Tesla Semi With Frito Lay Livery Spotted Broken Down On Roadside

Even though there was a Tesla service van on site, they had to call a tow truck.

By: Andrei Nedelea

Jan 20, 2023 at 10:08am ET

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PepsiCo and its subsidiary Frito Lay are now operating a fleet of 36 Tesla Semi trucks after deliveries began in December of last year. As a result, Tesla Semi sightings in traffic have gone up, including one showing one of these fully electric trucks seemingly broken down on the side of the road in Modesto, California.

This Semi had the Frito Lay livery and was towing a trailer when it happened. There is also what appears to be a Tesla service van parked in front of the truck, and this does evidently suggest the truck had a problem and technicians were called in to help.

In fact, Tesla established a special service team dedicated to the Semi (the Semi Service Program) last year, anticipating that being a brand new product, it would initially encounter some problems and require special attention and knowledge that regular Tesla technicians would be unable to offer.

What appears to be the same truck was spotted by a TikTok user who took a quick video showing that a tow truck was moving into position to get the stranded truck off the side of the road.

What do you think?

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We don’t know what the nature of the issue that made the truck stop there was, but it’s not the first Tesla Semi that needed to be towed. That truck wore Pepsi colors, so it was not the same truck from this new story, but it clearly could not continue under its own power after encountering a problem.

Breakdowns like these are to be expected, though, and they will keep occurring until bugs are ironed out. Tesla is no stranger to letting paying customers also be its Beta testers – just look at Full Self-Driving – so it’s not a stretch to imagine that it views PepsiCo in a similar light, although the latter accepted to be the first to operate these trucks knowing that there may be potential problems.