y ago
When you're long and leveraged the entire world is short.
- ajross 3y ago
  No, it's literally the blog of a Tesla short-seller. Read the archives. I love a good Musk pot shot as much as the next guy, but there are trustworthy sources to put on the front page of HN and there are sources we shouldn't be seeing. And this is one of them. "My friend found a driver who knows super-secret business details" my butt, basically. Never trust an opinion site to break news. Ever.

rootusrootus 3y ago

Some interesting thoughts, but a fair amount of obvious FUD too. And I'm not even a Tesla fanboy, far from it.

dolphinsea74 3y ago

[flagged]

stefan_ 3y ago

Well 750kW with a 700kWh pack is only a bit above a 1C charge rate which .. is not terribly much at all. Not sure what this says about the other statements in this article.

ChuckMcM 3y ago

This seems kind of par for the course. What I find strange is that there are busses[1] operating economically with similar time of use (but not top speed) requirements. The whole "car parts scaled up to truck size" is super on brand for their chief technologist. I'm also seeing a bunch of Rivian trucks and Ford E150 lightnings on the roads around the Bay Area which, for me, doesn't bode well for the launch of the Tesla truck either. If the Starship blows up tonight I imagine that's going to add stress too. I really wish Elon would pick cars or rockets and focus, that could really help the world. I'm not holding my breath though. [1] https://evmagazine.com/top10/top-10-electric-bus-companies https://evmagazine.com/top10/top-10-electric-bus-companies

schneems 3y ago
The first time I saw a cyber truck on the road in Austin I literally laughed out loud. It was that startling. I’m sure that will fade, but it’s a very comical first impression.
- metadat 3y ago
  Yes, 100% with you. The cybertruck is the ugliest, most offensive looking car I've ever seen. I also LOL'd. My previous comment at the time: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37935293 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37935293
  - avar 3y ago
    If you're buying a truck as a fashion accessory you'll care about the look, for anyone else being able to weld or bolt stuff to a sturdy stainless steel frame is a feature.
  - mrDmrTmrJ 3y ago
    I saw one driving down El Camino (Palo Alto CA) and thought it looked great. Respectfully, what generation are you? (Approximately how old are you?) I ask as there are really big difference in how it appeals to different demographics. And all the guys who saw the vehicle with me thought it looked really good. (Admittedly we're former engineering students, so your milage may very...)

protastus 3y ago

It's a prototype at the edge of what state of the art battery technology allows. Kudos to Tesla for having the guts and endurance to try. This is relevant for Tesla and for the industry.

jojobas 3y ago
Except Musk was all out saying how it was production ready six years ago.
- fastball 3y ago
  Honestly "Musk always gives timelines that are completely unrealistic" is a pretty tired criticism at this point. Is it true? Absolutely. Does it matter much? Not really. They're clearly making progress. Not sure what more you want in real terms. Not being able to stick to self-imposed deadlines isn't ideal, but its also not a crime.
  - jojobas 3y ago
    It wasn't just the deadlines, he also declared many things as already achieved, including some patently impossible (such as 200kWh Roadster). Perhaps worded so SEC can't get his bum, I don't know. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FZeB7SwmkiQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FZeB7SwmkiQ
    - fastball 3y ago
      Why do you believe a 200kWh battery to be impossible?
      - jojobas 3y ago
        A 1.5-ton battery on a sport roadster? You tell me.
        fastball 3y ago

jjulius 3y ago

>Center seating, which looks cool in the Tesla Semi launch video, is actually not practical and not well liked by PepsiCo’s drivers. My work involves direct interaction with truck drivers on a near daily basis and I have been saying this since Tesla debuted the interior design. I am completely unsurprised to hear this The amount of hubris Tesla has when it comes to so many things like this is mind-blowing.

_ea1k 3y ago
The thing that baffles me there is that the original group behind this had a semi truck background. And surely its earliest routes were NV<>CA, along with the checkpoint at the border? It seems like either it isn't as big of an issue as it appears to be... or they 100% knew about it and went ahead with it anyway. Given that this is Tesla, it could easily be either.
LispSporks22 3y ago
I am curious how the 0-60 performance number Tesla keeps talking about for the Semi is received in practice. Is it important to them? Is it more a case of something designed for an audience Tesla doesn’t understand?

wilg 3y ago

The author clearly has an angle here. Tesla's obviously in some kind of beta mode. They've even said (in the Leno episode) they're going to rev the thing before going into full production. Plus battery degradation is well understood. Plus it's known there are multiple range editions of the Semi, they aren't all the 500mi version. Also obviously the taxpayers aren't paying for this vehicle program somehow. Wait a year and see how it's going. We have to electrify all transport, so someone's got to work on it.

jjulius 3y ago
>Tesla's obviously in some kind of beta mode. Then stop marketing yourself as though you're not. I don't care if the little asterisk in the corner of your website makes it clear that "it's just beta mode, bro", they clearly prefer to put out an image that suggests otherwise.
- ryaneager 3y ago
  I mean car companies have been releasing concept art of future vehicles since like forever so it’s pretty standard.
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
  - jonathankoren 3y ago
    Concept cars aren't driven, let alone sold/given to actual customers.
    - snek_case 3y ago
      AFAIK the Tesla Semi isn't being sold to general customers. Pepsi is participating in the testing program, but they knew full well that they were early adopters, and they're doing it in part for the positive PR. It's sort of like a closed beta.
    - SoftTalker 3y ago

LeoPanthera 3y ago

I love that the Semi is just about as reliable as my Model X, which has been in for service 10 times, and even just this morning I got in to discover it completely dead with black screens. I can't wait to get rid of the damn thing.

gumby 3y ago
Are you in California? There is a lemon law that should apply to what you describe. You’ll get your money back.
- LeoPanthera 3y ago
  From the other comment: It's three years old, and was only undrivable for a total of about a week. It does not quality for lemon.
  - rootusrootus 3y ago
    The three year part is probably not a problem, if you are in California, because lemon law there applies through the entire factory warranty period. The outage time is 30 days, but maybe you'd count on number of attempts. 4 or more to fix the same problem would do it.
- bdangubic 3y ago
  Not just in California...
toomuchtodo 3y ago
This is a huge bummer to hear. I have over 100k miles on an ‘18 Model S with almost zero problems. Tires and wiper fluid is all she’s had done, almost exclusively supercharged. As sibling comment said, lemon it.
- LeoPanthera 3y ago
  It's three years old, and was only undrivable for a total of about a week. It does not quality for lemon, and even if it did, I don't have the energy to fight Tesla. I've literally had Tesla service people yelling at me, telling me that I am a liar about the problems my car has been having. There's no way I'm voluntarily talking to anyone from Tesla that I don't have to.

ilrwbwrkhv 3y ago

Its all a hot mess. All of their cars just feel like they are a compromise. From panel gaps to random electronic issues. It's all spin and marketing. I have moved away to the Taycan and it is a much better car. I have a neighbor who doesn't wash his Tesla because the panel gaps make water come in at a car wash. It's so funny to see. Tesla brought electric cars into the zeitgeist and they deserve credit for that but they never made good cars since maybe the first Model Ss.

dinobones 3y ago

How can I have the state of California fund my “research and development?” Can I just make some outlandish claims about my software helping offset climate impact and then I get California tax dollars?

austinkhale 3y ago

Not sure it's worth putting a lot of weight behind an anonymous source when it directly contradicts a lot of what Pepsi has said publicly[1]. There is a whole movement to short Tesla and a lot of blogs & social media purposefully put out a lot of FUD that makes it difficult to understand what are real critiques vs market manipulation. I'm sure the Semi program isn't perfect but the blog post seems... biased. [1] https://vimeo.com/851092605 https://vimeo.com/851092605

dolphinsea74 3y ago
[flagged]

jacquesm 3y ago

I think the thing that Tesla misses when it comes to semi construction is that unlike with the roadster and the model-s launches the customers are unlikely to be impressed by the tech-bro bit and will first and foremost look at ergonomics, safety and economics. Image isn't on the front burner at all and I think the number of actual truck drivers at the Tesla design department approaches zero. If they mess up the launch of the semi in terms of early adopter customer satisfaction they may not get a second chance.

henrikschroder 3y ago
> If they mess up the launch of the semi in terms of early adopter customer satisfaction Only Tesla thinks of this as a regular consumer product with a "launch". In reality, the competition is already offering electric trucks of various sizes, today, not in beta, not pre-production, but actual products you can buy. And since their competition understands the trucking business, they already know exactly how to slot EV trucks into existing fleets, complete with logistics systems and maintenance contracts and a billion other things that Tesla has zero clue about. They're doing the usual Silicon Valley "winging it", thinking it'll work in this market as well. Pepsi accepted the pilot program because of 1) Free publicity, although with Elon's recent public political statements, the value of that is quickly turning negative, and 2) Free trucks they're not paying for, California taxpayers are. And yet a lot of people still believe Tesla is the market leader and that everyone is just waiting for Tesla to come and disrupt the trucking business. https://www.freightliner.com/trucks/ecascadia/ https://www.freightliner.com/trucks/ecascadia/ https://www.mercedes-benz-trucks.com/en_GB/emobility/world/our-offer/eactros-and-services.html https://www.mercedes-benz-trucks.com/en_GB/emobility/world/o... https://www.volvotrucks.us/trucks/vnr-electric/ https://www.volvotrucks.us/trucks/vnr-electric/
- jacquesm 3y ago
  > And yet a lot of people still believe Tesla is the market leader and that everyone is just waiting for Tesla to come and disrupt the trucking business. Ironically those are not the people in the trucking business. Another thing that Tesla likely hasn't gained a lot of experience with is the longevity requirements on truck chassis. Those things undergo a ton of harsh treatment with a smile and 750K miles+ between rebuilds isn't all that rare, with 500K or so probably around average depending on whether you look at short-haul or long-haul or a mix. In the diesel world the chassis get two or more engine rebuilds. Total lifetime is crazy, check these out: https://www.commercialtrucktrader.com/Peterbilt/trucks-for-sale?make=PETERBILT%7C2313546&mileage=1000000%3A%2A&sort=year%3Aasc https://www.commercialtrucktrader.com/Peterbilt/trucks-for-s... That's 1 million miles and up.

toddmorey 3y ago

As the article mentions the program might have been a little smoke & mirrors for the stock price, it reminded me the roadster they drove out from inside the semi during the launch took preorders and still has very little chance of ever seeing production.

sidibe 3y ago
Smoke and mirrors is very common at Tesla. The funniest one was their battery swap event, I think it actually got them some extra government funding. They supposedly demo'd it on stage... but didn't think to set up cameras at an angle showing the actual swap? Then of course there's the "driver is only there for legal reasons" video attempted over multiple days including an accident. It's interesting how they keep getting away with it compared to Nikola

enragedcacti 3y ago

> During the installation process, the Megachargers took down the power grid for a good chunk of the city [imagine what happens when 100% of ICE vehicles have switched over to BEV in California by 2035]. A little bit tangential, but 2035 marks the ban on new passenger ICE vehicles. Given the average age of cars in the US, California probably won't even be at 50% passenger BEVs by 2035, let alone 100% of ALL vehicles. Kind of a troubling oversight for an automotive long/short manager seemingly specializing in EV companies.

p1esk 3y ago
Why is it troubling?
- lucideer 3y ago
  Because it's obvious enough that those who aren't experts in that field can easily point it out. That a supposed expert in the field missed it raises concerns by proxy about their expertise in general.
  - jjulius 3y ago
    And it's not at all possible that someone making a blog post forgot to put the word "passenger" before "ICE" there?
    - enragedcacti 3y ago
      the big mistake isn't missing "passenger", its claiming that 100% of vehicles on the road will be BEV when the regulation says 100% of sales will be BEV. The average age of cars on the road is about 10 years so a substantial number of vehicles will still be ICE in California in 2035.
      - jjulius 3y ago
        Eh, I got the word wrong (switch it to "sales") but it doesn't really change my point.

nblgbg 3y ago

These two are interesting >>>The constant use of the battery pack is unprecedented and is causing reliability problems for Tesla and other EV truck makers [similar claims coming from Uber drivers who use their Teslas over 300 miles per day, i.e., their batteries are dying quickly. Meaning the batteries are not meant to use more than few hours per day because they heat up ? >>>PepsiCo did a 500-mile trip with the Tesla Semi from California to Phoenix, but it was just for PR purposes. The batteries completely burned out, which is why on PR trips like this, they bring three Tesla Semis, with two being towed on a diesel Semi truck, only to be swapped out when the battery dies the other two Semis on the 500-mile drive As usual a demo product like other EV semis ?

_ea1k 3y ago
> Meaning the batteries are not meant to use more than few hours per day because they heat up ? TBH, it sounds like it might be temp related... but it could be as simple as overly conservative software. These are in such early stages of development, that I'm sure they are being very conservative about going into limp mode at the first sign of a potential problem.

breadwinner 3y ago

Maybe Bill Gates was right after all? See https://electrek.co/2022/12/02/watch-tesla-semi-500-mile-trip-bill-gates-said-wasnt-possible/ https://electrek.co/2022/12/02/watch-tesla-semi-500-mile-tri...

keyle 3y ago

The article is titled [SCOOP] and might as well be saying "I'm short on Telsa". While there is a lot of damning evidence in this mumbo jumbo of he said therefor I'm right There is something to be said about the advancement in technology. We need alternative to petrol, diesel. And while it might not be purely electric, it might be hydrogen, who knows, the move to Semis is vital. The problem is the baboon leading the pack with lies and deceits, might actually do more harm than good to the industry. And then, there is the the tax payers, who are signing blank cheques to the baboons...

bayareabadboy 3y ago
Funny how politics distorts one’s view of reality. Does anyone remember the state of the electric car industry prior to Elon Musk? You don’t have to agree with every (or any) opinion of his to acknowledge this lol
- jojobas 3y ago
  Yes, he had a 10 year head start, exclusive deals with battery manufacturers and unlimited money. He squandered most of it.
- rootusrootus 3y ago
  > Does anyone remember the state of the electric car industry prior to Elon Musk? Yep. We had the Nissan Leaf and a couple other minor contenders. And then we got the Bolt just before the Model 3 was released, and the Bolt is still by far the better value. The Model S made EVs sexy for a time, and that's nice, but it's hard to say that it meaningfully accelerated the transition overall. EVs were in the pipeline already, waiting for battery prices to get into the right range, and that's exactly what has happened.
  - darknavi 3y ago
    Well Tesla did prove that EVs can road trip reliably and did design the north American standard (which before was named with great hubris but now is actually accurate against all odds). I love my OG RWD Model 3.

sergiotapia 3y ago

Before you read too deeply into this article and take it at face value, take note of the author, the publication and what agenda they may have. Let me read a review for the RTX 4090 from pc-gaming-sux-cox-n-dix.com lol

Drblessing 3y ago

> All Tesla Semis and other electric trucks are subsidized by California state and the Megacharger station alone cost around $6 million [these mega chargers can power up to 28,000 homes]. The average US household consumes around 10,649 kilowatt-hours (kWh) of electricity per year, according to the US Energy Information Administration (EIA). This translates to an average of about 888 kWh per month, or about 29.6 kWh per day. Can these megacharger stations really output 828 mWh of power per day?

deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
datadrivenangel 3y ago
All you need is 34.5 Megawatts of power delivery, which is a lot of power but doable.
rootusrootus 3y ago
I wonder why here on HN, of all places, we think this is some kind of insurmountable issue. Maybe it's just that I'm old. I used to think a gigabyte was an amazing amount of storage and 9600 bps was fast. I wouldn't waste money on a micro SD card that small today, and I'm unhappy when my Internet is getting congested and giving me less than 100 Mbps. Engineering is what humans do pretty well, and given how successful we've been so far at delivering big power for EVs, I don't see why we can't continue that progression into the future.

DennisP 3y ago

So at first glance this is based on an anonymous second-hand source, and written on the substack of a self-described Tesla short seller. How seriously should we take this? I'll note that in another article[1], the author claimed that the delay in GigaMexico would push the next-gen model to 2027 and possibly bankrupt the company. According to Isaacson's Musk bio, Tesla moved initial production of the vehicle to Austin so their new production line and their engineers for the car would be in the same place. [1] https://bradmunchen.substack.com/p/teslas-next-gen-model-may-not-launch https://bradmunchen.substack.com/p/teslas-next-gen-model-may...

ShakataGaNai 3y ago
None. It's hearsay without any corroboration or sources, even for the statements that could be fact-checked (like state subsidies).
pengaru 3y ago
Just because it's from a self-described short seller doesn't mean it's not factually true. Short sellers obviously are incentivized to be uncharitable and focus on the negatives, but that also serves to bring the negatives to light where they might otherwise stay buried. We benefit from hearing both sides, especially if we're holding TSLA or considering trading.
- reverse_no 3y ago
  this is mental gymnastics. i really think HN would be better with a reputation system so that posts like these will be checked for accuracy after the fact. accounts that accumulate tons of wrong predictions can be labeled and easily ignored. it would help with this problem where a huge wave of the same wrong opinion floods the comments and everyone else gets greyed out. why do we let wave after wave after wave happen without any accountability? like when half of HN confidently predicted twitter would crash… im not saying it was a bad guess but lets make it mean something to be wrong!
  - pengaru 3y ago

chrisbrandow 3y ago

This report is great. It certainly rules out the, “everything is definitely on track“ scenario. But itoesn’t tell us anything beyond that. It simply comes down to what Tesla is really trying to do. This could either be a “pump”, or it could be the normal shortcuts and growing pains that are part of an ambitious beta product. A couple of years ago I would’ve leaned much further towards beta product scenario, but I’m still not willing to rule it out at this point.

jtriangle 3y ago
Anything can be "on track" if you don't know what the track is. It's a meaningless statement to anyone but those that know. All you can really do is smile and nod, which, it's much more useful to spend your time not listening to this sport of speculation, and, if you must speculate, speculate on if the idea of an electric semi is viable in the first place. Personally, I think it is. It's a much harder engineering problem than a car though, so, it's likely to take awhile to become really viable, and longer still to get to a place a reasonable person would call "good". I'd also go sofar as to say, tech wise, we're probably not there yet. We need better batteries, and a means to charge them. That's been slow going so far, and likely needs some significant investment. Something like a billion dollar X-prize, or, make it 2 billion, for inflation reasons, for the first group that can demonstrate a battery tech suitable for mass manufacturing that's 2x current lithium ion cells at 1/2 the cost. That'd probably get us there in the next 5 years or so, give it another 5 to scale out, and the parallel tech developed trying to attain that prize probably sees things developing relatively quickly after that.
m463 3y ago
I have worked with prototype computers and the process is WASTEFUL. To the outside it looks like the systems are a mess. For example, proto systems usually don't have power management written, or fan control at the beginning. This means the machines run hot and noisy, consuming extra power and (safely) spinning the fans at full speed. maybe next proto will have a fan controller/firmware. You get prototype memory sticks. software is buggy. given that, I can imagine that batteries are probably ignored by the chassis and software guys. I'm sure the battery guys are in a lab somewhere writing firmware and working on charging/discharging and managing the batteries. also, I remember that tesla is spending a lot of work on the factory that builds the product, not just the product. These trucks are one-offs and probably assembled by hand, or poorly assembled by a prototype factory line. Now, that said I may be giving them too much credit. I remember talking to a guy who had worked at microsoft in the early dos/windows days and I said "the engineers at microsoft probably don't know the new release broke this other software, etc" and he told me I was naive, that ms had meetings where they said "how can we OWN this?" these were the days when starting windows you typed "WIN" at the C: prompt.

_yb2s 3y ago

This is obviously a prototype and not a production vehicle, so issues like this aren't unexpected. That said, I cannot wrap my head around some of these engineering decisions. It does seem like the engineers are fundamentally misunderstanding the problem itself, and this truck simply isn't engineered to work as a truck. If car grade parts are really being used, that is wildly inappropriate and unsafe, for a vehicle that needs to control two orders of magnitude more weight down the road. That said, it could actually be revolutionary to move some car tech into the truck space, if done properly with heavy duty parts. For example, an independent suspension can make the ride much smoother.... which could result in less driver fatigue, and less damage to cargo. For example, traditionally nobody would ever consider a dual wishbone independent suspension for an offroad vehicle, but, many modern purpose engineered offroad vehicles such as the VW Touareg and Porsche Cayenne have proven themselves capable offroad (including winning many famous offroad competitions) with four wheel independent suspension. It is in no way a "car suspension," but a purpose engineered offroad truck dual wishbone suspension, and it works excellent. "Old timers" will dismiss these vehicles as just a lazy attempt to sell passengers cars as offroad vehicles to customers that never go offroad anyway, but the real world reliability and performance shows that to be an incorrect perspective.