The Tesla logo on a Model 3 at a car show on October 3, 2018 in Paris. (AP Photo/Christophe Ena, File)
PA
Tesla delivered its first electric trucks to PepsiCo on Thursday, more than three years after the company planned to start making the vehicles.
The Austin, Texas-based company formally delivered the trucks to a factory located near Reno, Nevada. The event was broadcast live on Twitter, a platform owned by Elon Musk.
Musk drove one of the three Tesla trucks in front of a crowd gathered inside the factory. One of the vehicles was white, the other bore the Pepsi logo, and the third was painted in Frito-Lay colors.
PepsiCo, based in Purchase, New York, is part of a zero-emission charging project at Frito-Lay’s Modesto, California facility. The project is funded by a $15.4 million clean charging technologies grant from the California Air Resources Board, which includes 15 Tesla electric tractor-trailers and other electric or natural gas-powered vehicles.
Electric trucks would also be eligible for a federal tax credit of up to $40,000.
During his presentation of the Tesla trucks in November 2017, Musk said that production would start in 2019 and that the vehicles would be able to follow each other autonomously as part of a caravan. But during Tesla’s third-quarter earnings conference call last October, the businessman said the company’s “Autonomous Driving” system wasn’t quite ready.
Musk reported that the truck has a range of 800 kilometers (500 miles) per load when carrying a load of 37,000 kilograms (82,000 pounds). The company plans to ramp up production to build 50,000 trucks in North America by 2024.
Competing companies working on hydrogen-powered trucks say battery-powered trucks are useless for long-haul services because the huge batteries take so long to charge. Musk said that hydrogen is not needed in heavy cargo transport.
Source: El Nuevo Herald