Today marks the fifth year anniversary since Tesla unveiled its vision for the future of heavy road transport. It came in the form of Tesla Semi truck which was revealed on November 17, 2017 in Hawthrone, California.
Tesla Semi Unveil, tonight, 8pm PT – tune in at https://t.co/7Ol1Bw0ZaG pic.twitter.com/uuplRKXCll
— Tesla (@Tesla) November 17, 2017
Fast forward five years and Tesla is gearing up to deliver the first Semi to customers on the first day of December. Tesla is doing this by holding a delivery event at its Giga Nevada factory where the first batch of Tesla Semi trucks is being built.
The Tesla Semi will be delivered to the first customer, which is likely to be PepsiCo which has been one of the high-profile companies in the US with orders for the electric truck.
The company announced this through the Tesla official Twitter account.
— Tesla (@Tesla) November 16, 2022
The post showcases the front of a Tesla Semi with its headlights on. The image also showcases the centre seating arrangement which is different from many other semi trucks in the industry. The seat also showcases a red seatbelt which is Tesla’s main brand colour.
The newest teaser post also resembles the original post from 2017 that has the frontal view of the Tesla semi too as it turns its headlights on and back off again. The headlights in the new teaser seem to be far improved over what was showcased back in 2017.
Tesla’s CEO, Elon Musk, will also be dragging himself away from his Twitter duties and attending the event and doing the handover to the first customer. Musk confirmed this in the Q3 earnings call last month:
“We’ll be handing over our first production Tesla Semis to Pepsi on December 1. I’ll be there in person”
This is an exciting chapter for Tesla as they enter another market segment dominated by traditional manufacturers, although this time Tesla does not have the first mover advantage, as many of the traditional trucking companies are already building long range heavy duty trucks, and lost of electric vans and smaller trucks.
Riz is the founder of carloop based in Melbourne, specialising in Australian EV data, insight reports and trends. He is a mechanical engineer who spent the first 7 years of his career building transport infrastructure before starting carloop. He has a passion for cars, particularly EVs and wants to help reduce transport emissions in Australia. He currently drives a red Tesla Model 3.