The end of the big oil monopoly is on the verge of becoming reality.
It's time to short oil and gas!
From Trains on down to the smallest roller skate will be powered by electricity in 20 years. All gasoline and diesels will be outlawed and relegated to museums.
Electrical power is 3 times as efficient, powerful, etc. And non-polluting if solar and wind are used to charge them--which they will be.
The world is changing rapidly now. I just wish I was born about 2010 to see the changes that will come about because of getting rid of ALL fossil fuels--including jet fuels--in the near future.
Even the hydrogen to push spacecraft into space will be produced by solar eventually.
There is simply no need for any burning of any fossil fuels anymore--much like there is no need to burn logs to stay warm.

Love the tech, love the concept. Now we have to wait and see if Tesla can overcome its production problems. If so this will become a viable company - if not it may become a financial nightmare.

Whereas an ICE placed in front or under the cabin confers a degree of passive safety, a hundreds of kWh battery placed there must be classified as an active hazard. But the concept is great even if it'll be widely adopted some 20-30 years from now. EVs must start dominating cities first before moving to the highways. I hope I'm wrong though. Good luck Elon, you need a lot of it.

Great for short work and city deliveries & pickups, BUT, as quick as the re-charge rate is ( equal to refueling a diesel ), the entire truck-stop would need re-wiring to install sufficient numbers of charging points. Then the electricity grid would need to be upgraded to cope with the load. Then, will your wind turbine meet base load ? Better fire up some more power plants - nuclear or coal ? Will they build a model to B- double spec ( GVM 63 tonnes ) ? Good looking truck with excellent tech. Close but no cigar - yet.

To yuraG : On the contrary, the engine is a proven nightmare when it hits you. The Tesla cars all have a reinforced crumple zone in the front and are the big winners on crash tests.
To possum1 : Musk announced his own "Mega-Chargers" network providing 400 miles of charge in 30 minutes. And no worry for the grid as all of those stations will be solar/battery powered only, providing electrons in sufficient numbers 24/7. Teslarati has a good article on this.

The comparison of refueling and recharging times is a valid one, because for safety reasons, refueling needs driver involvement. Recharging can be carried out while the driver is on a break, as the process is continually and automatically monitored to detect abnormal conditions.

Many steps forward, but the touch screens are absurd, requiring the driver to take his eyes off the road. In an aircraft, every control has a different shape of knob, for tactile confirmation.

Great article and thanks for the metric units!
yuraG - the battery is centrally located in the frame - in the front there is a small trunk :) possum1 - Elon said the electricity price will be fixed to 7ct/kWh. The only way they can achive this is by producing and storing the power onsite. I bet they will further lower this price after 7-10 years as the technology becomes cheaper. Bob Stuart - this is unfounded. A pilot always has to visually confirm that they hit the right button and some of the knobs and buttons are so far away from the windscreen that you wont be able to see outside at all while you operate them. A good touch screen interface can give very precise/quick visual feedback about its operation that is hard to mimic with knobs, for example. Plus a touch screen interface means many new features/function can be added only with software updates.

This technology is great when you don't factor in the 3rd world pit mines, the heavy metals and rear earth toxic materials, the coal or gas or nuclear powered primary electricity sources, etc.
LNG could provide a cleaner solution with minor tweaks to existing equipment and infrastructure.

Paulinator, have you been in any new car? They all have batteries, motors and computers. Staying with gas will not save the world from all the poisons you mention. On top of that I would rather have one factory making pollution in China that millions of cars right were I breath and live.
Bob Stuart, Even if you were correct about the screens, you miss the point that the truck can drive itself! This means that a few seconds looking at the screen is not a big risk. Also I see truckers all the time on their cell phones or watching movies while driving. I would much rather have them doing that in a self monitoring Tesla Truck than a normal one.