Watch A Tesla Semi Truck Lay Down Rubber While Accelerating Hard

A short video of Tesla's first lorry accelerating has emerged, and it's both weird and awesome...

While it’s probably the least relevant stat for such a vehicle, we can’t help but be astonished at Tesla’s claim that minus trailer (or ‘bobtail’), its Semi can do 0-60mph in five seconds. Around about as fast as an E46 BMW M3, in other words.

Well, now we have our first chance to see a trailer-less Tesla lorry accelerating hard. In a 25mph zone. Naughty.

It just looks odd, doesn’t it? The prototype is seen laying down some rubber, before disappearing into the distance at a rate that doesn’t seem feasible for such a large vehicle.

Bobtail-configurated acceleration is fun to watch and all, but much more important is the vehicle’s range. That’ll start at 500 miles, and Tesla says it’ll be possible to recharge from empty to 400 miles in just 30 minutes. The caveat is these charging speeds require a ‘Megacharger’, a new kind of DC charging station which the Californian firm would need to install at destination points and/or along busy routes.

Tesla intends to put the Semi into production during 2019, but given the persistent issues the company has been experiencing with the manufacture of the Model 3, it may well end up being a little later.