PepsiCo puts 18 Tesla Semis into company livery
PepsiCo has unveiled its fleet of 18 Tesla Semis in Sacramento, USA. The all-electric Class 8 trucks will be used at the beverage company’s bottling plant in Sacramento, California. PepsiCo ordered the first 100 electric semi-trailer trucks from Tesla in 2017.
The beverage company was the first orderer of the Tesla Semi almost five and a half years ago. This week, PepsiCo also became the first company to present the electric truck as a fleet vehicle in company livery. Tesla started deliveries of the Semi at the beginning of December last year.
According to media reports, a total of eventually 21 units are to be used at the bottling plant in Sacramento. A further 15 vehicles are expected to enter service at PepsiCo’s production facility in Modesto, California, by PepsiCo snack company Frito-Lay which announced its transition off diesel vehicles in 2021. DC chargers have been installed at both sites, it said. A local newspaper, Sacramento Bee, speaks of four 750 kW charging stations at each location, which are said to look very similar to the V4 Superchargers.
PepsiCo received several national and state grants to purchase the Tesla trucks and charging infrastructure, with media reports stating that the Sacramento Metropolitan Air Quality Management District awarded $4.5 million in grants to 18 of the 21 trucks that will be used at the South Sacramento bottling plant. In total, PepsiCo received $15 million in state and local grants for the vehicles and charging infrastructure in Sacramento and Modesto, plus $40,000 per vehicle from the federal government.
Now that the Semis are in operation, their performance has been observed. Erica Edwards, senior vice president of manufacturing at PepsiCo, is quoted in a media report as saying that the Tesla Semi’s “have a range of about 400 miles before they need to be charged”. Tesla famously quotes a range of 500 miles (over 800 kilometres) when fully charged.
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