Thursday evening, Tesla delivered the long-awaited production versions of its electric semi-truck five years after CEO Elon Musk revealed the commercial vehicle. Pepsi received the semi-trucks at an event held at the company gigafactory in Sparks, Nevada.
Back in December 2017, Pepsi placed an order for 100 trucks. On the waiting list are other high-profile customers waiting in the line such as Walmart, UPS and Anheuser-Busch. At the event, Tesla had five semi-trucks with PepsiCo and Frito-Lay branding.
Tesla did not reveal the price of the Semi truck however, during its second quarter earnings report, it did say that it would need to push production out to 2022 due to supply chain challenges and the limited availability of battery cells.
Tesla CEO had initially introduced the electric truck Class 8 prototype in 2017 and then planned to start production in 2019.
When the truck was first introduced, Tesla said Autopilot, the automaker’s driver assistance system, would be on the Tesla Semi. However, reportedly by Tech Crunch, neither Musk nor Dan Priestly mentioned any automated capabilities of the truck.
The truck will be able to travel 500 miles on a single battery charge when fully charged and driving 65 miles per hour.
The automaker has not provided any stats including the battery pack size.
