A Tesla engineer describes building the electric semi business from a co-founder's question about shipping parts via diesel truck. Diesel trucks are just 1% of vehicles but burn 16-18% of road fuel, making electric semis far cheaper per mile. The company is now scaling to capture a $3 billion market opportunity.
And what was your journey through Tesla to end up here?
So I started as an intern on battery engineering, then was fortunate enough to actually end up at this factory, Gigafactory Nevada, you know, back in 2014. And then JB, one of our co-founders, now board member, was asked, why do we have to ship parts between these two factories in Fremont, California? We're here in Reno, Nevada. How do we do that? Not on diesel trucks. And we quickly realized there was a business case there. And as a company, we're always super interested in doing this because of the environmental impact it can have. And diesel trucks consume a lot of fuel. They're 1% of the vehicles on road. They're like 16 to 18% of the fuel consumed. So on a dollar-per-mile basis, the semi-truck is substantially cheaper running electric than it is diesel. You know, so all the way back in 2017, we unveiled our initial design. And then went through multiple loops, had some company growth challenges in there a few times. And, you know, we'll own the schedule, but now we're ready and it's time to bring this to scale.
