Tesla Semi: Was I wrong? (Responding to you.)

My recent smackdown of the Tesla Semi long-haul truck was hated by zealots and fanboys alike. But did I miss something? Did the Teslarati finally pin me down with the facts? Let’s see…

Download the PODCAST for this report

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Many of you in the audience were exceedingly keen, I note, to kick me in the slats in the comments section yesterday concerning my position on that ridiculous Tesla Semi shitbox truck >>. 

Have I decided to repent and apologise, fall on my sword and accept the Messiah - Electric Jesus - into my life? Well, I did address some of your more entertaining comments, whatever that's worth...

Here’s what Ruka Solo had to say:

you didn't figure in the weight of a 12 litre diesel engine nor the gearbox against the weight of electric motors and drivetrain or the 1 000 litre fuel tank. Tesla Semi is indeed a bullshit concept that cannot work, but if you're gonna do the maths, do all of them :)

I must've got hundreds of these. The central thesis is that I didn't include something or account for some arbitrary factor.

These comments suggest there's a big heavy battery there but we have to compensate because they pulled out the diesel engine and the transmission and things of that nature and certainly they do weigh something.

When you change the fundamentals of a truck or a car, it’s not just those specific components that change.

A Cummins X12 engine weighs 2050 pounds or 931 kilograms if you're from around here. A Road Ranger gearbox is about 300 kilos, 1000 litres of fuel we’ll call that 1000kg because you have to put it in tanks which weigh something, so there's another thousand kilos.

So let's call that 2.2 tonnes in total. How dare I not include that in my assessment of that ridiculous electric shitbox, I was told.

The funny thing is, if we can reverse-engineer the LDV eT60: Australia's first electric ute >> it’s only going to be just as easy to call bullshit on the technicalities of the Tesla Semi. So let’s finish this thing off, shall we?

The Tesla Semi does add rather a large inverter, because it would have to surge to 1 megawatt of output because you have to get DC out of the battery and convert it to AC for the three motors.

I did originally look up what the power must be if you're going to get from 0 to 100km/h; if you're going to do that in 20 seconds with roughly 40 tonnes worth of total mass, then you're gonna need slightly more than 750 kilowatts to do that. That's rather a big inverter required, in other words.

You'd need a dirty big cooling system for that too, because work is heat and heat is work. Plus it has to actively cool the battery when the battery is being charged, so it's not as if we're getting rid of the cooling system. This is all added weight.

You do have three motors each with massive reduction gearing built in, because if memory serves, based on the Model S Plaid specifications, they do spin at 23,000 RPM and you have to get them down to 500-something at the wheels.

At 100km/hour your average truck wheel is spinning at about 500 RPM so there's a massive fixed gearbox there that has to be capable of withstanding all of the load of inertia imposed on it.

So this Tesla Semi truck is definitely going to be heavier than an equivalent internal combustion truck and the question is: ‘How much heavier?’

There's an obvious conclusion here and there's obvious empirical evidence that's hidden in plain sight. Watch the full report to find out exactly what it is that proves the Tesla Semi will absolutely not work as a cargo-hauling heavyweight in the trucking industry.

While you’re at it, here’s why electric vehicle prices will soar >>, you might like to understand why the plan for 1 million EVs by 2027 is bullshit >> or deep-dive into the BIG problem with EV pick-up trucks and towing >>

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