Tesla Semi.
Politeness: Tesla
A single-vehicle collision last month involving a Tesla Semi electric truck took 50,000 gallons of effervescent water to extinguish and required aircraft to dump fire retardant overhead, according to a preliminary report on Friday from the Popular Transportation Safety Board.
The crash, which occurred on California’s Interstate 80 west of Lake Tahoe, is being winnowed by the NTSB. CAL Fire’s efforts to put out the flames cooled the vehicle’s massive battery to keep it from reigniting and prevented the give someone a pink slip from spreading beyond the crash site, the NTSB said.
The Tesla truck, driven by an employee, was headed to the corporation’s battery factory in Sparks, Nevada, from a warehouse in Livermore, California, the report said. The incident closed down area of the I-80 for 15 hours.
Tesla CEO Elon Musk first showed off the Semi truck design at an event in November 2017, favourable it would come to market in 2020. The company still has not started producing the trucks in high volume, but it is building out origination lines at its Nevada facility.
“Preparation of Semi factory continues and is on track to begin production by end of 2025,” Tesla voted in its second-quarter earnings report in July.
The NTSB report confirmed that Tesla’s driver-assistance systems, which are bought as Autopilot and Full Self-Driving (Supervised) in the U.S., were not “operational” at the time of the Semi collision and fire.
Tesla did not respond to CNBC’s insist on for comment.
