California Highway Patrol members spoke to the truck’s driver, who said the test mule was “exceeding” its 600-mile range estimate.
The California Highway Patrol (CHP) have some photos of a Tesla test mule out in the wild. It appears that during the conversation with the driver, it’s actually exceeding the claims that Tesla made about its performance…
Check out the inside view from the cabin.
The CHP rep reportedly spoke with the driver of the Tesla Semi at a weigh station near Donner Pass, in Truckee, California. The Tesla Semi driver told the weigh station operators that “the truck is meeting or exceeding the range estimates” with an alleged 75,000-pound test payload of nine concrete blocks on their trailer.
With some basic math, we can make some estimates here. Each of those nine blocks you see in the photo is approximately three by three by six feet.
Concrete’s density is around 145 pounds per cubic foot, with the trailer carrying around 500 cubic feet, our calculations put the payload to be close to 73,000 pounds.
A normal weight concrete weighs 2400 kg per cubic meter or 145 lbs per cubic foot (3915 lbs per cubic yard). The unit weight of concrete (density) varies depending on the amount and density of the aggregate, the amount of entrained air (and entrapped air), and the water and cement content.
Source
Other claims from commenters on Facebook⢠made some other observations about the size of the concrete blocks.
One user said:
“75000 pounds Concrete ways 150 lbs per cubic foot.. rough guess those blocks are 2x2x4 x 17 blocks = 36000 pounds
Not quite 75000″
Originally Tesla CEO Elon Musk said that the Tesla Semi would get around 500 miles of range. He also stated it would do 0-60 in 5 seconds.
The driver on this test run has said that the truck’s range was performing better than expected, claiming it was closer to 600 miles but there isn’t enough data to accurately prove that yet.
If the range is true and the towing capacity is accurate, this could be great news for the Tesla company.
I personally would love to see the Tesla Semi live up to its claims and would love to see more of these on the roads.
