Tesla Semi truck unveil & test ride set for Oct 26th !
Everything We Know About Tesla's Semi Truck I wonder what the range is ?
Forum Discussion
Stsmark it's pretty simple math really. A diesel semi in the US gets between 5 and 6 MPG average with a 80K total gross load. Ergo, it will take about a 100 gallons of diesel to go 500 miles.
Now all we have to do is convert 100 gallons of diesel to MW/H of juice. And we can do this by using this web page: (for some reason RV.net won't let me link web pages today?) (1 gallon of diesel=.0407MWH.
So we now know what average MPG a semi in the US gets and we also know it will take 4 MW/h of juice to get us to go that far in an electric Semi. Well not really because an electric motor is roughly 2x's as efficient as an ICDE.
So we take 4 and divide it by 2 and we get, wala, 2!
So we now know it will take 2MWH of electricity to go 500 miles in our electric semi.
Well, not really. You see, there is bunches of vampires on a semi truck. If you have a refer you have to run a pump and fans to the refer to keep your beer or fish cold. (we surely can't have a diesel APU on an electric Semi!!) Those systems take a BUNCH of power. On my little tiny electric car my 30 mile range car goes down to 25 miles just by turning on the AC. That is OVER 17% just to keep the interior of my electric car cool and not frozen!!!
And it gets really bad when someone turns the heater on. The heater uses so much power it turns on the gasoline engine to keep up.
Just like the set of pots or pans on TV we can say: "But wait, it gets better; there is more!!!" (Or worse in this case) OTR semi's have to run in all sorts of bad weather in the winter. And I think we all know what happens to batteries in cold weather. Yep, storage power goes WAY down. I know my electric car mileage goes way down due to storage loss and using the heater during the winter. I say 20%+ for my car.
BTW, Elon must have some magic battery because he "claims" and 500 miles on a 500kwh battery. Well that's odd, the Ford Lightning (a little tiny pickup) gets about 3/4 of a mile per KWH towing a tiny light trailer on pretty much flat ground.
Now lets sit back and see the goal posts get dug up and moved miles!
I can hear the excuses of the fan boi's now...Reeee, Reeee....
Now all we have to do is convert 100 gallons of diesel to MW/H of juice. And we can do this by using this web page: (for some reason RV.net won't let me link web pages today?) (1 gallon of diesel=.0407MWH.
So we now know what average MPG a semi in the US gets and we also know it will take 4 MW/h of juice to get us to go that far in an electric Semi. Well not really because an electric motor is roughly 2x's as efficient as an ICDE.
So we take 4 and divide it by 2 and we get, wala, 2!
So we now know it will take 2MWH of electricity to go 500 miles in our electric semi.
Well, not really. You see, there is bunches of vampires on a semi truck. If you have a refer you have to run a pump and fans to the refer to keep your beer or fish cold. (we surely can't have a diesel APU on an electric Semi!!) Those systems take a BUNCH of power. On my little tiny electric car my 30 mile range car goes down to 25 miles just by turning on the AC. That is OVER 17% just to keep the interior of my electric car cool and not frozen!!!
And it gets really bad when someone turns the heater on. The heater uses so much power it turns on the gasoline engine to keep up.
Just like the set of pots or pans on TV we can say: "But wait, it gets better; there is more!!!" (Or worse in this case) OTR semi's have to run in all sorts of bad weather in the winter. And I think we all know what happens to batteries in cold weather. Yep, storage power goes WAY down. I know my electric car mileage goes way down due to storage loss and using the heater during the winter. I say 20%+ for my car.
BTW, Elon must have some magic battery because he "claims" and 500 miles on a 500kwh battery. Well that's odd, the Ford Lightning (a little tiny pickup) gets about 3/4 of a mile per KWH towing a tiny light trailer on pretty much flat ground.
Now lets sit back and see the goal posts get dug up and moved miles!
I can hear the excuses of the fan boi's now...Reeee, Reeee....
