Jay Leno and the Tesla semi, most info I've seen to date

No comments on Jay’s inability to keep it between the lines?

I see the Tesla semi as a technology demonstrator at this point. It’s workable for a fairly small portion of the industry, and getting some of them on the road is good so the engineers can deal with the inevitable warts. Wide spread adoption cannot come until the next iteration in battery density. But, 30% more energy in that battery, and I’m seriously looking at buying one.

 

How can anyone give a price on a car that you never know what it's going to cost to purchase.

Musk changes the price faster then we can change our underoos.

What I'd like to know is how he functions without a union while the other 3 can't get rid of the union.

Nobody liked the govt bailout of 08 but that's about where it's headed if they don't go back to work.

 

Have you priced one? You couldn’t afford it at today’s rates. You also couldn’t charge it. I saw what Pepsi was doing with theirs. 75 mile trip out and then back. Well that makes sense!

…worse to plug it in you have to drop the trailer. EVs are stupid especially BIG ones!

 

since fossil fuels are the enemy and climate cultists have hijacked the global economy they are headed for death. Take out the major US ICE producers and it’s win win for them. Notice no US makers build a successful EV. Ford wants to spin off mustang to be its own brand. GM wants to do corvette. The rest are Tesla, rivian, lucid, etc. They could dump ICE cars, eliminate all that legacy debt, legacy pensions, eliminate their EPA polluted sites, etc in one swoop.

it might not kill them this go around, but if the union gets what they want? The US auto industry will go the way of British cars. And they are needed for national security. You need manufacturing to build war material, but not this idiotic regime. Doing everything possible to destroy America. Bilderberg group years ago decided to de-industrialize the US. Many called it a conspiracy. Well it’s happening!

 

First Tesla is priced between the $175-$200k range, it is sold at a loss. While Freightliner's EV and Volvo is around $400k and Kenworth from what I was told is going to be north of $450k.

Expensive?

Hell yes but there is an offest with fuel use and so on. Taking the half-life of the truck - 500k miles - and the fuel average of 6 mpg, that is about $340k in fuel at $4 a gallon. I know it is more but seeing that there are other costs involved which add up. I think when you factor in all of this, you are investing in a truck for a million miles maybe close to $750k to do the job. I would have to run my own numbers but it is close to that mark.

Tire costs are the same on both vehicles, energy needed to run the truck is the problem, it isn't that the grid won't handle it, it is a question of uniform cost. With power companies using scams to squeeze consumers, it may end up being more costly than diesel.

First the major US ICE producers include Toyota, Honda, and a lot of others. Ford and GM are not the only ones any more.

Toyota has been the most successful of all of them with Honda being second, Tesla leads the world in manufacturing on how to build and market an EV, while Ford, GM and that other company are acting like this is 1985 and what they will build is what people will buy. Honestly they need to go out of business.

BS, we are not living in the 1940s. The US auto industry is not going the way of the Brits - it already has. We have a completely diluted auto industry, the Japanese companies dominate the industry, and the US companies are the legacy system and inflexible and more importantly, act like a multinational company first. Ford, GM, and the other companies can not convert to wartime production, it is impossible now, their lines are set for cars and not metal production, and they have no talent to do so either, those days are gone. There is no national security issues because these companies - Ford, GM and other one is not american, their patriotism is only as great as what the government can give them and after what we gave GM, they quickly forgot who invested in them and ran to china to sell parts of their company off. Ford has taken money too, and we handed Chrysler to Fiat with millions of dollars to bribe them to buy it.

To everyone, EVs are here to stay, they are flawed like everything else we have, we are just used to having to deal with those flaws from legacy vehicles and not used to the limitations of the EVs because of our mindset on transportation.

I don't think the EV is going to solve much, Oil is still needed, oil is the ultimate energy source, it is the ultimate material source and it is going to be with us for at least another 2 centuries because our lives all depend on it - from what we wear to what we eat to the medicine we take, it is important for humankind. EVs depend on it for the plastic parts and tires. EVs can't be made with only metal, so it is here to stay.

The real problem with EVs are not EVs themselves, it is some of their supporters are too myopic, borderline mentally ill and woke as all hell. SO the best thing is to not fall for the traps, not to deal with the BS on both sides and let's see where this goes. Our biggest enemy right now is governments who are trying to do something only God can do.

 

You can't completely discount the cost of fuel because electricity is not free. The efficiency of electric cars is primarily in rolling resistance and wind resistance, so if you just do that to a regular car or a regular truck you'll also get better fuel mileage. Modern trucks these days seem to be averaging around 8 or 9. Especially on whatever route Pepsi has them running on because it's probably flat ground.

 

Wonder what the yearly cost of fuel vs. Electricity would be.

 

Jay Leno has a CDL?

 

Lost me at “Spark Plugs”

 

Why would it be up to the taxpayers to build the infrastructure for EV’s?
No one has been able to explain that.
And let’s not overlook the fact that electric motors are not indestructible. They have a life cycle and no matter how well you construct the wiring and the other critical parts, moisture and corrosion will always be a threat.
Not to mention battery life and replacement costs.