Tesla Semi launch, Geely's battery healing fast-charging, Rivian R3, and more

Frederic Lambert (0:00)

One, and we are live for a new Electrek Podcast episode. I am Frederic Lambert, your host on Azure. I'm joined by Seth Weintraub. How are you doing this week, Seth?

Seth Weintraub (0:10)

I'm good.

Frederic Lambert (0:12)

All right, Seth is joining us from the West Coast this week. So that's why we're doing the podcast a little bit early to accommodate this travel, but we have still a big show ahead of us, a lot of news this week that came out. And I think I can hear myself, Seth, or your speakers right now. I don't know why I couldn't before the show, but we're going to have to figure that out. But yeah, so we're going to jump right in. Because we were doing it live, we know that a lot of people won't be able to join us as the usual time, but I'm going to remind you about that. We're going to be able still to take some of your question at the end of the show if we're good on time. All right, this week was the Tesla Semi-Unveiling Step 3

Obviously, it was originally unveiled in 2017 Then there was another production unveiling in 2022, where they claimed that the vehicle was getting into production, but it was just at a smaller factory, mostly hand-built. And now this is the very real Tesla Semi-Unveiling launch, production launch, high-volume production launch. Let's call it like that, because they did the unveiling this time at the factory in Nevada, the new factory, which is supposedly built for 50,000 trucks a year.

Now, what new information that we get? You know, it's the third time unveiling this, so there's a lot of things that are getting repeated. But a lot of the focus of the presentation was around the manufacturing of the truck, which is one of the reasons that I'm still excited about the Tesla Samaic, because it's been late. It's seven years late. There's no way around it. There's been plenty of other class 8 electric option release since. So it's like, all right, Tesla is not the first to market there. So it's less exciting than the early days of the EV industry where Tesla was leading. But where Tesla does still have an advantage is getting a vehicle, electric vehicle program, to volume production profitably. So a lot of the focus was around that, around the vertical integration of the manufacturing at the Nevada facility for the Tesla SMI. It declaimed a lot of first to, actually the concentration of all the parts manufacturing, subsystem manufacturing at the same facility is by far the most integrated from any class 8 truck out there. I put some feelers around my trucking experts and just to fact check some of the claims here that were made during the event. And all of them agreed that no one else is doing that much of their own manufacturing on class 8 trucks. You know, the stampings, the battery, the axles, everything in house. Well, not everything obviously, but you know what I mean. They also claim a first powder coated class 8 truck on the earth to be the battery line.

They confirm a few things that we already knew about, like the 4680 cell switch. So the first, originally, they were using like an architecture on the battery pack closer to the Model 3, Model Y with the 2170 cells. They were even using Model 3 drive units at one point. That also has been modified. Now, they're sharing it with the Cybertruck. It's sharing the same or at least a similar drivetrain.

Another first that they claim is the electric steering. So there's no hydraulic pumps now for the steering. It's not a steer-by-wire. Other people are reporting this as a steer-by-wire. It's not really a steer-by-wire. It's just electric steering. There's still a mechanical connection with the steering. It's just that there's no hydraulic pumps being used here.

Seth Weintraub (4:04)

It's like electric assisted steering, is what you're saying.

Frederic Lambert (4:07)

Yes. So the actual steering mechanism within the axle is powered by electric drives rather than the hydraulic system. So that's apparently a first in classic truck as well. There's the new Mega Manifold. So Tesla has been known for its manifold design. The Octo-Volve and all that for the HVAC system within its vehicle that are very efficient. And this one is like a blown up version of the one in the Cybertruck. Oh, I wrote CyberCab here, but I meant Cybertruck. Unless there's maybe a CyberCab also has a similar smaller system.

They already unveiled this map here of the Mega Chargers. We have already seen some of them, but this is obviously a hopeful map. It's that the Mega Charger is in operation right now.