Oliver Haslam·

Watch A Tesla Semi Travel 500 Miles On One Charge

Tesla has finally begun to ship its Semi truck to its first customers and the company has been able to make good on a claim that some weren’t convinced by – the truck can travel a full 500 miles on a single charge.

Tesla’s claim of a 500-mile range while fully loaded was something that some were not convinced was possible, including Microsoft cofounder Bill Gates.

 

Now, Tesla has shared a timelapse of its electric Semi doing exactly that.

Gates sat a few years ago that he believed the extra weight that a Semi would need to carry would require larger batteries, adding yet more weight. That, he believed, made similar trucks impractical.

The problem is that batteries are big and heavy. The more weight you’re trying to move, the more batteries you need to power the vehicle. But the more batteries you use, the more weight you add—and the more power you need. Even with big breakthroughs in battery technology, electric vehicles will probably never be a practical solution for things like 18-wheelers, cargo ships, and passenger jets. Electricity works when you need to cover short distances, but we need a different solution for heavy, long-haul vehicles.

Tesla first announced the Semi in 2017 and it’s taken until now for it to get the truck into production. But now that the trucks are starting to be delivered, we can hope that more will start to arrive in due course, too.

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