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The Staggering Economics of the Tesla Semi
The Tesla Semi is going to start deliveries this year and there is some staggering economics of how much better it will be than a diesel truck.
Elon Musk has stated that the Tesla semi will start shipping this year and that it will have 500 miles of range. This is after many delays, but Tesla is finally ready to start delivering it to customers. In Elon's Master Plan, Part 2, he made reference to building an electric semi.
The first customer of the Tesla semi is not known to the public yet. Some think it will be PepsiCo because they placed an order for 100 electric semi trucks. Tesla will build out Mega Chargers for the Tesla semi in order to make sure it can charge quickly.
The Economics of the Tesla Semi
If you look at average fuel prices and use the website for U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA), you can see about how much it costs for a trip for a diesel truck on a highway per gallon of diesel fuel. This ends up being about $4.99.
If you use a distance of 200 miles, you can do a calculation with a miles per gallon around 6 and come up with about 34 gallons (at 5.9 miles per gallon). This is simply for the average diesel truck.
With some simple math, you can take 34 gallons * $4.99, which is $169.76 for the cost of fuel for that diesel truck. This equals about 85 cents per mile. The Tesla semi, which is an electric truck, can take that same load and move it 200 miles. With electricity, you must think about it differently.
We can use a 2 kWh per mile usage for the Tesla Semi even though Tesla says the energy consumption is less than that. This will make calculating more simple. If you take 200 miles * 2 kWh per mile, you get a total of 400 kWh consumed. Tesla can also provide an energy cost of about 7 cents per kWh.
You can then take that 400 kWh * $0.07 per kWh which equals $28 total for the 200 mile drive. This is about 14 cents per mile. With this you get:
* A diesel truck trip at 200 miles is $169.76
* A Tesla semi truck trip at 200 miles is $28.00
This is a savings of about 83% and the Tesla semi will have less wear and tear on its brakes, less maintenance due to having no engine and oil changes, along with being a source of clean energy.
For more information on this, you can see this Tweet thread by Alex Gayer:
The jaw-dropping economics of electric truckingThe retail price of a semi-truck is often discussed when comparing diesel vs. electric, however the potential disparity becomes far less relevant when the economics of operation are concerned.— Al≡x Gay≡r (@alex_gayer) August 11, 2022
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Jeremy Johnson is a Tesla investor and supporter. He first invested in Tesla in 2017 after years of following Elon Musk and admiring his work ethic and intelligence. Since then, he's become a Tesla bull, covering anything about Tesla he can find, while also dabbling in other electric vehicle companies. Jeremy covers Tesla developments at Torque News. You can follow him on Twitter or LinkedIn to stay in touch and follow his Tesla news coverage on Torque News.
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Comments
It is not true that electric
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It is not true that electric vehicles are "a source of clean energy". They USE energy, they don't produce it. Furthermore, the source used to charge the vehicle could be either clean or dirty. Let's not get so excited about EVs that we forget where energy comes from.
I mean yeah but what's the
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I mean yeah but what's the total range on a charge we used 200mi as an example but if that's a charge range that's gonna suck, gonna take forever to ship anything.and yeah what we doin about Tesla batteries recycling or how much maintenance on them compared to a diesel would be. And idk if anyone noticed but we hit an energy crisis this summer in the states, and just my electric bill tripled so I've got no intention of switching anytime soon cause I don't think where I live it would have been any cheaper to drive an electric car. And have any of you looked into battery replacement costs for the Tesla?
13000 to 20000 just for sedan
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13000 to 20000 just for sedan sized batteries I do not want to see the semi figures
Electricity comes mainly from
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Electricity comes mainly from cold and nuclear and now that there's enough some solar panel the windmills never make enough is simply not enough when to go against their cost but all that together is what it takes to produce electricity now how does these elected to nuclear power how do they get the coal power what are the coal come from and the sunlight how is all this stuff done how are the sunlight solar panel stuff put in that bought by truck coal delivered to the from the coal mine to the electrical places my truck nuclear either made on sale site or materials about in my truck so it's going to take electric trucks to produce electricity to make the electricity for the trucks to go up and down the road condemning diesel which comes from the Earth is the second most abundant source of liquid in the world next to water and all this is supposed to save the planet somewhere another let's just see what happens
This article is scientificly
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This article is scientificly flawed. To compare a diesel truck with electric you need to convert the truck horsepower hours into KWH...cost of fuel is irrelevant. The energy usage to move 40+ tonnes over 200 miles considerably exceeds 400kwh. Author has no apparent idea of how to compare fossel fuel and electric power. Suggest revisiting article based on energy consumption with realistic figures
Research the MIT engineer who
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Research the MIT engineer who has developed an ultrasonic drill to reach the Earth's core. The drilling takes a matter of weeks. Located near existing fossil fueled power plants, water is injected into the "pipe" which ejects super heated steam to turn power plant turbines. This is a game changer... AND it's NOT science fiction!
A comparison betwen GMC gas
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A comparison betwen GMC gas truck and Ford electric truck worked well .Both towing exact 20 foot campers..Ford electric didn't even come close to Fords claim of mileage while towing...Gas GMC had better result...End result is Ford needing to recharge below 200 miles. While gas GMC went almost 300 miles before refueling...
Don't beleive what they claim as they always lie..
My semi gets about 8.0 mpg
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My semi gets about 8.0 mpg doing 72 mph all day
SC's are now .58 per kwh..
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SC's are now .58 per kwh...were. 13 in 2018. Home charge (sce) was .13 in 2018, now almost .20/kwh C a pattern here?
I must've missed the item
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I must've missed the item where it stated how long to fully charge...if it is like the other full EV vehicles..then it will take hours...preventing a driver TEAM from working together to ship freight efficiently and quickly....sometimes overnight.
The piece of the puzzle that
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In reply to I must've missed the item by Brad Littlefield (not verified)
The piece of the puzzle that you seem to be missing is that if time is a factor, EV's don't get fully charged. The last 1% of charge can take as long as the first 50%. To make best time on a road trip, EV drivers typically charge to anything from 40% to 70%, unless they're busy doing something else. If you're following proper etiquette, you shouldn't charge to more than 80% at a busy charger unless you absolutely need it to reach the next charger. Semi drivers will probably use charge stops for their 30 minute breaks.
We really need to see solid
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We really need to see solid data of testing of loaded truck (at least 85% GVM) showing range of both trucks. 500 Miles stated is a Tesla truck with no load. Until we see this data, there is no financial viability.
All the comments regarding
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All the comments regarding the true cost of electricity are interesting, but I'd like to address some of the other questionable calculations that were used in this article to make the case for the superiority of the Tesla Semi.
Mr. Johnson used 6 mpg to calculate diesel tractor fuel costs. That's very misleading. The majority of diesel tractors on the road are less than 5 years old, and are either Freightliner Cascadias, Peterbilt 579's, or Kenworths.
I lease a 2020 Peterbilt 579 Ultraloft, and over the past 2 years, when loaded, I usually average around 8.5 mpg. I primarily work as a subcontractor for a company with a very large fleet of trucks, and the fleet average most weeks is between 8.4 and 8.6 mpg.
The 6 mpg figure used in the story has to be based on old data that tracked the fuel mileage of old school long nose tractors, which are the aerodynamic equivalent of bricks on wheels. The resulting cost per mile figure of 85 cents per mile is misleading. When calculated using a more accurate 8.5 mpg, the cost per mile is around 59 cents per mile. Still substantially more expensive than the cost per mile given for the Tesla Semi, but not the ridiculous difference outlined by the article.
It'll be interesting to see what the true MSRP of the Tesla Semi ends up being. Only then will it be possible to accurately estimate the long term savings.
I don't know what to say. I'm
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In reply to All the comments regarding by Edwin (not verified)
I don't know what to say. I'm not in the trucking industry. I see comments like yours and I see comments like this:
"No, I worked for commercial vehicle brake testing. 4MPG was average with stop and go. Might be able to get close to the 7MPG if the driver chooses to deploy all of the aero flaps and keep his speed below 65MPH.
But so often, they chose not to fuss with making sure the skirts and foils are in place and don't realize 5MPH slower is only minutes longer over the course of most trips."
It seems like there's a lot of disagreement no just how much fuel diesel semis use. That might have to do with different routes and loads, but at the end of the day, the electric semi seems to beat even the best numbers people give.