The Tesla Semi has been spotted in two new Instagram photos uploaded Wednesday, and it’s shaping up to impress. The all-electric truck is set to hit the roads next year, following an unveiling hosted by CEO Elon Musk at the Tesla Design Studio in Hawthorne, California, last November. As a vehicle that could reshape the trucking industry, Tesla’s truck looks set to stun.
Tesla fans Paul de Dood and Colin Dougherty took pictures of a prototype truck parked up at the Kettleman City Supercharger station halfway between Los Angeles and San Francisco. It’s one of the 1,229 stations around the world designed to charge the company’s cars in around half an hour with 120 kilowatts of power. The Kettleman City installation is a larger station with 40 plug-in points and solar panels on the roof, with tables and restrooms in a nearby facility point.
See the truck parked up at the Kettleman City station below:
While the company’s literature refers to stations like the Kettleman City installation as a “mega supercharger,” this is not the same as the “megacharger” announced at the unveiling event in November. These installations, placed every 400 miles in the United States, will be designed to charge the Semi to an acceptable level within 30 minutes, using solar panels to harvest energy. While it is unclear how powerful these chargers will be, photos from the unveiling event show a much larger charging connector than the company’s existing cars and Bloomberg analysis suggests the vehicle would need around 1,200 kilowatts to charge in these times.
Tesla’s prototype truck has been gradually making the rounds since its unveiling. In January, the vehicle was spotted in a matte black outfit, quietly gliding past the UPS Customer Center in Sunnyvale, California, around 20 minutes drive from the company’s headquarters.
The truck will ship in models offering range of 300 or 500 miles, with prices starting at $150,000. At the unveiling event, Musk stated that this would be efficient for most journeys, as 80 percent of shipping round trips are 250 miles or shorter.
The truck has already attracted some big-name customers. DHL, one of the world’s largest package delivery firms, has orders 10 vehicles ahead of its launch. In December, PepsiCo placed an order for 100 vehicles ahead of launch. Orders for the vehicle already moved past 250 in the month after its unveiling.
