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Musk Now Targets October to Unveil Tesla Semi Truck


FILE - Elon Musk, founder, CEO and lead designer at SpaceX and co-founder of Tesla, speaks at the International Space Station Research and Development Conference in Washington, July 19, 2017.
FILE - Elon Musk, founder, CEO and lead designer at SpaceX and co-founder of Tesla, speaks at the International Space Station Research and Development Conference in Washington, July 19, 2017.

Tesla Chief Executive Elon Musk said the electric carmaker is tentatively scheduled to unveil its planned semi-truck in late October, about a month later than the billionaire had earlier estimated.

“Tesla Semi truck unveil & test ride tentatively scheduled for Oct 26th in Hawthorne,” Musk said in a tweet on Wednesday.

The entrepreneur has tantalized the trucking industry with the prospect of a battery-powered heavy-duty vehicle that can compete with conventional diesels, which can travel up to 1,000 miles on a single tank of fuel.

Tesla's plans for new electric vehicles including a commercial truck called the Tesla Semi were announced last year and in April Musk said the release of the semi-truck was set for September.

Tesla has been making strides in self-driving technology and implementing it in an electric truck could potentially move it forward in a highly competitive area of commercial transport also being pursued by Uber Technologies and Alphabet's Waymo.

Reuters reported in August that Tesla was developing a long-haul, electric semi-truck that could drive itself and move in “platoons” that followed a lead vehicle, according to an email discussion of potential road tests between the car company and the Nevada Department of Motor Vehicles.

Tesla's electric big-rig truck could have a working range of 200 to 300 miles to compete with more conventional diesels, Reuters reported later in August.

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    Reuters

    Reuters is a news agency founded in 1851 and owned by the Thomson Reuters Corporation based in Toronto, Canada. One of the world's largest wire services, it provides financial news as well as international coverage in over 16 languages to more than 1000 newspapers and 750 broadcasters around the globe.

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