Nearly 8 years after we first saw the Tesla Semi unveiled, we finally got a chance to ride in one at ACT Expo.
ACT Expo is America’s largest commercial EV expo, and we’ve been bringing you stories of what we saw there for the past week.
One of the stars of the show was the Tesla Semi, which got a production update last week with Tesla saying the truck is “on track for volume production in 2026” (hmm, “next year”? where have we heard that before?).
And at ACT Expo itself, Tesla announced a network of 46 public megachargers, mostly across the southern half of the US, which the Semi can plug in at.
We’ve heard a lot about the Semi over the years, but so far there’s been relatively little progress in terms of finally rolling it out en masse to customers.
While we’ve heard plenty of successful independent trials, and Tesla did deliver the first Semis way back in 2022, there have been relatively few delivered to other customers since then. The last update we had was in 2023, when Tesla said about 70 semis had been delivered – only about double the size of the original batch to Pepsi/Frito-Lay.
More recently, Tesla announced last week that the fleet has cumulatively traveled 7.9 million miles – though that’s just 400,000 miles more than the last update we had in September 2024. So things are still moving slowly.
Further, last month, we saw indications that the Tesla Semi had suffered more delays and a “dramatic” price increase compared to previous estimates. (Though we also had a conversation at ACT suggesting that even post-increase, compared to today’s diesel semi prices, the Semi is still incredibly disruptive – if Tesla can scale and get it out to customers).
But it’s not all bad news, because we’re here to report that the Tesla Semi is operating just fine, and we had first-hand experience in one at ACT Expo.
Tesla hosted ride-alongs of the Semi on the private backlot of Anaheim Convention Center, and we got a chance to do a short, low-speed ride-along in the high-profile electric semi tractor (though without a trailer attached). Out of all the lines there, the Tesla one was longest (but was also faster-moving, since Tesla could take multiple people standing behind the driver’s seat).
These aren’t the first public ride-alongs Tesla has done, but they’re the first we’ve been around for, and Tesla hasn’t often allowed filming. So, behold, the full 6 minute video of our ride here:
There was nothing particularly eventful about the ride, except for the fact that we were in a Tesla Semi, something we’ve been waiting on for eight years now, ever since we were at the unveiling in 2017.
Our driver highlighted the Tesla party line about the benefits of electric heavy duty transport, – lower emissions, simpler (lower maintenance) powertrains, regenerative braking both for energy recovery and safer operation, less noise, and so on.
The whole ride was low-speed, except for one moment along the back straight where I encouraged the driver to give it just a little extra juice. And it felt nice and snappy, and also had quite strong off-throttle regenerative braking, as Teslas are famous for.
It’s hard to tell how it would have felt when loaded, but the truck still responded more snappily than we’d expect from a diesel – and didn’t require 18 gears to get there. (We have driven Daimler’s eCascadia with a partial load, and it felt much nimbler than we’d ever expect out of a semi truck.)
While performance for performance’s sake isn’t the point of these trucks, they do need the capability to haul heavy loads, and getting up to speed more quickly means a truck will require less lead time to enter traffic lanes, disrupt traffic less when making turns or merging, and so on.
The benefit of a more powerful motor can even shave time off of a route – for example, if your route includes a long grade, getting up and down the hill faster (with more power on the way up, and regenerative braking on the way down) can save significant time. See this video of a Tesla Semi blowing past diesel trucks up a hill for a demonstration.
The screens within the cabin were active, along with cameras all around the vehicle and Tesla’s navigation system on the right screen. However, Tesla’s FSD visualization system on the left screen was not active, and just showed a static screen.
And, in a covered parking lot with lots of trucks going in and out, it was both quiet and not stinky with exhaust fumes. Wouldn’t it be nice if every depot was like that?
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