Semi Ramp-Up
During a recent interview on an episode of Jay Leno’s Garage, Tesla manager Dan Priestley and Chief Designer Franz von Holtzhausen gave a great breakdown of the work that went into the creation of Tesla’s new class 8 tractor - and gave us some pretty interesting details at the same time.
The episode premiered on October 2nd, and began with a conversation between the host - Jay Leno himself - and the two Tesla executives. The pair talked about the Semi’s construction and the systems that make it such a powerful entry into the class 8 market - including the overall design of the vehicle.
Priestley and von Holtzhausen quickly brought Leno up to speed on the vehicle’s drive train with, hauling power, and regenerative braking ability - making mention of their amazing performance in the recent Run On Less electric transport study. The ability to extend battery charge while driving with this system is a big reason why it performs so well - as is the ability to recover 70 percent of its charge in under half an hour.
Overall, the discussion stayed primarily on the design philosophy of the truck - the team’s priority on safety, and aerodynamics especially being a big part of that. Both Tesla execs make several smaller mentions of things we haven’t heard about yet too.
For instance, when Leno asks about the price, we don’t get a hard number, but Priestley mentions that the whole point was to keep the truck at a competitive price in relation to diesel variants, while still offering the operating cost savings from being electric.
He also mentions that Tesla has plans for releasing a long haul version of their Semi that includes a sleeping area. Currently the Semis are built on the Daycab design - where the vehicle is expected to do its deliveries and then return by day’s end. The truck is clearly capable of operating multi-day hauls, so it makes sense that Tesla would eventually be producing a long-haul version.
But it’s here that Priestley makes a small aside that - for anyone following Tesla news on the regular - is very interesting.
Leno asks how many Semi’s the company has built so far, and Priestley says that they’ve made a couple dozen - somewhere in the 60 to 70 range. These would be for companies like Pepsi, as well as a bunch for Tesla’s own internal use.
But then he says,
““We’re collecting data, we’re getting a lot of really great driver feedback, and then we’re going to take that time to do a bunch of improvements and bring that into a high volume [...]””
Now that is interesting.
Tesla is in the habit of making constant improvements to their vehicles, so it isn’t surprising that they’d be doing the same thing with the Semi. It’s the idea that they are doing this before even getting the vehicle into mass production that shows how different the Semi project is to other vehicles in the company’s fleet. And it really has to do with the use-case of the Semi.
Back at the beginning of the episode, there was the usual banter about the usefulness of the truck, and how much it saves on fuel - but very quickly Leno hit on a topic that was very poignant: Tesla’s strategy for winning over transport truck operators.
It’s one thing to convince large companies to make the switch for the savings alone - it’s definitely another to convince truckers that your vehicle is legitimately the better option.
Von Holtzhausen makes repeated mention of how other trucks have to accommodate for their massive engines so much that the interiors can’t really be designed for teh driver’s comfort. This is their office, and so Tesla has designed the whole rig around what makes a trucker’s job easier.
Even paying attention to the routine - getting into and out of the truck often - leading to things like the rear-facing door handle, and the gear storage being just inside the driver-side door - even the steps have been lowered slightly to help, as research showed that the biggest cause of trucker injuries is falling when getting into or out of the vehicle.
Leno is 100% correct that Truckers tend to be very resistant to change - they know what they like, and are particular about anything new that shakes up their routine. But in basing their approach on researching what working truckers need, Tesla has proven that all they need to do is let the vehicle speak for itself, and operators will respond.
Honestly, it’s a very smart way to go about this. Tesla knows that changing an industry like transport trucking was never going to be easy - especially with changing it to electric, which has a reputation for being unreliable before now. If they continue with this tactic, the full production run will be very successful.