Tesla Semi.
Courtesy: Tesla
A single-vehicle collision final month involving a Tesla Semi electrical truck took 50,000 gallons of water to extinguish and required plane to dump hearth retardant overhead, in keeping with a preliminary report on Friday from the Nationwide Transportation Security Board.
The crash, which occurred on California’s Interstate 80 west of Lake Tahoe, is being investigated by the NTSB. CAL Fireplace’s efforts to place out the flames cooled the car’s huge battery to maintain it from reigniting and prevented the hearth from spreading past the crash website, the NTSB mentioned.
The Tesla truck, pushed by an worker, was headed to the corporate’s battery manufacturing facility in Sparks, Nevada, from a warehouse in Livermore, California, the report mentioned. The incident closed down a part of the I-80 for 15 hours.
Tesla CEO Elon Musk first confirmed off the Semi truck design at an occasion in November 2017, promising it could come to market in 2020. The corporate nonetheless has not began producing the vans in excessive quantity, however it’s constructing out manufacturing traces at its Nevada facility.
“Preparation of Semi factory continues and is on track to begin production by end of 2025,” Tesla mentioned in its second-quarter earnings report in July.
The NTSB report confirmed that Tesla’s driver-assistance techniques, that are marketed as Autopilot and Full Self-Driving (Supervised) within the U.S., weren’t “operational” on the time of the Semi collision and hearth.
Tesla didn’t reply to CNBC’s request for remark.
