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Tesla Semi and Roadster could be relying on a “battery breakthrough”
Elon Musk and Tesla have made some bold claims for the new Tesla Semi and Roadster. Those who understand batteries have been scratching their heads trying to figure out how the company can deliver the specs it’s promising – and concluding that the only possible way is some as-yet-unannounced advancement in battery technology.
Musk says the Tesla Semi will be able to haul 80,000 pounds for 500 miles, and recharge to 400 miles in 30 minutes, which would revolutionize the trucking industry. As for the Roadster, its promised 0-60 acceleration of 1.9 seconds effectively shuts down every one of the world’s baddest supercars, and its touted 620-mile range would be double that of any EV produced to date.
However, industry experts are questioning Tesla CEO Elon Musk’s touted range and charging capabilities, saying the specifications defy current physics and battery economics.
According to Bloomberg, analysts at Bloomberg New Energy Finance point out that Tesla Semi’s announced specs would require a battery capacity of between 600 and 1,000 kilowatt hours (6-10 times the size of the largest Model S battery). Using current technology, an 800 kWh battery pack would weigh over 10,000 pounds and cost more than $100,000. That’s just for the battery – Tesla has said its entire truck will start at $150,000. It seems plain that Tesla is counting on falling battery prices to square the circle. “The first Tesla Semis won’t hit the road until late 2019,” Bloomberg points out. “Even then, production would probably start slowly. Most fleet operators will want to test the trucks before considering going all-in. By the time Tesla gets large orders, batteries should cost considerably less.”
It isn’t just the capacity of the battery that’s causing analysts to wear out their calculators – Musk’s claim that the Tesla Semi will be able to add 400 miles of charge in 30 minutes would require a charging system 10 times more powerful than Tesla’s current Supercharger – which is already by far the most powerful in the industry.
Tesla Semi Megacharger port could support 1 MW of power.
“I don’t understand how that works,” said Bloomberg New Energy Finance EV Analyst Salim Morsy. “I really don’t.” Tesla’s current generation of Superchargers have a power output of 120 kilowatts and can add about 180 miles of range to a Model S battery in 30 minutes. To meet Tesla’s charging claim for the Semi would require the promised Megacharger to deliver an output of at least 1,200 kW.
Perhaps Tesla’s biggest bombshell is the promise that it will guarantee truckers electricity rates of 7 cents per kilowatt hour, which Bloomberg estimates could translate to fuel savings of up to $30,000 a year. Musk says that adding solar panels and battery packs at the charging stations will account for at least part of the cost reduction. However, BNEF’s Salim Morsy insists that Tesla will have to heavily subsidize those electricity rates – he estimates that Tesla will pay a minimum of 40 cents per kWh. “There’s no way you can reconcile 7 cents a kilowatt hour with anything on the grid that puts a megawatt hour of energy into a battery,” Morsy said. “That simply does not exist.”
Of course, that’s no different from what Tesla does for its current Supercharger network, offering free electricity to many customers, while paying almost $1 per kWh to produce it, according to Morsy’s estimate.
And how about that Roadster? To deliver its promised range of 620 miles, it will need a 200 kWh battery pack, twice the size of Tesla’s largest currently available pack. Mr. Morsy predicts that Tesla will stack two battery packs, one on top of the other, beneath the Roadster’s floor.
Even with a double-decker pack however, it’s hard to escape the conclusion that Tesla is counting on improving battery tech to make the Roadster, like the Semi, feasible. Battery density has been improving at a rate of about 7.5 percent a year, and that’s without any major breakthrough in battery chemistry.
“The trend in battery density is, I think, central to any claim Tesla made about both the Roadster and the Semi,” Morsy said. “That’s totally fair. The assumptions on a pack in 2020 shouldn’t be the same ones you use today.”
A massive battery pack not only enables greater range – it’s also a key element in the Roadster’s world-beating 0-60 acceleration. Jalopnik’s David Tracy spoke with battery expert Venkat Viswanathan, a Mechanical Engineering Assistant Professor at Carnegie Mellon, who says that the 1.9-second figure actually seems reasonable.
Viswanathan explains that the power output of a motor is limited by the power draw from each battery cell. Because the Roadster’s pack is double the size, the power draw may not be that much more than that of a Ludicrous Model S.
Viswanathan told Jalopnik that the most modern battery cells offer specific energy of about 240 watt-hours per kilogram. Using that assumption, the Roadster’s 200 kWh battery pack should weigh roughly 1,800 pounds, a huge advance over the previous-generation Roadster. With clever use of lightweight materials, the Roadster could still come out under the nearly two-ton curb weight of the Nissan GT-R, an acceleration benchmark among sports cars.
Viswanathan concludes that a 0-60 time of 1.9 seconds and a range of 620 miles are quite feasible, although there are several other factors that will come into play – much depends on the vehicle’s tires and aerodynamics.
Meanwhile, at least one analyst thinks Tesla’s latest revelations (or claims, or fantasies, depending on your point of view) have implications that go far beyond the Semi and the Roadster. Michael Kramer, a Fund Manager with Mott Capital Management, told Marketwatch that he suspects improved battery capacities and charging times could make their way into all future Tesla vehicles.
“I’d have to imagine that Tesla has figured out how to put this technology on all of their cars, which means every car could get a full charge in under 30 minutes,” Kramer wrote. Once the Model S “is equipped with the 200 kWh battery pack in the new Roadster, which I can’t imagine is too far down the road, the range issue for the Tesla is officially dead.” (Elon Musk has said that Models S and X will not get physically larger packs, but improved energy density could increase capacity while keeping the size of the pack the same.) Someday soon, Kramer says, “The Model S would likely be able to drive further on one charge than a car on a full tank of gasoline.”
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Note: Article originally published on evannex.com, by Charles Morris
News
Why SpaceX is finishing another space-internet system that isn’t Starlink
SpaceX launched three final O3b mPower satellites Sunday, finishing a lesser known SES satellite network.
SpaceX had an 87 minute window opening at 2:49 p.m. Eastern on Sunday to fly a Falcon 9 out of Cape Canaveral carrying the final three satellites for SES’s O3b mPower constellation, a project that has taken more than a decade to finish since Boeing and SES first signed SpaceX on for the work.
Unlike the thousands of Starlink satellites SpaceX has stacked into orbit over the years, O3b mPower flies in a different neighborhood entirely. The three new satellites, tagged F11, F12 and F13, are headed for medium Earth orbit at roughly 5,000 miles up, more than ten times higher than Starlink’s shell around 340 miles but still a small fraction of the 22,000 miles where old school geostationary satellites sit. That middle position is the whole point, because a satellite that far out needs far fewer siblings to blanket the globe than a low orbit constellation does. Essentially, SES only needed 13 satellites total to build a network offering quick, steady service that used to require thousands of spacecraft.
With most people having heard plenty about Starlink and almost nothing about O3b mPower, SES and SpaceX already blend the two networks for some customers. Both SpaceX and SES sell satellite broadband, but they’re aimed at different buyers. Starlink is built for volume, direct to consumers, RVs, homes, small businesses, plus a growing aviation and maritime business. O3b mPower skips consumers entirely and sells enterprise grade connectivity to airlines, cruise lines, offshore energy operators, telecoms needing backhaul, and governments, priced and provisioned more like a dedicated circuit.
A 2023 partnership lets cruise ships combine Starlink’s speed with O3b mPower’s steady capacity depending on what a ship needs at a given moment. Sunday’s completed 13 satellite constellation effectively finishes the medium orbit half of that pairing, years after.
Sunday’s mission was already a something on SpaceX’s manifest well before O3b mPower entered the picture. This flight marked its 29th trip to orbit, a history that includes two crewed Axiom missions, the European Space Agency’s Euclid telescope and 22 separate Starlink batches. SpaceX has landed boosters on the droneship A Shortfall of Gravitas so often that Sunday’s touchdown attempt, if it went as planned, was set to be the 661st successful Falcon booster landing to date.
For a company that pushed the Starlink constellation past 11,000 satellites back in August, almost entirely through bulk launches from California, Sunday’s flight was a reminder that SpaceX’s schedule still has room for someone else’s satellites too. SES gets a finished network built for a narrower set of customers, and Falcon 9 gets one more line on an already long resume.
Elon Musk
Tesla gives the Roadster an official “Go for launch” demonstration date
Tesla teased an October 1 Roadster reveal, reviving years of delayed SpaceX thruster hover promises.
Tesla teased an October 1 event date for its next generation Roadster, posting an image on X Saturday that shows the car lit up like it is sitting on a launch pad, with the date “10.01” stamped across the bottom and the caption “Go for launch.” A countdown clock on Tesla’s Roadster order page now points to the same date, which falls on a Thursday. The company has not said where the event will happen or whether it will be streamed at the moment. Stay with us @Teslarati for live updates.
Go for launch pic.twitter.com/Khu03eiZ04
— Tesla (@Tesla) September 12, 2026
Tesla has since sent formal invitations to reservation holders confirming the event will take place in Waco, Texas, about 90 minutes north of its Austin headquarters, based on a digital ticket shared on X by Sawyer Merritt. Tesla did not name the exact venue, though Waco sits close to SpaceX’s McGregor, Texas, rocket test site, previously reported as the planned location for a Roadster thruster demonstration. The invite sets the reveal for 8:30 p.m. Eastern on October 1, requires RSVPs by midnight on September 16, and limits entry to guests 21 and older. Invitations are non-transferable.
The tease follows nine years of a project defined by unimaginable specs along with slipped dates. Musk first showed the second generation Roadster in November 2017 as a surprise reveal at the end of the Tesla Semi event, promising a 0 to 60 mph time under two seconds, a top speed above 250 mph, 620 miles of range from a 200 kWh battery, and production starting in 2020. At last November’s shareholder meeting, Musk set an April 1 demo date and joked the choice gave him “deniability” if it slipped again, which it did, moving first to late April, then to “a month or so,” then to August.
Tesla Roadster SpaceX Package’s 1.1-second 0-60 mph launch visualized in concept video
Whatever Tesla shows on October 1 is expected to center on the SpaceX developed thruster package Musk has described since 2018. Internally code named A71, a nod to the Lockheed SR-71 Blackbird, the system reportedly uses cold gas thrusters fed by a composite overwrapped pressure vessel, the same tank design SpaceX uses on Falcon 9. Musk has said a thruster equipped Roadster could hit 60 mph in about 1.1 seconds under roughly 2.75 g of launch force, well past the 1.9 second figure quoted for the standard car. That version reportedly will not be street legal and has reportedly been discussed as a limited run sold through a track only program.
The standard Roadster is still expected to carry the original $200,000 base price and $250,000 Founders Series tier, both set when Tesla opened $50,000 and $250,000 reservations in 2017. Tesla VP of Vehicle Engineering Lars Moravy has confirmed production will happen at Gigafactory Texas, with Musk targeting 2027 or 2028, 12 to 18 months after whatever the company demonstrates next month.
Tesla is planning to roll out some pretty significant safety and accident avoidance features with Full Self-Driving version 15, which will be the next major FSD deployment from the company.
Tesla AI lead Ashok Elluswamy used a near-miss this week to preview what the company says is the next leap in Full Self-Driving.
In response to a driver whose car had swerved away from another vehicle pulling out of a parking lot, Elluswamy wrote that he was glad the owner was safe and that “even earlier prediction of hazards, even faster reaction time and overall significantly better safety and collision avoidance” would arrive with FSD v15.
Glad you are safe. Even earlier prediction of hazards, even faster reaction time and overall significantly better safety and collision avoidance coming as part of the next big upgrade (v15).
— Ashok Elluswamy (@aelluswamy) September 11, 2026
The comment landed as Tesla continues to treat software as the primary safety upgrade path. v15 is described internally as a larger architectural step, with a much bigger neural network and tighter coupling between prediction and control.
The company has already begun using early v15 software in some robotaxi operations while rolling out safety features such as Automatic Collision Evasion into current customer cars, allowing the driving stack to intervene even when the driver is in manual control.
Tesla is rolling out a new FSD version with a massive safety addition
Tesla’s published telemetry is the backbone of its safety argument. In recent North American Vehicle Safety Report data, vehicles with FSD (Supervised) engaged traveled roughly 5.1 million to 5.7 million miles between major collisions, defined as airbag-deployment events.
Tesla’s estimate of the U.S. average over the same period is about 699,000 miles per comparable crash. That is the comparison Tesla often frames as roughly seven times fewer major collisions.
A tighter comparison uses the same Tesla fleet. Cars driven manually with active safety features such as automatic emergency braking still recorded a major collision about every 2.1 million miles. Against that baseline, FSD’s advantage shrinks to roughly 2.4 to 2.7 times fewer severe crashes, which independent researchers argue is the more apples-to-apples figure.
European data released in 2026 pointed in the same direction: Tesla reported FSD as 3.5 times safer than manual driving in the Netherlands and 4.1 times fewer collisions than manually driven Teslas with active safety across more than 100 million kilometers in five approved countries.
Those numbers do not settle every debate. NHTSA’s Standing General Order still shows Tesla accounting for the large majority of U.S. Level 2 driver-assist crash reports, in part because the fleet logs far more assisted miles than rivals. Critics also note that Tesla’s “U.S. average” mixes crash definitions and driving mix.
Even so, Tesla’s own same-car comparisons, plus lower rates of automatic emergency braking and harsh maneuvers when FSD is engaged, are the evidence Elluswamy is pointing to when he says v15 will push prediction and collision avoidance further. The claim is not that software already eliminates risk. It is that each major version is meant to widen the gap between the system and an unaided human driver.
Why SpaceX is finishing another space-internet system that isn’t Starlink
Tesla gives the Roadster an official “Go for launch” demonstration date
