DHL revealed the result of a Tesla Semi trial it recently did and the company came out impressed by the...
DHL says that it was able to confirm that the Tesla Semi is capable of 500 miles on a single charge with a full load.
But more importantly, DHL confirmed that it achieved an efficiency of 1.72 kWh/mile on average during its two-week trial:
During the trial, the trial vehicle averaged 1.72 kWh/mile operating at speeds exceeding 50 mph (80 km/h) on average for over half its time on the road. The result exceeded our expectations and even Tesla’s own rating.
That’s exactly what Tesla has been predicting, and in fact, Tesla says that it now does a little better with 1.6 kWh per mile.
kWh per mile means that this is the amount of energy it needs to travel a mile. Considering that 1.7 kWh of electricity can cost as low as $0.15, it opens up the opportunity to greatly reduced the cost of operation of semi trucks.
Speeds "exceeding 50 MPH"? Like, 51 MPH? The claimed efficiency is nonsense given the promotional videos from Tesla where they tried to obscure the driving time, distance, and speed. It also flies in the face of the EV Semi testing conducted last year
DHL's statement is that their longest run was 390 mines, with no information about state of charge at the beginning or end. They are extrapolating the 500 mile distance.
This sounds like Pepsi's first press statements before they found out what shit boxes these trucks are the hard way.
Be as skeptical of me as you like. Feel free to believe the company that has lied for a decade now about capabilities and timelines. It doesn't hurt me at all. But keep in mind that Tesla has forced crash victims that they have settled with to sign NDAs and non-disparagement agreements. It's 100% likely that PepsiCo has also signed both.
I'm not sure how you could think they weren't having reliability issue with all the Tesla Semi pulled over and being towed for a couple years now, but again that doesn't really effect me. If you look, you'll see evidence. And, of course, you can watch Tesla's own marketing video of the overnight drive. Zoom in on the speedometer and see how fast the driver is going, see the driver being passed by other semis, then wonder why that might be.
Most electric semis will not be able to haul as much stuff at once.
I agree with this statement, but not all trucks are weightbound. Many hit their volume limits long before weight limits. Additional with TCO its possible the cost per mile of operating an electric semi might still be worth hauling less tonnage per truck requiring additional shipments.
I saw another source that said they were hauling 75,000lbs total weight and that's as much as they ever usually haul. So they don't max out their trucks on a daily basis carrying parcels, so for them whatever the total allowable difference is between an EV/ICE isn't an issue.
Edit: I guess that if DHL grew as a business though they might eventually start moving more packages around and that would require more weight, but that's not a today thing.
TLDR; Every major truck company has an electric truck for sale, they have the same daily range in Europe and are significantly cheaper to operate.
He is a startup found turned truck driver who does weekly vlogs about his work and gives good insights about the current state of electric trucking in Europe. At the moment every large trucking company (not just Tesla) have electric trucks on sale and the company he is working for bought quite a few from different companies. He gets day ranges of 750km with the right traffic conditions and also just charges in his 45min breaks which you have to take every 3.5h I believe. Also the daily driving is limited to 10h and the maximum speed limit is 80 kph, so the theoretical maximum range of a single driver truck in Europe is a little bit above 800km. That puts electric truck right now on par with diesel trucks, because you cant always drive the at the maximum speed limit. Also he calculated once that electric trucks are roughly 30% cheeper.