Thursday, August 4, 2016

Elon Musk Details Tesla's Semi-Truck, Minibus Plans


Tesla has just released its second quarter earnings and while there were plenty of relevant details to go radon from CEO Elon Musk’s investor call, one of the more significant pieces of information to come from the call involved Tesla’s plans for an electric semi truck and minibus, including an estimated timetable to have both vehicles unveiled in the “early to mid 2017.”

Musk himself admitted that Tesla’s ideas for these two vehicles are still the equivalent of broad strokes, which means that it still doesn’t have a fleshed-out plan as far as production of the two models are concerned. A lot of the questions that even Tesla is asking itself will likely be answered when prototype versions of the truck and the minibus are unveiled. To the company’s credit, it’s taking these projects very seriously. With the semi-truck, Tesla has tapped former Model S program director, Jerome Guilen to lead the project. In addition to his familiarity with Tesla’s engineering and development methods, Guillen also has a background in developing trucks, having done so in the past as an engineer at Daimler’s truck division and as the man at the helm in the development of the Freightliner Cascadia truck.

As for the minibus plans, Musk addressed those separately when he responded to a rendering of a Volkswagen-inspired minibus that was pieced together by Jalopnik. Turns out, Tesla isn’t necessarily planning to build a public transport in the traditional sense, but a modern electric version of Volkswagen’s Type II Microbus.

Tesla’s goal, it seems, is to have these options available in the event that electric or autonomous technologies become more widely accepted throughout the industry. The truck industry, in particular, is reportedly been considering a shift to EV models for the future. Having fleshed out plans that includes production timetables for both models would give Tesla the advantage of offering something that no other automaker has at this point. It’s an ambitious goal to have considering that these plans were only made public when Musk announced the company’s updated Master Plan last month. Then again, it would be unbecoming of Tesla if its goals aren’t ambitious to begin with.

Continue after the jump to read the full story.





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