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Adoption of Tesla’s electric truck will be driven by regulation
It’s expected that the commercial trucking industry will begin to transform in the same way that the passenger automotive industry has. Fuel efficiency has become a new priority and electrification is now the go-to plan for achieving higher MPGs in heavy trucking. In much the same way that regulations pushed trucking towards lower pollution at the expense of efficiency in the 1970s, today’s trucking paradigm is seeing a push for more efficiency. At what expense?
A new report from Ravi Shanker at Morgan Stanley urges investors to consider electric and self-driving commercial trucking as an opportunity. Shanker says that regulations and economics will drive the industry towards electrification and autonomous technologies. The analyst says that this could happen as early as 2020, which is when new federal fuel economy regulations on heavy-duty vehicles begin to really gather steam. Although efficiency gains will be had with electrification and self-driving, Shanker makes it clear that this will be secondary to the demand created by regulatory pressure.
As usual, we look to California for a glimpse of what could be coming. California’s Sustainable Freight Action Plan calls for 100,000+ zero-emissions trucks to be on the road by 2030 in that state. There is debate as to whether this plan is realistic, but federal standards are also playing a large role. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (part of the federal Department of Transportation) have proposed emissions and fuel economy standards for heavy-duty vehicles. The first of these began with the 2014 model year.
For our purposes, the regulations affecting “combination tractors” (aka “tractor-trailer” or “18 wheeler”) models are pertinent. The 2018 standards are relatively loose and most in the industry believe they are achievable, but the EPA and NHTSA have proposed further standards to begin in 2021, with incremental increases thereafter through to 2027. The goals are largely aimed towards lower CO2 emissions with reductions of about four percent (depending on the vehicle type) being the goal. The reduction is not the issue with industry insiders, however, it’s the test cycle to be used, which some argue is less realistic and which disfavors other emissions that also have requirements to be met. This Phase 2 of the federal efficiency standards for heavy trucks is not yet finalized, but will very likely be the driving force behind national changes in trucks.
Equating these changes into standard numbers that the general public would understand is difficult. Heavy-duty trucks can range in fuel efficiency from 20 mpg or better down to 2-3 mpg. For most tractor-trailer combinations, MPG averages of 4-9 mpg are the norm, depending on load, tractor type, and area of operation. Most analysts calculate efficiency using fuel use in tons per mile with a relatively long distance (100-500 miles) being the average. Using this method, for example, in my time driving a tractor pulling a refrigerated trailer across all 48 states, my fuel economy average was about average for that sector of the industry at roughly 60 ton-miles per gallon. Today, these numbers are slightly higher, according to the latest U.S. Transportation Energy book. Using this method of calculation, a 2015 Toyota Prius is about a third as efficient at moving freight as was my truck.
This doesn’t mean there isn’t room for improvement, of course. There are more companies than Tesla working towards deleting the smoke stacks from big trucks.
In Europe, Volvo trucks is working hard towards a zero-emissions (at the tailpipe anyway) trucking solution with several approaches being tested. An overhead tram-like charging system has been deployed for a short stretch of highway in Sweden, aiming to improve plug-in trucks’ range in EV mode. Short-haul battery electrics and two different versions of autonomous (or semi-autonomous) systems are also being tested.
Here in the States, Volvo’s Mack Trucks is working on a handful of electrification options for heavy-duty drivetrains. So is Daimler (Freightliner, Western Star in the U.S.). Startups like Nikola also have eyes on this electric trucking future. Other startups have hoped to get into the mix as well, but the failure rate is high with companies like Smith Electric, Vision Industries, and Boulder Electric having designed and marketed innovative commercial truck options that ultimately never caught on.
Meanwhile, the largest maker of electric heavy vehicles is Chinese maker BYD, who branched out from making gadget batteries into building electric buses, trucks, and more. They are currently filling contracts internationally for buses and trucks in places as disparate at California, Malaysia, and Europe. BYD builds battery-electric, hydrogen fuel cell electric, plug-in hybrid, and hybrid drivetrains and machines for several commercial market sectors.
So we can guarantee that changes to the trucking industry are coming, but no one can say how fast or how much change that will be. Current federal regulations will drive the industry forward until 2018 and it’s likely that new standards will be in place to keep carrying change forward after that. California’s ambitious plans for adopting electric trucks will be largely regulation and incentive driven, but that has down sides as well. Many of the startups we’ve seen who’ve created electrified big rigs or delivery trucks ultimately failed when the incentives began to dry up.
For Tesla, this could mean that the financial case for the Tesla Semi will need to be more economics-based and less dependent on single market, incentives-based plans. This means that Elon and Co should be looking beyond California and it’s 100,000 vehicle plans into a broader market. We’ll discuss the potential economic case for a Tesla Semi in a future editorial.
Elon Musk
Elon Musk just set a condition that could end Falcon 9 as we know it
Elon Musk says SpaceX will finally retire Falcon 9 once Starship flies reliably every week.
Elon Musk gave the clearest timeline yet for retiring Falcon 9, SpaceX’s workhorse rocket.
The comment came in a reply on X, where Musk wrote that “once Starship is flying reliably several times per week, it makes sense to shift super scarce SpaceX engineering and production resources to Starship to get launch rate to several times per day, which means winding down Falcon.” He was responding to physicist Casey Handmer, who noted that NASA is reportedly uneasy about SpaceX phasing out Falcon after building what Handmer called the most successful launcher ever, with the fleet nearing 1,000 total launches.
Now @SciGuySpace reports NASA is in a tizzy because after running the most successful launcher ever for more than a decade and nearing 1000 launches, @SpaceX is planning to retire Falcon in favor of Starship in a few years.
Sorry, NASA, you’ve had 15 years to burn down the… https://t.co/uCNoMwK0v9
— Casey Handmer (@CJHandmer) August 22, 2026
Falcon 9 is still SpaceX’s busiest vehicle by far. The company is on pace for roughly 140 to 145 Falcon flights this year, following 165 in 2025, president Gwynne Shotwell told Time earlier in 2026. She has already said Falcon flights would “tail off” as Starship comes online, while reports indicate that SpaceX has stopped booking new Falcon 9 launches past 2028 and halted production of some expendable Falcon hardware, according to Bloomberg.
It’s worth noting that Musk’s post is a condition, and not a countdown on when Falcon will retire. Starship has not yet flown weekly, let alone daily. Its most recent flight in July ended with a soft splashdown in the Indian Ocean, a milestone Musk pointed to earlier this month when he said the vehicle’s heat shield problem was effectively solved. SpaceX towed that ship to Christmas Island for inspection, and the next flight, Flight 14, is aimed at putting Starship into orbit for the first time. A tower catch attempt for the upper stage has been pushed back to what Musk has called “a few months” away.
SpaceX and a new Trump order that could rewrite the next decade of launches
The gap between Falcon’s role today and Starship’s promised role tomorrow matters most to NASA. Falcon and its Dragon capsule remain the only way the agency rotates astronauts to and from the International Space Station, and Starship is not certified to carry NASA crews. Musk’s post did not address how that handoff would work if Falcon winds down before a crew-rated Starship variant exists. The timing lines up with Musk’s other recent Starship comments. Two days before the Falcon post, he told a different X user that SpaceX is aiming for more than 30 Starship launches a day by 2030, or roughly 10,000 a year, a figure tied to the Trump administration’s new push for higher national launch cadence. Falcon, which took over a decade to reach its first 100 launches, was never built to approach that kind of volume.
For now, Falcon 9 keeps flying at a near-record pace while Starship works to prove it can do the job Musk has already picked out for it.
Tesla Cybercab is set to launch in Austin, Texas, on September 3, as the company has officially started sending out invitations to a dedicated event it will hold in the city where its headquarters is located.
The Cybercab is Tesla’s dedicated ride-sharing vehicle: it features just two seats and has no steering wheel or pedals. It is aimed at fully autonomous passenger transport, and will operate in the Robotaxi fleet alongside the Tesla Model Y, which has been performing driverless rides for real-world passengers for more than a year.
Thank you so much @Tesla for inviting us to the Cybercab launch in Austin! 🤠 pic.twitter.com/F1rAR8zd5O
— TESLARATI (@Teslarati) August 22, 2026
The launch of the Cybercab marks the next chapter in Tesla’s autonomy story. The company has been developing autonomous transport for years with its Full Self-Driving (Supervised) platform, which is available in any vehicle the company has built with the proper hardware and software capabilities.
Its capabilities vary by hardware and software version, but Tesla says its latest hardware version, known as AI4, can deliver full autonomy. However, future vehicles will operate with even more robust hardware packages, as Tesla will develop AI4.5 and AI5 for even more capability in its vehicles.
Following a report from The Information that surfaced earlier this week, the writing was on the wall that Tesla was set to launch Cybercab in the near term. The report stated Tesla could launch Cybercab as soon as the end of August. Tesla came close and has booked it for September 3.
The big thing with this event being scheduled is not necessarily that Tesla is launching a new vehicle, but instead that it is launching a vehicle that has no steering wheel or pedals and will operate exclusively on a self-driving program that is evidently nearing full autonomy. If the event allows vehicles to take passengers on public roads and drop them off wherever they please within the City of Austin, it will be a drastic advancement in the company’s self-driving story.
People have ridden in Cybercab previously: Tesla had the “We, Robot” event in October 2024, which allowed people to experience fully autonomous rides in a closed circuit at Warner Bros. Studios in Burbank.
🚨 Ride in a Tesla Cybercab with us
— TESLARATI (@Teslarati) May 11, 2025
Additionally, Tesla launched employee rides in Cybercab in July.
It’s a drastic step forward for Tesla, whose CEO, Elon Musk, has promised for years that the company would release a fully autonomous vehicle and platform capable of allowing drivers to relinquish any responsibility behind the wheel.
Elon Musk put a number on where he thinks SpaceX’s Starship program is headed by 2030, replying on X a day after President Trump signed a memo pushing the country toward 1,000 space launches and reentries a year.
The exchange started when Aaron Burnett, co-founder of propulsion startup Mach 33, posted that “1,000 launches/reentries is the goal,” quoting White House science adviser Michael Kratsios on the newly signed National Space Transportation Policy. Burnett noted that the FAA’s own bull-case forecast reached only 385 annual launches by 2030, while his firm’s conservative model already put SpaceX alone near 940. Musk responded, “We’re aiming to reach 30+ Starship launches/day in 2030, which is ~10k annualized. Still tiny numbers compared to airplane flights!”
We’re aiming to reach 30+ Starship launches/day in 2030, which is ~10k annualized.
Still tiny numbers compared to airplane flights!
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) August 21, 2026
That figure is specific to Starship, the rocket SpaceX is still developing for orbital and lunar missions, not the Falcon 9 fleet that carries most of the company’s current launch volume. Starship has flown twice this year, a slower pace than the four and five flights SpaceX managed in 2024 and 2025. Getting from two flights a year to 30 a day is the scale of jump the new federal policy is meant to clear regulatory room for.
Trump’s memo, signed Thursday, directs agencies to identify new launch and reentry sites on federal land, including a new reentry site within 90 days, and to speed up the permitting and environmental reviews that have long slowed cadence growth. It also sets a goal of returning American astronauts to the moon by 2028 and placing initial lunar base elements by 2030, tying the launch buildout directly to NASA’s Artemis program.
SpaceX has already been pushing the FAA toward higher numbers on its own. The agency approved up to 44 annual Starship launches from Kennedy Space Center in February, on top of a 2024 review that raised the cap at Starbase in Texas to 25 a year. Those approvals cover a fraction of the 10,000 annual flights Musk is now describing, which shows how far current permitting still sits from the administration’s stated target.
The near-term test of all this is more modest. SpaceX cleared a full-duration, six-engine static fire on its next Starship vehicle this week, the last major hardware checkpoint before Flight 14, which is targeting no earlier than August 28 and is expected to attempt the vehicle’s first full orbital mission. Musk said last week that a tower catch of the upper stage is still probably months away, a reminder that the immediate roadmap remains far more incremental than the daily launch numbers he just posted.
Elon Musk just set a condition that could end Falcon 9 as we know it
Tesla will launch Cybercab on September 3
