Ten Tesla Takeaways: Part I

In many ways, the Tesla truck launch in California last week pointed the way toward trucking’s future. Photo: Jack Roberts

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It’s been a busy 18 months or so in trucking, with new diesel and electric trucks debuting seemingly every time we turn around. And, of course, here at the eleventh hour, Tesla finally unveiled what was perhaps the most anticipated launch of them all, that of its new, Class 8 all-electric Semi truck.

The Tesla event was all about making a splash. Actual details on the new truck were fairly sparse, and the company will have to clarify several points made during last week’s launch, as well as address additional issues that were skipped over.

In the meantime, there was in fact, a lot to be learned from the Tesla Semi launch: Five things we know now… and five things that remain to be seen.

Five Things We Know Now, Thanks to Tesla:

1.Trucking is going to change

We might as well get this one out of the way first: Regardless of what you think of Elon Musk and his new truck, bear in mind that he is a visionary. It was apparent the other night in Hawthorne, that he knows enough about trucking to be dangerous. And that is a reality that is going to impact this industry in one way or the other in the coming months and years.

And Musk is hardly alone in this space. There are any number of visionaries eyeballing trucking right now. Some of them, like Amazon’s Jeff Bezos or Peloton’s Josh Switkes, are fairly well known to us. But there are also a lot of very talented unknown people working behind the scenes at companies like Apple, Google, Intel, and Walmart who are looking at trucking with fresh eyes. And that means new ways of doing business using …Read the rest of this story

Source:: http://www.truckinginfo.com/blog/truck-tech/story/2017/11/10-tesla-take-ways-part-i.aspx