News
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
Lucid unveils Lunar Robotaxi in bid to challenge Tesla’s Cybercab in the autonomous ride hailing race
Lucid’s Lunar robotaxi is gunning for Tesla’s Cybercab in the autonomous ride hailing race
![Lucid Lunar robotaxi concept [Credit: Rendering by TESLARATI]](https://www.teslarati.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/03/lucid-lunar-robotaxi-concept-teslarati-rendering.jpg)
Lucid Group pulled back the curtain on its purpose-built autonomous robotaxi platform dubbed the Lunar Concept. Announced at its New York investor day event, Lunar is arguably the company’s most ambitious concept yet, and a direct line of sight toward the autonomous ride haling market that Tesla looks to control.
At Lucid Investor Day 2026, the company introduced Lunar, a purpose-built robotaxi concept based on the Midsize platform.
A comparison to Tesla’s Cybercab is unavoidable. The concept of a Tesla robotaxi was first introduced by Elon Musk back in April 2019 during an event dubbed “Autonomy Day,” where he envisioned a network of self-driving Tesla vehicles transporting passengers while not in use by their owners. That vision took another major step in October 2024 when, Musk unveiled the Cybercab at the Tesla “We, Robot” event held at Warner Bros. Studios in Burbank, California, where 20 concept Cybercabs autonomously drove around the studio lot giving rides to attendees.
Fast forward to today, and Tesla’s ambitions are finally materializing, but not without friction. As we recently reported, the Cybercab is being spotted with increasing frequency on public roads and across the grounds of Gigafactory Texas, suggesting that the company’s road testing and validation program is ramping meaningfully ahead of mass production. Tesla already operates a small scale robotaxi service in Austin using supervised Model Ys, but the Cybercab is designed from the ground up for high-volume, low-cost production, with Musk stating an eventual goal of producing one vehicle every 10 seconds.
At Lucid Investor Day 2026, the company introduced Lunar, a purpose-built robotaxi concept based on the Midsize platform.
Into this landscape steps Lucid’s Lunar. Built on the company’s all-new Midsize EV platform, which will also underpin consumer SUVs starting below $50,000. The Lunar mirrors the Cybercab’s core philosophy of having two seats, no driver controls, and a focus on fleet economics. The platform introduces Lucid’s redesigned Atlas electric drive unit, engineered to be smaller, lighter, and cheaper to manufacture at scale.
Unlike Tesla’s strategy of building its own ride hailing network from scratch, Lucid is partnering with Uber. The companies are said to be in advanced discussions to deploy Midsize platform vehicles at large scale, with Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi publicly backing Lucid’s engineering credentials and autonomous-ready architecture.
In the investor day event, Lucid also outlined a recurring software revenue model, with an in-vehicle AI assistant and monthly autonomous driving subscriptions priced between $69 and $199. This can be seen as a nod to the software revenue stream that Tesla has long championed with its Full Self-Driving subscription.
Tesla’s Cybercab is targeting a price point below $30k and with operating costs as low as 20 cents per mile. But with regulatory hurdles still ahead, the window for competition is open. Lucid’s Lunar may not have a launch date yet, but it arrives at a pivotal moment, and when the robotaxi race is no longer viewed as hypothetical. Rather, every serious EV player needs to come to bat on the same plate that Tesla has had countless practice swings on over the last seven years.
Elon Musk
Brazil Supreme Court orders Elon Musk and X investigation closed
The decision was issued by Supreme Court Justice Alexandre de Moraes following a recommendation from Brazil’s Prosecutor-General Paulo Gonet.
Brazil’s Supreme Federal Court has ordered the closure of an investigation involving Elon Musk and social media platform X. The inquiry had been pending for about two years and examined whether the platform was used to coordinate attacks against members of the judiciary.
The decision was issued by Supreme Court Justice Alexandre de Moraes following a recommendation from Brazil’s Prosecutor-General Paulo Gonet.
According to a report from Agencia Brasil, the investigation conducted by the Federal Police did not find evidence that X deliberately attempted to attack the judiciary or circumvent court orders.
Prosecutor-General Paulo Gonet concluded that the irregularities identified during the probe did not indicate fraudulent intent.
Justice Moraes accepted the prosecutor’s recommendation and ruled that the investigation should be closed. Under the ruling, the case will remain closed unless new evidence emerges.
The inquiry stemmed from concerns that content on X may have enabled online attacks against Supreme Court justices or violated rulings requiring the suspension of certain accounts under investigation.
Justice Moraes had previously taken several enforcement actions related to the platform during the broader dispute involving social media regulation in Brazil.
These included ordering a nationwide block of the platform, freezing Starlink accounts, and imposing fines on X totaling about $5.2 million. Authorities also froze financial assets linked to X and SpaceX through Starlink to collect unpaid penalties and seized roughly $3.3 million from the companies’ accounts.
Moraes also imposed daily fines of up to R$5 million, about $920,000, for alleged evasion of the X ban and established penalties of R$50,000 per day for VPN users who attempted to bypass the restriction.
Brazil remains an important market for X, with roughly 17 million users, making it one of the platform’s larger user bases globally.
The country is also a major market for Starlink, SpaceX’s satellite internet service, which has surpassed one million subscribers in Brazil.
Elon Musk
FCC chair criticizes Amazon over opposition to SpaceX satellite plan
Carr made the remarks in a post on social media platform X.
U.S. Federal Communications Commission (FCC) Chairman Brendan Carr criticized Amazon after the company opposed SpaceX’s proposal to launch a large satellite constellation that could function as an orbital data center network.
Carr made the remarks in a post on social media platform X.
Amazon recently urged the FCC to reject SpaceX’s application to deploy a constellation of up to 1 million low Earth orbit satellites that could serve as artificial intelligence data centers in space.
The company described the proposal as a “lofty ambition rather than a real plan,” arguing that SpaceX had not provided sufficient details about how the system would operate.
Carr responded by pointing to Amazon’s own satellite deployment progress.
“Amazon should focus on the fact that it will fall roughly 1,000 satellites short of meeting its upcoming deployment milestone, rather than spending their time and resources filing petitions against companies that are putting thousands of satellites in orbit,” Carr wrote on X.
Amazon has declined to comment on the statement.
Amazon has been working to deploy its Project Kuiper satellite network, which is intended to compete with SpaceX’s Starlink service. The company has invested more than $10 billion in the program and has launched more than 200 satellites since April of last year.
Amazon has also asked the FCC for a 24-month extension, until July 2028, to meet a requirement to deploy roughly 1,600 satellites by July 2026, as noted in a CNBC report.
SpaceX’s Starlink network currently has nearly 10,000 satellites in orbit and serves roughly 10 million customers. The FCC has also authorized SpaceX to deploy 7,500 additional satellites as the company continues expanding its global satellite internet network.
![Lucid Lunar robotaxi concept [Credit: Rendering by TESLARATI]](https://www.teslarati.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/03/lucid-lunar-robotaxi-concept-teslarati-rendering-80x80.jpg)
Lucid unveils Lunar Robotaxi in bid to challenge Tesla’s Cybercab in the autonomous ride hailing race
Brazil Supreme Court orders Elon Musk and X investigation closed
