Elusive Red Tesla Semi Spotted At California Supercharger

The Class 8 truck can’t charge at regular Superchargers, so it’s unclear what it was doing there.

Red Tesla Semi Spotted At Supercharger In California

Photo by: Twitter

Iulian Dnistran

By: Iulian Dnistran

Jan 19, 2023 at 11:30pm ET

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Tesla’s red-colored Class 8 Semi truck has been spotted at a Supercharger in Northern California, backing up into a spot and waiting to be admired. The video, embedded below, was posted by Twitter user @teslacarsonly who was there at the scene, in Dublin, California.

The elusive red Tesla Semi seems to be used more for promotional purposes than anything else, considering it was previously shown on Jay Leno’s Garage and other corporate events, and now it was just parked at a location where it can’t actually charge its batteries, because it uses the Megacharger connector, and not the plugs available at Superchargers.

With this being said, plus the fact that the location where the truck was filmed is only about 20 miles away from Tesla’s Fremont factory, we can assume that it was just a surprise visit.

This isn’t the only red Tesla Semi, however. In a video posted late last year on Tesla’s LinkedIn page, another red Semi was seen undergoing durability and reliability testing.

The Semi was unveiled way back in 2017 and after several production delays, partly caused by the supply chain issues a lot of companies had to go through during the COVID-19 pandemic, it finally went into limited production in December 2022, with the first units going to PepsiCo. and its Frito-Lay subsidiary.

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The snack and beverage makers have been using their trucks ever since for trips between 100 and 425 miles long, but it hasn’t been all smooth sailing, as one of their Semis was spotted being towed earlier this month.

With an estimated battery capacity of around 900 kWh, charging speeds of up to 1,000 kW (1 MW), and a central driving position for the driver, the Tesla Semi is certainly one of the more unusual and interesting trucks out there. It’s also one of the more efficient Class 8 rigs, with Elon Musk touting an energy consumption of 1.7 kWh/mile, which - with the average price of electricity for business customers in the US at around 13 cents per kWh - comes down to about $110 for 500 miles of driving with a gross combination weight of just under 82,000 pounds (37,194 kilograms).