Oh, Lordy. You can’t make this stuff up. For reasons best known only to himself, Tesla CEO Elon Musk has sent his company’s brand reputation spinning down the drain, just in time to poison the much-delayed full-volume production of the much-hyped Tesla Semi class 8 electric truck — which Musk now plans to sell in Europe, where sales of his sedans and SUVs are especially cratering. In the meantime, Musk plans to re-write all of human knowledge. No, really.
Shhhh! Genius at work!
Selling Tesla Semi Class 8 Trucks In Europe: A Tough Job But Somebody’s Got To Do It
As widely reported last week, the tipoff to the Tesla Semi sales plan in Europe was Tesla’s hiring of Usuf Schermo to lead its European sales effort.
Schermo comes to Tesla from the startup Volta Trucks. Volta has surfaced every now and then on the pages of CleanTechnica, but the last time we caught up with them was back in May of 2023, when the company launched a 16-tonne (metric tons) electric truck aimed at the urban delivery market, so we have some catching up to do.
In 2023, the organization that runs the IAA (Internationale Automobil-Ausstellungorganization) Mobility auto show in Germany also posted an interview with Schermo in the run-up to its September showcase. Schermo emphasized that Volta’s “next-generation city truck” was “designed to be the safest vehicle possible for an urban environment.”
“The passenger car industry has been transitioning away from internal combustion engine powertrains for a few years and has been supported with incentives and infrastructure, but now is the time for the commercial vehicle industry to catch up,” Schermo remarked.
“We want to see an acceleration towards zero-emission commercial vehicles in our cities across Europe, creating more sustainable and healthier cities for us all,” he remarked again for good measure.
Who In Their Right Mind Wants To Hitch Their Brand To Tesla?
IAA Mobility also asked Schermo how Volta plans to leverage the September 2023 showcase for marketing purposes. “We would like to network with fleet operators and decision-makers who are looking to make this transition now or in the near future, to show them our offering and help guide them through the transition,” Schermo responded.
“The world is changing rapidly, and the commercial vehicle industry is at the beginning of its largest shift in recent history, with a movement away from the internal combustion engine and the use of fossil fuels,” Schermo added.
That’s all well and good for Volta’s business, but fleets with a brand reputation to protect may want to think twice before hitching their good name to Tesla. One must wonder, for example, if PepsiCo is rethinking its decision to hitch a ride on the Tesla Semi when it pre-ordered 100 of the trucks back in December of 2017.
The magic number of 100 has not materialized, but PepsiCo is getting closer. Almost seven years later, in May of 2024, the company announced that 50 of the trucks would operate from its hub in Fresno, with an assist from eight 750-kilowatt Tesla charging stations and two Tesla Megapack Battery Energy Storage Systems at the site.
“Frito-Lay North America (FLNA) also has a fleet of Tesla Semis that operate out of their Modesto, Calif. facility,” PepsiCo added, referring to the Tesla Semi trucks already in operation under the wing of its corn chip branch.
Tesla Semi Has Lots Of Competition In Europe
Reviews of the Tesla Semi have been positive, but other automakers have already plunged into the Class 8 truck market ahead of Tesla and more are pouring through the door practically every day, including European truck makers.
Last week the legacy German truck maker MAN Truck & Bus, for example, announced that it has started series production of its electric truck on the same manufacturing line as its diesel trucks, enabling it to bring more trucks to market more quickly.
The repurposing of MAN’s diesel production system, along with supply chain and logistics tweaks, also enables the company to offer any electric truck in the 12–50 tonne range to its customers, including a long-haul truck to compete directly with the Tesla Semi.
MAN anticipates that it can deliver its first 1,000 trucks by the end of the year. No word yet on how many will be Tesla-equivalent, but then again, they don’t have to be. Some customers may prefer to forego the whole idea of a Class 8 truck in favor of smaller, more nimble trucks — which Tesla does not make.
As for brand reputation, MAN notes that it already has a firm footprint in the electric bus field, which is another ripe market left untouched by Tesla. That helps explain why MAN already has 700 electric truck pre-orders in its pocket.
“MAN is the market leader in Europe for electric city buses, which have been manufactured at its plant in Starachowice, Poland, for some time now, and was also the first European manufacturer to present an electric coach in Ankara,” MAN remarked in a press statement last year.
The Fuel Cell Truck Factor
Battery-electric trucks are just one area of competition faced by the Tesla Semi in Europe. Hydrogen fuel cells are also in play. Although fuel cell electric trucks continue to struggle for a foothold here in the US, European Union policymakers have come down firmly on the side of diversity in the zero-emission mobility field. Europe is a favorable market for anyone with a fuel cell vehicle up their sleeve, especially if they come with a supply of green hydrogen.
The latest news on that score comes from Honda, which has been working with Isuzu on something called the “GIGA Fuel Cell Truck.” Last year, the two companies launched the electric truck into the road-test phase in Japan. In addition, earlier this year, Honda announced plans to market a fuel cell engine in Europe as part of its global hydrogen plan.
Toyota also made headlines last week when its European division announced that a small fleet of trucks sporting Toyota fuel cells has hit the road, transporting freight between Belgium, France, Germany, and the Netherlands in partnership with VDL Group.
The Ick Factor
A compare/contrast analysis of battery and fuel cell electric trucks is beyond the scope of this article, but if you have some thoughts on the topic, feel free to drop a note in the comment thread. The point is that European policymakers, rightly or wrongly, are making it more difficult for the Tesla Semi to compete in the zero-emission freight-hauling business.
In addition, the brand reputation factor kicked up a notch last week, when Musk’s patron in the White House, US President Donald Trump, dumped a load of bombs on Iran’s nuclear facilities, further fraying the already-frayed relations between the US and its allies in Europe.
Topping off an interesting week for the Tesla brand, Musk took himself to his social media platform X (formerly Twitter) to announce his plans for re-writing all of human knowledge, with the help of a new iteration of his AI business, Grok.
“We will use Grok 3.5 (maybe we should call it 4), which has advanced reasoning, to rewrite the entire corpus of human knowledge, adding missing information and deleting errors,” he declared in a widely reported message.
In the meantime, the world has witnessed the devolution of the Starship branch of another Musk venture, SpaceX.
Could the Tesla brand fall any farther? Maybe! Musk finally announced the launch of his much delayed robotaxi venture in Austin, Texas on June 22. Hold on to your hats….
Image (via CleanTechnica archive): Despite the ongoing brand reputation meltdown at Tesla, CEO Elon Musk is moving forward with plans to market the new Tesla Semi Class 8 electric truck in Europe.
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