Tesla Semi launch, Geely's battery healing fast-charging, Rivian R3, and more

Uh, this week was the Tesla Semi unveiling step three.

Um, [laughs] obviously it was originally, originally unveiled in 2017.

Then there was another production unveil in 2022 where they claimed that the vehicle was going into production, but it was just at a smaller factory, mostly hand-built.

And now this is the very real Tesla Semi unveiling launch, production launch.

High-volume production launch, let's call it like that, 'cause they did the unveiling this time at the factory in Nevada, the new factory, which is supposedly built for 50,000 trucks a year.

Now, um, what new information that we get, you know, it's the third time unveiling this, so we, there's a lot of things that are, are, are getting repeated.

Um, but, uh, a lot of the focus of the presentation was around, uh, the manufacturing of the truck, which is, you know, one of the reason that I'm still excited about the, the, the Tesla Semi 'cause w- you know, it's, it's been late.

It's seven years late.

There's no way around it.

There's been plenty of other Class 8 all-electric option release since, so it's like, all right, it's not, this Tesla is not the first to market there.

It's not...

It's, so it's, it's less exciting than, you know, the early days of the EV industry where Tesla was leading.

But where Tesla does still have an advantage, uh, is getting a vehicle, all-electric vehicle program to volume production profitably.

So a lot of the focus was around that, uh, around the vertical integration of the manufacturing at the Nevada facility for the Tesla Semi.

Uh, they claim a lot of firsts too, and blah, blah, blah.

Actually, the concentration of all the parts manufacturing, subsystem manufacturing at the same facility is by far the most integrated, uh, from any Class 8 truck out there.

I, I put some feelers around with my, my trucking experts and, uh, t- like, uh, just to fact check some of the claims here that, uh, that were made during the event.

And, uh, y- all of them agreed that, um, no one else is doing that much of their own manufacturing on Class 8 trucks.

You know, the stampings, the battery, the axles, everything in-house.

Well, not everything obviously, but y- you know what I mean.

Uh, they also claim a first powder-coated Class 8 truck, uh, on, on the, uh, to be the battery line.

They, uh, they confirm a few things that we already knew about, like the 4680 cell switch.

Uh, so the first, um...

Originally they were using, like, uh, an architecture on the battery pack closer to the, uh, Model 3, Model Y with the 2170 cells.

They were even using Model 3 drive units at one point.