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Electric trucks from large to small vital to Tesla’s Master Plan
It all goes back to Elon Musk’s original secret Master Plan from 2006, when the billionaire entrepreneur issued his famous vision of the future: “[T]he overarching purpose of Tesla Motors (and the reason I am funding the company) is to help expedite the move from a mine-and-burn hydrocarbon economy towards a solar electric economy, which I believe to be the primary, but not exclusive, sustainable solution.”
Musk made an executive decision right from the beginning to target customers whose opinions influence others by building premium electric cars that would make people sit up and take notice. Until Tesla came along, electric cars were little more than glorified golf carts. But if Tesla is going to make significant progress toward its ultimate goal, it is going to have to make electric trucks as well as passenger cars. Trucks are responsible for about 50% of all emissions created by the transportation sector according to the EPA. It’s no wonder Musk’s follow up plan calls for a zero emissions Tesla targeted at the mid to heavy duty truck segment.
The Tesla Plan
“In addition to consumer vehicles, there are two other types of electric vehicle needed: heavy-duty trucks and high passenger-density urban transport. Both are in the early stages of development at Tesla and should be ready for unveiling next year,” outlines Musk in his Master Plan Part Deux.
Aaron Turpen previously gave us an excellent analysis of what characteristics a Tesla pickup would need to have in order to be successful. He set out in detail what Tesla would need to do to build such a truck.
- V8-like performance including roughly 400 hp and 380 lb-ft
- Extended and four-door cab offerings
- Cargo bed size of 5.5 feet with option for 7 feet
- Towing capacity of about 10,000 pounds
- Payload capacity of 1/2 ton to 3,000 pounds
- 4×4 capability
- Driving range, under load, of at least 150 miles
- Conventional styling and appeal
How is Tesla going to make batteries with the energy and power needed to move such heavy vehicles? The Powerwall may offer clues. Just one year after it was introduced, Tesla brought its second generation version to market with roughly double the capacity of the original. Tesla doesn’t reveal very much about its ongoing battery research programs, other than to say that improvements of between 5 and 7 percent a year are anticipated as it ramps up production at the Gigafactory.
One assumption is that batteries for trucks will be significantly different from those used on its passenger cars, with more focus on energy and less focus on power. While a Tesla pickup that breaks the 3 second 0-60 barrier would be very cool, that sort of acceleration would have little relevance to how a truck gets used in daily driving.
When it comes to trucks that haul freight, it’s possible that the company has some sort of battery swapping plan in mind at truck stops along major transportation routes. Another approach would be to simply swap tractors at designated service areas much the way Formula E drivers swap cars during a race. Tesla could own the trucks and lease them to freight companies. The idea is as old as the Pony Express.
What About The Competition?
While Tesla is busy planning its truck strategy, other companies are chasing the same low emissions dream. Most of them rely on some form of range extender engine to build a truck that has low emissions but is cost competitive. The most promising of those ventures may be from Workhorse, which claims it will have a full size plug-in hybrid pickup truck with dual motors on the market by 2018. It uses the two cylinder range extender engine from the BMW i3 REx to provide electricity to the battery when needed. A rendering of the truck by Australia’s Motoring shows a truck that is purposeful rather than svelte in its design.
Delivery and cargo vans are another target market. Four large cities — Mexico City, Paris, Madrid, and Athens — announced their intention to ban all diesel powered vehicles from their streets by 2025. Many of the medium duty trucks used to deliver food and consumer goods to city dwellers are powered by diesel engines, especially in Europe.
Deutsche Post, known globally as DHL, is one of the largest parcel delivery companies in the world. It is working hard to reduce its carbon footprint but could not find an all electric van suitable for its needs. So it built its own. “We designed it as a tool. So the fit and finish does not need to be as good as in a passenger car,” Win Neidlinger, director of business development at Deutsche Post tells Fortune. “It did not cost billions to develop and produce. You will not believe how cheap it is to make.” The company now plans to become a manufacturer and start selling the vans, which it calls StreetScooters, to customers in 2017.
Photo credit: Deutsche Post
UPS is also in the delivery business and is a world leader in testing alternative fuels and alternative powertrains in its trucks. It has invested more than $750 million in alternative fuel and advanced technology vehicles since 2009. UPS now has 7,700 low emission vehicles in its “rolling laboratory” test fleet and is evaluating vehicles that run on natural gas, renewable natural gas, and propane according to Electric Cars Report.
It also is using electric powertrains in some of its vehicles. A version of the Workhorse plug-in hybrid range extender system is being tested in several of its delivery vans. It is also thinking small when it comes to what is known in the industry as the “last mile” conundrum. How do companies like UPS create nimble, zero emissions vehicles that can access congested urban areas? One solution being tried in Hamburg, Germany and Portland, Oregon is a hybrid electric tricycle called the eBike. It has a battery and electric motor and can move using pedal power, electric power, or a combination of both.
Photo credit: UPS
Some of the biggest polluters are garbage and trash hauling trucks. Because the stop and start hundreds of times a day, their diesel engines are constant spewing toxic pollutants into the atmosphere. While their total numbers are small, they discharge a disproportionate amount of emissions to the atmosphere. Taming the emissions from beasts would be an important step forward.
Ian Wright, a Tesla co-founder and former board member, thinks he has a solution. His company, Wrightspeed, builds heavy trucks powered solely by electricity but with a twist. Wright and his engineering staff have invented a small natural gas powered turbine that acts as a range extender engine. He claims his turbine operates so cleanly, it does not require a catalytic converter to meet California’s strict tailpipe emissions laws.
Salt Lake City start-up Nikola Motors recently revealed its idea for a 1000 HP low emissions electric truck called the Nikola One. Sleek and futuristic, it relies on battery power to turn its six electric motors but also has an onboard hydrogen fuel cell that is says will give the tractor a range of 800 to 1000 miles. The company says it has over a billion dollars worth of reservations in hand. While it did present a full size prototype at the reveal, many are taking a wait and see attitude toward Nikola Motors, which has no factory at the present time but claims it will begin production in 2018.
Summary
Trucks will play an important role in reducing global emissions from the transportation sector. A recent report from Navigant Research predicts annual sales of electric trucks — including hybrids and plug-in hybrids — will increase by a factor of ten over the next decade. From 31,000 worldwide today, Navigant says more than 332,000 electric trucks will be sold annually by 2026. That’s a big market for manufacturers to target.
Tesla has refused to consider any sort of range extender device for its cars, but solving the problems of building low emissions trucks for delivering freight and cargo across long distances may make such things a necessity. The need is great and the time is short. If hybrid trucks are what are needed, even as a stop gap measure while battery technology catches up with energy and cost constraints, that would be important for a world struggling to limit carbon emissions.
News
SpaceX set to launch astronauts and a classified Falcon Heavy mission on the same day
SpaceX plans three launches Thursday, including Crew-13 astronauts and Falcon Heavy’s first classified NRO mission.
SpaceX is lining up one of the busiest single days in its history, and the company offered a preview on Wednesday morning with a simple post on X: “Sunrise at pad 40.” The video and photos show Falcon 9 standing at Space Launch Complex 40 at Cape Canaveral, roughly a day before it is scheduled to carry four astronauts to the International Space Station.
That launch is only the first of three SpaceX missions planned for Thursday, October 1, across both coasts.
Sunrise at pad 40 pic.twitter.com/J7Qme4VvIX
— SpaceX (@SpaceX) September 30, 2026
Crew-13 is targeting liftoff at 11:10 a.m. ET, with a backup opportunity Friday at 10:47 a.m. ET. NASA astronaut Jessica Watkins will command the mission, with NASA’s Luke Delaney as pilot and Canadian Space Agency astronaut Joshua Kutryk and Roscosmos cosmonaut Sergey Teteryatnikov serving as mission specialists. According to NASA, Dragon is set to dock with the forward port of the station’s Harmony module around 8 p.m. ET, less than nine hours after launch. Watkins is the only member of the crew who has flown before, and Kutryk will become the first Canadian to reach orbit through NASA’s Commercial Crew Program.
The Falcon 9 booster is flying for the third time after supporting Crew-12 and a Starlink mission, and it will attempt a landing at Landing Zone 40 beside the pad. That site made its debut in February when the Crew-12 booster touched down there, as Teslarati reported at the time. Crew-13 will relieve the Crew-12 astronauts, who have been aboard the station since the middle of February.
On the West Coast, another Falcon 9 is scheduled to lift off from Vandenberg Space Force Base in a window running from 2:18 to 3:16 p.m. ET, a flight NASASpaceflight lists as a Transporter rideshare mission.
The day is set to close at 11:53 p.m. ET, when Falcon Heavy launches from Launch Complex 39A with NROL-97, the first National Reconnaissance Office payload ever to fly on the rocket. SpaceX rolled the vehicle out to the pad Tuesday night. Its two side boosters, which previously flew GOES-U, ViaSat-3 F3 and NASA’s Roman Space Telescope, will return to Landing Zones 1 and 2, while a new center core will be expended in the Atlantic. The Roman launch took place on August 30, so NROL-97 will come barely a month later as Falcon Heavy’s third flight of 2026 and 14th overall.
NASA taps SpaceX to launch the telescope that could unlock new worlds
If all three Florida boosters land as planned, it would be the first time the Space Coast has seen landings at LZ-40, LZ-1 and LZ-2 on the same day, according to the Orlando Sentinel, which has warned residents in Brevard, Orange and Volusia counties that more than one sonic boom is possible.
The schedule arrives just three days after Starship reached orbit for the first time on Flight 14 from Starbase, Texas, deploying 26 Starlink V3 satellites. If Thursday’s missions stay on time, SpaceX will have flown Starship, Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy from four different pads in about four days.
Crew-13 is also the start of a longer run for Dragon. NASA recently added Crew-15, Crew-16 and Crew-17 to SpaceX’s contract in a $946 million modification, keeping Dragon as the agency’s only operational ride to the station while Boeing’s Starliner remains grounded.
Although the two vehicles are built for completely different use cases, Tesla utilized engineering expertise while developing both the Cybercab and Semi to build a thermal architecture that would fit both vehicles. Of course, with some slight revisions.
The development was noted by Lars Moravy and Dan Priestley last week at Tesla’s Semi Handover event in Sparks, Nevada, where the company showed off its dedicated production facility for the Class 8 truck.
🚨 Tesla designed the integrated thermal systems for Cybercab and Semi at the same time as the vehicles were both in development
Tesla wanted to build one thermal system that worked with both vehicles, apart from small modifications.
Semi and Cybercab share parts 🤯 pic.twitter.com/KmzSsUbrcg
— TESLARATI (@Teslarati) September 25, 2026
Tesla’s decision to develop one thermal architecture for both the Cybercab and Semi is one of the more revealing engineering choices in the company’s 2026 lineup:
“We designed it at the same time we designed the Cybercab and we said okay we’re going to take our most efficient vehicle and our biggest vehicle and we’re going to take one thermal system and make it work for both.”
Core parts, meaning the compressor, pumps, and heat exchangers, are shared, with only modest changes to cooling-loop sizing and a larger radiator on the truck. The result, they said, is a compressor and thermal stack already proven across millions of miles, delivering “reliability from day one.”
Priestley also highlighted a practical payoff of the indirect design:
“There’s no AC lines, there’s no refrigerant lines…It comes from the factory fully charged, sealed with refrigerant, and it just exchanges coolant. It doesn’t actually run refrigerant up to the front of the vehicle.”
This eliminates potentially leak-prone plumbing that would otherwise require hands-on service, reducing overall uptime and potentially cutting into business margins. The megamanifold runs cabin HVAC and every powertrain heating and cooling loop at once, recapturing waste heat from motors and the battery instead of dumping it the way a diesel engine does.
The approach is just the latest chapter in a continuing story of stretching thermal solutions across wildly different vehicles. Model Y’s Octovalve evolved into the Super Manifold used on Cybertruck, and later Model S/X refreshes. Cybercab then introduced Supermanifold V3, which Tesla says is 80 percent automated to build and 38 percent more efficient than typical automotive thermal systems.
This thermal system is also shared with Cybercab – one thermal system for both our most efficient vehicle & our biggest vehicle
— Tesla Semi (@tesla_semi) September 25, 2026
Tesla has done the same with the 4680 cells, both being utilized in the Cybertruck and Semi, and with heat-pump compressors that Priestley noted were already common across the passenger-car fleet.
Concurrent development of crucial vehicle elements buys scale and reliability that a truck-only thermal system could not match. High-volume passenger car parts are cheaper and more accessible, which can give fleets a sealed, low-maintenance loop of operation from their first day of operation.
For owners and operators, that translates into less energy spent on cabin heat in the colder months, fewer refrigerant-related repairs, and a thermal architecture already stress-tested at passenger-car volumes before the first high-volume Semi left the lines in Nevada.
Tesla CEO Elon Musk certainly tipped off some details of the Tesla Roadster event with a broadening of information regarding the company’s decision to delay the unveiling for two weeks.
For years, people have speculated about what the Roadster will be capable of. While there have been plenty of things said about what it *could* do, we have not seen or been told by Tesla what it will actually be capable of.
However, over the past few days, Tesla’s weather updates have truly pushed the speculation into Plaid Mode, basically all but confirming the car will have some sort of aerial capability — whether that would be hovering or fully flying remains to be seen — but it definitely seems that it will be able to leave the ground intentionally.
“Because this event can only be held outdoors…”
Tesla posted on Monday that it would delay the Roadster event until October 15, and it indicated that it had to do this because the event “can only be held outdoors.”
With the potential SpaceX collaboration to develop cold-gas thrusters that will help the vehicle go airborne, doing this indoors is probably not a safe, or even plausible, possibility.
Roadster event update
We’ve been tracking the weather closely with local meteorologists, but given the severe conditions predicted & because this event can only be held outdoors, we’ve made the difficult decision to reschedule.
New date is October 15. Additional details to…
— Tesla (@Tesla) September 28, 2026
FAA Airspace Restriction
The FAA gave Tesla a Temporary Flight Restriction (TFR) for 10,000 feet above ground level, much higher than the typical 2,000-foot restrictions that are usually placed at SpaceX’s McGregor, Texas site.
Tesla Roadster event requires restricted airspace, and the FAA obliges
Some have said that this massive increase is due to Tesla’s need to restrict unauthorized drone use for spying on the event.
Elon Admits High Winds
“Due to high winds, the new Roadster demo is postponed by 2 weeks,” Musk said in a post on X yesterday.
Due to high winds, the new Roadster demo is postponed by 2 weeks https://t.co/dV3ojDh1iT
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) September 30, 2026
A reply reading, “What’s strong wind got to do with a car demo with four grounded wheels?” was directly below Musk’s post, satirically and sarcastically probing for more details.
All signs are pointing toward an aerial demonstration for the Roadster.
SpaceX set to launch astronauts and a classified Falcon Heavy mission on the same day
Tesla Cybercab and Semi have more in common than you might think
