Tesla's much-hyped Semi truck, which company founder Elon Musk calls "the most badass rig on the road," may have just shed some light on the most closely guarded secret around the EV maker's entire big-truck program: The truck's weight and payload capabilities.
Tesla simply refuses to say how much it's Class 8 EV weighs. Though Pepsi's Semis participated in the North American Council for Fuel Efficiency's Run On Less program, reporting real-world performance stats, still nobody knows the exact weight. Even as Tesla hopes to ramp up Semi production, mostly to fulfill existing orders (not reach new customers), the weight hasn't ever been exactly confirmed.
In the world of sales, and frankly in the world of how much things weigh, if someone doesn't want to tell you, it's almost certainly bad news.
All EVs have to carry heavy batteries, which never get any lighter even as they lose charge. The Tesla Semi likely carriers about 10,000 pounds of batteries to achieve an advertised 500-mile range.
No matter how light a truck's hood gets, that's a lot of weight to offset.
The popular joke (or meme) around the Semi has become that it exclusively hauls potato chips for Frito-Lay, a Pepsi company. Indeed many skeptical owner-ops dismiss sightings of Teslas blowing the doors off diesel trucks on Donner Pass's steep grades as a simple parlor trick, with a Semi hauling a trailer that's mostly full of air (much like a bag of Fritos).
But a new video has surfaced of the Semi hauling something pretty tangibly heavy: Five Model 3 Tesla cars.
