Silent Tesla Semi trucks run long and far as Pepsi tips how fast they charge on 750kW Megachargers

Tesla Semis at Megachargers (image: Pepsi)

It takes less than half an hour to top up a Tesla Semi electric rig to 95% battery capacity on the dedicated 750kW Megacharger stations that Pepsi uses for them, says one Semi driver. The trucks run for 12 hours a day, according to the beverage giant, while some go on trips that are as long as 450 miles.

The fleet of 21 Tesla Semi trucks that Pepsi received with the help of a US$31 million grant from the California Air Resources Board has been running for a few months already. Pepsi now has a good overview what the Tesla semi rig is capable of, and has shared its observations in a production video called “Run On Less – Electric DEPOT” as part of its sustainability program.

There, Pepsi representatives say that its ICE truck drivers got accustomed to the electric Tesla Semi very quickly, pointing out the interior accoutrements as well as the centered driver’s seat placed at a high observation point. One of the drivers also mentioned the fast charging abilities of the Tesla Semi as a big advantage, as he is able to take the electric truck to 95% in “20 or 30 minutes” from “like 5% or 10%” of battery capacity.

Interestingly enough, the actual output of the Tesla Megachargers that Pepsi installed on its premises and which are built on the new 1MW charging platform that Tesla announced together with the Semi, is 750kW. On its own Semi driver profiles at the dedicated “Run on Less” campaign page, however, Pepsi lists that “charging time is 45 minutes for 0-75% state of charge,” somewhat contradicting the driver’s observations.

Tesla is now looking for government funding to install a number of stations that will house those same 750kW Megacharger piles along a 1,800-mile route stretching from the Texas border to its Fremont factory in California. Such a Megacharger highway may greatly induce the electric Semi truck’s adoption by other companies, or help Tesla shuttle its own goods between its two production centers on the cheap.

As for the actual Tesla Semi range that the drivers have been observing, three of the 21 rigs that Pepsi runs for “about 12 hours a day” go on longer haul routes. These can range from 250 miles to 450 miles, pinpointing that the Semi’s advertised 500-mile range is doable in real-life scenarios, at least for the weather conditions that Pepsi has been running its electric trucks in.

On a different note, another advantage of the the Tesla Semi trucks is that they apparently run pretty silent as can be witnessed in the video below where a Semi pulls from a stoplight with only the typical whooshing sound of an accelerating EV.

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Silent Beast | Semi Stoplight Acceleration ‘Sound’
by u/lil_nar in teslamotors

Daniel Zlatev – Tech Writer – 833 articles published on Notebookcheck since 2021

Wooed by tech since the industrial espionage of Apple computers and the times of pixelized Nintendos, Daniel went and opened a gaming club when personal computers and consoles were still an expensive rarity. Nowadays, fascination is not with specs and speed but rather the lifestyle that computers in our pocket, house, and car have shoehorned us in, from the infinite scroll and the privacy hazards to authenticating every bit and move of our existence.

Daniel Zlatev, 2023-08- 5 (Update: 2023-08- 5)

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