In an interview early this morning, Tesla CEO Elon Musk reveled that the Tesla’s upcoming electric semi truck will have up to 1,000 km or 621 miles of range with the use of Tesla’s new in-house battery cells and structural pack technology.
The Tesla Semi was launch in 2017. During its initial launch the class 8 truck promised a 8,000-lb capacity with the option of 300 and 500 mile ranges. All for a price of $150,000 or $180,000 depending on the version. Shortly after Musk came back onto scene with a bump in range for the Tesla Semi production version, stating it will have closer to a 600 mile range.
Now, the CEO has stated that during testing they have found ways to extend the initial range estimates: “Getting a range of let’s say 500 km is I think quite easy, trivial to be frank, for a semi truck and this is assuming a truck that is pulling a load of 40 metric tons. If you want, for long-range trucking, you can take the range up to, we think, easily 800 km, and we see a path over time to 1,000 km range for an heavy duty truck.”
Although the first numbers mentioned are close to what Tesla originally announced, the 1,000 km (621 miles) is a new figure not yet disclosed by the EV giant.
Musk also commented on the Tesla Semi’s capacity: “You are able to carry basically the same cargo as a diesel truck. We think that maybe there’s 1-ton penalty. Maybe. At this point, we think that we can have less than 1-ton cargo reduction and we think long term it’s going to be zero cargo reduction for electric trucks.”
In addition, Musk confirmed in the interview that the Tesla Semi will use the company’s new 4680 cells as well as the new structural battery pack technology introduced by Tesla during its Battery Day event this past September.
Check out all of the CEO’s comments regarding the Tesla Semi in the full interview below: