After first flagging a move into larger kinds of electric vehicles last year, Tesla CEO Elon Musk has today revealed plans to unveil the company's first all-electric semi truck at its headquarters in Hawthorne, California, with test drives to take place next month.
Tesla first laid out its ambitions for electric trucks in its "Master Plan, Part Deux" last year. In it, Musk described an electric heavy duty truck that would substantially reduce the cost of cargo transport and boost safety, while also being really fun to operate.
Not all that much is known about Tesl'a electric freight truck, but Musk did say in back in April that the company was on track for a September unveiling. He followed up by touching on it in a Ted talk soon after, describing it as a heavy duty, long-range, high-torque semi designed to alleviate heavy duty trucking loads.
"This is something which today people do not think is possible," said Musk. "To think the truck doesn't have enough power or it doesn't have enough range. With the Tesla Semi, we want to show that, no, an electric truck can out-torque any diesel semi, and if you had a tug-of-war competition, the Tesla semi will tug the diesel semi uphill."
Only time will tell who wins such a battle, but we are set to learn a whole lot more about the Tesla Semi toward the end of October. And Musk still appears quite excited about what it can do.
Source: Twitter
