A newly-released video of a Tesla Semi prototype heading down towards Santa Rosa, California on a highway, puts an end to ideas that the project is dead.
To date, the Tesla Semi dreamed up by Elon Musk has been put to work in limited runs, including an earlier trip from Tesla's Nevada Gigafactory to its Fremont, California. plant to deliver battery packs. Other sightings have been made in Oklahoma, Saint Louis, Texas, and other parts of California.
This all comes on the heels of Elon Musk's weekly whirlwind of drama coming out of his Silicon Valley dream factory. From the Tesla Semi not being ready to Model 3's being stalled in production to a disgruntled employee supplying disinformation, Tesla is basically an HBO drama set in real time.
Tesla Semi driving to Santa Rosa pic.twitter.com/5Gdk4WAJcE
— Tesla (@Tesla) June 20, 2018
Taking Reservations
In terms of total reservations, there is no final number other than unofficial tallies by publications based on news reports, with an educated guess in the thousands. Confirmed reservations have come from Anheuser-Busch, UPS, Pepsi, Lublaws, and FedEx to serve short distance routes between manufacturing and distribution centers (Pepsi, Anheuser-Busch) and to replace aging legacy fleets (FedEx)
Many have been skeptical over Tesla's range using existing battery technology, such as Daimler Truck head's Martin Daum, who shared his thoughts about broken "laws of physics" in an interview this year.
"If Tesla really delivers on this promise, we'll obviously buy two trucks — one to take apart and one to test because if that happens, something has passed us by," said Daum. "But for now, the same laws of physics apply in Germany and in California."
NEXT: Survey Says: Americans Warming Up to Self-Driving Cars
Watch
