Bill Gates once said electric semis would “probably never” be practical. In his August 2020 blog post he wrote: “Even with big breakthroughs in battery technology, electric vehicles will probably never be a practical solution for things like 18-wheelers… Electricity works when you need to cover short distances, but we need a different solution for heavy, long-haul vehicles.” According to Elon, during a later visit to the Gigafactory BG told him a long-range Semi was “impossible.” When Elon pointed out that Pepsi was already operating them, BG kept insisting it “doesn’t work.” Bill Gates also shorted Tesla stock (a roughly ~$500 million position and by the time of that meeting he had lost about $1.5 billion on it). We don’t know if that short remains open today… Today the Tesla Semi website is live with the production version: • Up to 500 miles of range fully loaded • Megacharger at up to 1.2 MW recovers ~60% of range in 30 minutes • Cheaper to run than diesel (lower energy cost + far fewer parts) - can pay for itself within a typical ownership period • Fleet software with live status, Trip Planner, remote support + OTA updates Volume production is underway. And today Einride placed the LARGEST public Tesla Semi order ever for 500 Tesla Semi trucks (serving Amazon and others), with first deliveries starting next month. The future of trucking is clearly going electric!