Trucking event will provide independent Tesla Semi performance data

ANAHEIM, Calif. —The automotive and truck industries will soon learn much more about Tesla Inc.'s Semi — the Class 8 truck the electric vehicle company claims will upend the trucking industry with revolutionary performance.

PepsiCo confirmed Wednesday it would enter at least one of the Tesla Semis it operates in the Run on Less trucking industry event this year.

"We're really excited to participate in the run and allow the industry to have access to the insights and the learnings that we are getting from experiencing these vehicles," said Amanda DeVoe, sustainability and technology director, fleet, at PepsiCo's Frito-Lay North America division. "We're gonna run 'em hard."

DeVoe said the truck would operate with a maximum payload and travel up to 500 miles round trip during the event.

"We really want to demonstrate the capability of our team, the capability of the Semi and the capability of the Class 8 electric vehicle to compete with the [internal combustion] counterpart," she said during a panel at the ACT Expo clean transportation conference Wednesday.

Tesla has previously provided minimal, basic information about the Semi. PepsiCo has only provided sparse details regarding its experience with the electric Class 8 tractors to date.

But Run on Less, which showcases advances in freight efficiency, will follow the truck and post independent performance data on the event's website.

"Getting Tesla into this is a big deal," Mike Roeth, executive director of the North American Council for Freight Efficiency, a truck industry think tank, told Automotive News.

While trucking companies and fleet managers will be looking at data for all the trucks in the event, he said Tesla would attract particular attention because it is a new entrant into the trucking sphere and has already disrupted the auto industry.

To date, Tesla has shown a sped-up video of an eight-hour run from its Fremont, Calif., factory to a PepsiCo bottling factory in San Diego in November.

Tesla claims the Semi was loaded with just under 82,000 pounds and traveled the 500-mile route with battery capacity starting at 97 percent and finishing at 4 percent.

Tesla said the unmodified Semi, in normal traffic, used less than 2 kilowatt-hours of energy per mile, which would be an impressive feat if it could be replicated.

That would be more efficient than a GMC Hummer EV pickup.

The event, which is operated by the council in odd-numbered years, will follow the operations of electric big rigs from a variety of truck manufacturers during three weeks starting Sept. 11.

Geotab, an Oakville, Ontario, fleet telematics company, collects data from the trucks for the council to post daily. Onlookers can check the data and slice aspects cumulatively or by specific routes, dates and weather conditions.

"Any data on a Class 8 electric vehicle that can be shared is a big deal because there are lots of questions about their performance," said Charlotte Argue, Geotab's senior manager for sustainable mobility.

Argue said she expects "a lot of buzz about Tesla specifically."

Part of that is because Tesla has not shared many specifics about its trucks. On its website, Tesla says the Semi has a range of 300 to 500 miles, can charge up to 70 percent of its range in 30 minutes and can save $200,000 in fuel expenses over three years of operation.

PepsiCo has said it expects to take delivery of 100 Tesla Semis this year. It has some of the first vehicles in operation in central California.

Distance traveled, the effect of speed and distance on the battery charge, and weather conditions, including wind speed, that the vehicles encounter are among the datasets Run on Less will make public.

Operators of Nikola, Freightliner, Volvo and other brands have entered electric trucks in the event. It will track the trucks' performances in real-world operations from seven depots in California — the most aggressive state in phasing out diesel trucks — and one in New York. According to the freight efficiency council, the Semi will operate from Sacramento, Calif. PepsiCo said that is where it will base 21 of its Teslas.

The event will provide only general comparisons between brands, according to Roeth and Argue.

That's because they will carry loads of different weights, travel different routes of varying distances and encounter different charging systems. Head-to-head comparisons will be difficult based on the level of data the results will display, Roeth said.

Laurence Iliff contributed to this report.