Elon Musk, CEO of Tesla, starts the first semi-truck deliveries.
Elon Musk, the CEO of Tesla, and Dan Priestly, the company’s senior manager for Semi truck engineering, took the stage at the company’s facility in Sparks, Nevada, on Thursday to officially begin delivery of the company’s first few production Semi trucks.
Tesla established production facilities and began building the Semi this year at a facility outside of Reno, where it mostly manufactures the battery cells, drive units, and battery packs that power its cars. How many Semis Tesla and Musk are shipping remains a mystery as of Thursday.
Tesla first unveiled the Semi concept in December 2017. The Covid epidemic and problems with the availability of battery cells, among other things, caused a delay in production.
Musk made a passing reference to the upheaval of the previous five years during the delivery kick-off event and joked, “Sorry for the delay.” Later, after saying “thank you,” he turned the microphone over to PepsiCo Frito Lay officials. PepsiCo is Tesla’s first customer to receive and utilize production Semi trucks.
The positioning of the steering wheel and driver’s seat is one of the key distinctions between Tesla’s Class 8 offering and other heavy-duty trucks. Tesla built the Semi with the steering wheel in the centre of the cab and touchscreens placed on both sides of the driver, as opposed to using the left side (or right side in Europe).
While the Tesla Semi was being developed, the market saw the introduction of various heavy-duty vehicles that were all electric.
Daimler and Renault Trucks, both owned by Volvo, have already manufactured and delivered electric heavy-duty trucks to clients. Tesla Even troubled Nikola, whose founder was fired and found guilty of fraud recently, began producing a battery-powered truck in March.
But Tesla has several cutting-edge features that are exclusive to them, such as a new, fast-charging system and a battery that has a longer range than rivals. The DC fast-charging system uses a water-based coolant to deliver up to 1MW of power while maintaining safety. According to Tesla, a fully loaded Semi can go 500 miles on a single charge.
According to Musk, the new quick-charging technology would eventually be incorporated into Tesla SuperCharging locations and used to power Cybertrucks. The consumer pickup truck Tesla is developing. The business intends to mass produce the heavy pickup with sharp edges at its new factory in Austin, Texas.
Tesla Semi Event
Fans who are concerned about his dedication to and concentration on the electric vehicle industry may find comfort in the Tesla Semi event.
As the owner and CEO of the dominant social media platform Twitter, which Musk purchased in a leveraged buyout for $44 billion in October, Musk has lately assumed additional duties. He raised the money for the acquisition by selling a portion of his large Tesla stock. He has become involved in several disputes and issues surrounding that platform since he took control of Twitter.
On Thursday, Musk showed signs of regaining his mojo by discussing the company’s vehicle technology and environmental goal.
He estimated that there are roughly 15 million passenger cars and 200,000 heavy-duty trucks in the United States. “It seems like a little fraction,” he added, but due to their size, weight, and constant operation, semi trucks account for a significant portion of dangerous vehicle emissions.
Those who live close to warehouses, ports, and other areas where there is a lot of truck traffic may suffer horrendous health impacts as a result of these emissions.
As of 2020, short- and long-haul trucks, delivery vans, and other medium- and heavy-duty vehicles made up around 6% of the on-road fleet in the United States, according to American Lung Association studies on transportation and air quality.
These cars produce a disproportionate amount of pollution, including 26% of the transportation sector’s greenhouse gas emissions and 59% of the ozone and particle-forming nitrogen oxide emissions.
In addition to assisting in the fight against climate change, Musk added that the Semi “will also enhance the quality of your air and the health of individuals living near motorways.”
Other electric heavy-duty trucks that replace diesel trucks can be said to do the same. At the Semi deliveries ceremony, Musk and other executives avoided talking about Tesla’s driver assistance technologies, known as Autopilot and Full Self-Driving Capability. When Musk unveiled the Semi in 2017, he predicted a future with automated trucks.
They also didn’t talk about how many vehicles they’ll make in the upcoming year or how they’ll get the extra battery cells and raw materials needed to make them.
Before the event, shares of Elon Musk’s vehicle company closed unchanged at $194.70, and they did not significantly change in after-hours trade.
Twitter is not safer under its new owner Elon Musk, according to its former head of trust and safety, Yoel Roth, who claims that Elon Musk is running the social media platform “like a dictator.”
Yoel Roth, who left last month, claimed that the social networking site has begun to deviate from following policies that were made publicly known in favour of judgments made by Musk alone.
One of my limitations was that if Twitter began to be governed by a dictatorial order rather than by policy, I would no longer be needed in my position and would no longer be able to accomplish what I do.
Roth stated in a New York Times opinion post shortly after his resignation that many of the changes Musk has made have been “sudden and scary for workers and consumers alike.”
According to a tweet by Mr Roth at the time, the Tesla billionaire fired almost half of the 8,000 employees at the company, including 15% of the trust and safety division.
Users could pay for a verified tick on their account thanks to Musk’s misguided attempt to redesign Twitter’s verification process, which Mr Roth claims was done in defiance of his team’s advice and warnings.
Soon after, scammers pretending to be from Nestle and Lockheed Martin started using the platform as their playground.
Additionally, Mr Roth backed Twitter’s choice to ban Donald Trump from the platform following the riots at the US Capitol on January 6, 2017, noting the danger of further inciting violence.
We witnessed the most concrete illustration of what it looked like for anything to transition from online to off, he claimed. Two weeks ago, Musk restored Mr Trump’s account after a slim majority supported it in an unexpected Twitter poll.
Edited by Prakriti Arora
