PepsiCo Adopts Tesla Semis in Sacramento

750-kW Fast Chargers Installed

Tesla unveils electric semi fleet in Sacramento

On Tuesday, PepsiCo revealed its latest collection of 18 Tesla Semi big rigs – fully- electric Class 8 vehicles – that are set to be used at their bottling plant in Sacramento.

PepsiCo first put in their request for 100 Tesla Semi (trucks) as far back as 2017, illustrating how long a wait it has been since. On December 2nd of this year, shipments finally launched; however the rate at which these have been produced continues to be incredibly low.

As reported by different sources, PepsiCo has plans to employ 21 Tesla Semi-trucks at their Sacramento manufacturing facility for the purpose of delivering locally prepared items. Their Frito-Lay outlet in Modesto will be supplied with an additional 15 vehicles.

To gear up for electrification, the company put in two places high-power direct current quick chargers. Four stalls (750 kilowatts per stall) that look alike Tesla V4 Superchargers are mentioned in the article. This charger is also known as Megachargers as it has megawatt-level capability of charging but there’s no explicit information about the stations or the connection used.

PepsiCo unveils fleet of all-electric Tesla semi-trucks in Sacramento

One of the most fascinating elements is that a good portion of the money for PepsiCo’s seminal buy of Tesla Semis (valued about 250K per unit) was acquired from state and federal grants. Yahoo points out:

We conjecture that, given the financial assistance, other fleets would be amenable to making the conversion to electric vehicles.

It’s remarkable to note that Erica Edwards, senior vice-president for manufacturing for PepsiCo, has said that the Tesla Semi trucks “have a range of around 400 miles before they need to be charged.” Tesla, on the other hand, declares that the range is 500 miles (over 800 km) when fully loaded, and the efficiency is 1.7 kilowatt-hours (kWh) per mile (1.06 kWh/km).

As more and more fleets receive their vehicles, we are likely to observe some useful performance and fuel economy tests. The real, dependable range can also be gauged by the distance of the typical routes favored by fleets.

Source: Yahoo