As often with Tesla, we had to be patient. But PepsiCo has indeed just acknowledged delivery of its first Tesla Semis on the sidelines of an event organized at the Gigafactory in Sparks, Nevada. The soda maker is the very first known customer of these new kind of autonomous trucks. Pepsi had ordered 100 Tesla Semis shortly after their presentation in December 2017.
It will therefore have been necessary to wait a total of five years between the presentation of the Tesla Semi and the arrival of the first units on the roads. According to Tesla, the next big customers to ship are expected to be Anheuser-Busch, Walmart and carrier UPS. The first international customers of the Tesla Semi, and the dates of the first deliveries abroad remain unknown for the moment.
Pepsi will gradually integrate the new trucks into its supply chain. This will help the firm to continue its energy transition, and to gradually allow its factories, warehouses and distribution centers to quickly achieve carbon neutrality. The firm revealed that the first 15 trucks will be assigned to the Frito-Lay plant in Modesto, California.
On the sidelines of the event, 5 Tesla semis in the colors of Frito-Lay and PepsiCo were shown. Despite the delay of several years between the initial order and delivery, we can only point out that Elon Musk has shown himself to be quite fair in his schedule for once. A few months ago, the entrepreneur announced on Twitter that production of the Tesla Semi had started.
And that the first deliveries would take place from December 2022. In fact, initially, Tesla was to start manufacturing its first Semis from December 2019. But delays have accumulated. It must be said that the manufacturer, like its competitors, had to face the shortage of components. The cells used by the Semi’s batteries, in particular, were available only in limited quantities.
But we imagine, beyond that, that Tesla also had to refine its copy because the Tesla Semis are far from being simply electric semi-trailers. They come with the Autopilot as standard for semi-autonomous driving on highways, and in the long term will allow a single driver to drive a convoy made up of several Tesla Semi autonomous.
On the autonomy side, during the last in situ test, Tesla demonstrated that they could drive, charged, at least 800 km before going through the charging box. And if we are to believe Tesla, it only takes about thirty minutes on Supercharger to recharge a Semi to 80% (about 640 km of autonomy). For now, the unit price of the Tesla Semi remains unknown – most estimates resume a range between $150,000 and $180,000.
