Elon Musk will present the electric truck today Semithe first of 100 that his auto company Tesla finished after having delayed it several times and after announcing last October that it would be presented in December 2022. It is an 18-wheel heavy vehicle, Tesla’s first in the market for electric trucks.
During the presentation of the vehicle, details such as the charge they require to function, the autonomy, the recharging speed of their batteries and the sale price of the vehicles, which was initially estimated at
The manufacture of Semi It was subsidized by the government of Joe Biden, who approved a budget for the development of “green” commercial vehicles. The subsidy for each unit was 40 million dollars.
These first 100 heavy electric vehicles are reserved for PepsiCo (which will receive them in these weeks), since other companies such as UPS, Walmart of Canada and Sysco had also placed orders for the vehicle. Added to this list of companies is the brewery AB Inbev, which since 2017 had placed an order for 40 vehicles.
The first Semi It is ready after Musk estimated that the trucks would be produced from 2019, but due to problems with the batteries and the pandemic at the end of that year and the beginning of 2020, the delivery was delayed until today.
Tesla was the first to make electric sedans, but in the case of electric trucks, companies like Renault Trucks, Nikola, Volvo and Daimler already had models available.
Criticism of Elon Musk and Tesla for Semi
The criticisms towards Semi They did not wait, first of all due to the already mentioned delay in production and delivery.
Secondly, because it is thought that these electric trucks will fail, since it is not believed that they will achieve the autonomy of more than a thousand kilometers that the cargo transport market demands.
Other issues for which Elon Musk and his Tesla company were criticized is for the promises he made about Semi and that now they are not fulfilled: at the beginning, Musk had said that it would be the first vehicle of its kind with autonomous driving. But last month he announced that Tesla’s trucks will still have to be operated by humans.
About the prices and other characteristics of the Semi There was also controversy, since at the beginning of 2017 Musk estimated that they would have a range of 805 km and a sale value of 180 thousand dollars. But this will very possibly change, it will be known in today’s presentation.
Editorial Team The editorial team of EMPRENDEDOR.com, which for more than 27 years has worked to promote entrepreneurship.