Tesla just drove their Semi 800km on a single charge, with a gross weight of 36,000kg

Until now, Tesla has played in the consumer space with their vehicles, but in just a few days (December 1st), they will hold the Tesla Semi delivery event. At the Giga Nevada event, they will present a small number of vehicles to their first customer, Pepsi supporting their Frito-Lay plant in Modesto, California and PepsiCo beverages plant in Sacramento.

Ahead of that event, Tesla CEO Elon Musk posted today that the Semi had completed a 500-mile (804km) trip, with the Semi’s gross weight, truck and trailer, tipping the scales at 81,000 lbs or 36.74 tonnes (36,740kg).

Back in December 2017 when Musk unveiled the Semi, he announced the Semi would have 500 miles of range, at full capacity, going highway speeds. At the time, that seemed like an incredibly bold promise, and even today while there are other electric trucks available on the market, none are capable of those ranges.

At the Semi launch event, Musk also highlighted that 80% of routes (in the US) were less than 250 miles, meaning you could travel to the destination and back without a charge. There are of course a number of variables that could impact range, but to know they can achieve the specs they promised 5 years ago, is promising for the viability and commercial appeal of the product.

Tesla has not yet confirmed the size of the battery pack for Semi, but it is expected to be between 750kWh and 1MWh to achieve the 500-mile range. There may also be a smaller capacity battery that would offer around 300 miles of range, which would come at a lower cost.

Regardless of the final battery pack size, there’s no doubt that being between 7-10 times the size of a Model S battery, charging speeds will be important. This is where the company’s new Megachargers are going to be important.

While these may end up being rolled out at truckstops along the highways, more likely is the installation of megachargers at the businesses that purchase Semi to be paid off as part of the vehicle’s leasing costs. Tesla also has plans to offer autonomous driving in the Semi in the future. From recent photos of near-production-ready prototypes, it is clear the Semi will ship with the same, or very similar HW3 camera suite to enable Autopilot and potentially FSD down the road.

With long periods of driving, truck drivers are incredibly susceptible to fatigue and resulting accidents are far too common. It’s hoped that Tesla’s investment in autonomy in passenger cars, can transfer to the commercial world of launch-haul interstate trucking.

The economics of an all-electric Semi will be quite different to diesel trucks, but if you can add autonomy things get really interesting. If Tesla is able to ship world-class fleet management software as part of the service, then we’re likely to see the familiar Tesla story of demand outstripping support for years to come.

It is worth noting that these challenges are ones felt by transport and distribution companies the world over and I personally can’t wait till we see Semi on the road in Australia. We are a country that needs freight distributed over vast distances and has far too many accidents, if Semi can help, then we should do everything we can to get it here sooner, rather than later.

For the longer journey Tesla will need to add an option for a sleeper cabin, a common attribute of trucks that allows drivers to pull over and rest to meet their tightly enforced, mandated breaks. Right now and for some time ahead, drivers are certainly still responsible for the vehicle, but if they can leverage Autopilot/FSd to do the heavy lifting, they should be fresher to intervene when required.

While the focus has been on getting Semi to market, once that occurs and production ramps, the focus will rapidly turn to full automation and replacing the human driver, as it is for the robotaxi efforts in cars. When you do that for ridesharing, you move the needle on per-ride affordability, but do it for moving goods around a country and you’ll have a revolution.

The recent change in Tesla’s FSD Beta software to use an occupancy network represents a really important step forward when it comes to autonomy in Semi. FSD beta has largely dealt with ground-level obstacles, but when you are navigating a vehicle of this size, you have to accommodate for signs, trees, bridges and other obstacles in the vertical space as well.

The navigation routing also needs to accommodate the different weight restrictions of a Class 8 truck, it simply isn’t allowed on every available road, so understanding and responding to signs is also a must-have requirement.

While there are many challenges ahead for the Tesla Semi, this range test is a good sign things are heading in the right direction.