New videos surfaced today of a white Tesla Semi spotted at Tesla’s test track located behind the automakers Fremont plant in California.
The videos were posted to YouTube by Chris Nguyen who recorded them on March 5, 2021. According to Ngyuen, issues with his drone were the reasons behind his videos being so short: ”I spotted the Tesla Semi on their Test Track behind their factory in Fremont on 3/5/21. The lead car is a Model Y. Sorry for the short video, I was experiencing issues with my drone.”
As Nguyen noted, the car seen driving in front of the Semi in his video is a Tesla Model Y. Upon closer review, it appears that the Model Y is being used to record the Semi’s lap using a rear-facing camera.
It is typical of a manufacturer to record videos of its new vehicles before their launch to be used as promotional videos. So the real question here is, is the Tesla Semi about to launch?
Tesla CEO Elon Musk reveled late last year that the 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. Musk stated that during testing they 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.”
Tesla Gigafactory Texas is expected to house the series production of the Tesla Semi, at least at first. There has been some speculation that Tesla is also preparing for production of the electric Semi at Gigafactory Nevada. Production of the Tesla Semi is expected to begin small volume production later this year, and may possibly see some deliveries before the year’s end.