Issue link: https://read.dmtmag.com/i/730311
Class 8 Feature driven rear axle with electric motors directly adjacent to the wheel hubs – de- rived from the electric rear axle that was developed for the Mercedes-Benz Citaro hybrid bus. The power is supplied by a battery pack consisting of three lithium- ion battery modules resulting in a range of up to 125 miles – enough for a typi- cal daily delivery tour. The batteries are housed in a crash-proof location inside the frame. The cost of fully electric drive sys- tems, coupled with their low mileage range, has made the venture prohibitive until recently. Daimler Trucks expects the costs of batteries to lower by a factor of 2.5 between 1997 and 2025 – from $550/kWh down to $220/kWh. At the same time, performance is forecast to improve by the same factor over the same period – from 80 Wh/kg up to 200 Wh/kg. Tesla says its own electric semi is under development Tesla, makers of electric and semi- automated sedans, announced just days earlier in an online blog post it has already begun work on an electric-pow- ered heavy-duty truck. Tesla CEO Elon Musk in a July 20 blog post titled "Master Plan, Part Deux" said the heavy-duty truck devel- opment could be unveiled as early as next year, though the company is still in the early stages of development, he said. "We believe the Tesla Semi will deliver a substantial reduction in the cost of cargo transport, while increasing safety and making it really fun to operate." Musk also in the blog post addressed criti- cism of the company's autonomous Autopilot system, which came under fire recently by the public and regulators for its role in causing a fatal crash in which a Tesla Model S sedan hit a Class 8 tractor-trailer. "This is not beta software in any normal sense of the word. Every release goes through extensive internal valida- tion before it reaches any customers," Musk writes. "It is called beta in order to decrease complacency and indicate that it will continue to improve (Au- topilot is always off by default). Once we get to the point where Autopilot is approximately 10 times safer than the US vehicle average, the beta label will be removed." Tesla is not the first company this year to say it has an electric semi in the works. Start-up tech company Nikola (a company also named after famed inventor Nikola Tesla) also announced it 28 October 2016 BestDriverJOBS www.bestdriverjobs.com