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At 7 lbs a gallon for diesel most semis can carry 200 gallons so add an extra 1000lbs if you like, the Tesla still has to make up 5000 lbs while having 1/3rd the range.

Timing stops for megachargers will be a whole lot more difficult than truck stops until they are as ubiquitous. If you have to use a plain old supercharger your talking 8-10 hours for a charge, don't even bother with a normal plug of any kind.




Elon says that the truck will be charged by the end of the 30 minute DOT required break (14:06 into the livestream: https://livestream.tesla.com/).


That's with a megacharger not a supercharger, there are no megachargers deployed anywhere yet. Megachargers are 1600 kilowatts vs 120 kilwoatts for a supercharger.

A charging station with 10 megachargers going at the same time will draw as much power as a small city of say 10,000 homes.


A municipality with only 10,000 homes isn't even approaching city status, more like a small town... but I get your point.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Settlement_hierarchy


Is that possible? Assuming 500 miles of range at 2kwh a mile is a 1000kwh battery, charged over 30 minutes, is 2 megawatts, if the voltage is the same as the supercharger (480V) requires 4000 amps...


Google says your average powerline carries 10k amps.. so it seems within reason, but it would require some power upgrades ;)


Power = amps × voltage . So no. They are 10kA × 3kV (well, depends on the line), so that gives us 30MW.


Yeah no doubt, there are a ton of unanswered questions here. If they can't retrofit their existing chargers to "mega" status that would pretty severely limit the usefulness of this product.


At least the weight will be (measurably) consistent no matter how much charge is in the battery. That said, they still weigh more than diesel so I assume they'll pay more at the scales.


> they still weigh more than diesel so I assume they'll pay more at the scales

I'm not sure what you mean here. In the US, scales are used to ensure compliance with axle load limits, not to determine any costs.

In any case, since they don't need the weight of a diesel engine, transmission, fuel tanks, or emissions systems I'm not sure how the weight balance will work out.


It would be a slow rollout anyway. First customers would be people with ~200 mile routes, just charge at home base.

Then people with ~500 mile routes that can charge at both ends. grow from there.


It looks like the first big buyer is using them for those short-haul trips.

Does the Semi have a sleeper cab? If not, it won't be used on long-haul routes regardless of battery.


What's required for a sleeper cab? We got some shots of the interior and it looked easily big enough to add a bed or the like. With a battery that big heating overnight should be practically free.


Just the space to put a bed, storage, and possibly a small fridge and microwave.




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