Tesla reveals pricing for its electric Semi truck

The Tesla Semi looks cool, but the battery-powered big rig’s most attractive feature could be its Black Friday pricing.

The sleek-looking long-hauler will cost just $150,000 for the 300-mile range version and $180,000 for a model that can go 500 miles on a single charge, according to Tesla’s Web site.

That’s way below estimates that have lately been floated in the media, including a $400,000 projection by MIT Technology Review.

What’s more, Tesla claimed late Thursday that each all-electric Semi will save its owner $200,000 in fuel costs over the lifespan of the truck.

Long-haul trucks cost $120,000 on average and burn up to $70,000 of diesel fuel per year, according to Engs Commercial Finance, a lender to the transportation industry.

Commercial big rigs have an average lifespan of 10 years, according o the California Air Resources Board.

Tesla didn’t explain the pricing surprise for the Semi, which the company doesn’t plan to produce until 2019. But observers chalked it up to CEO Elon Musk’s aggressive bets on battery technology.

Last June, McKinsey & Co. reported that battery-pack costs, driven by surging demand for electric vehicles, fell to $230 per kilowatt-hour in 2016 from $1,000 in 2010.

Still, the Semi’s specs appear to be counting on advances that haven’t yet been realized.

Electrek, a news site that tracks the transition from fossil fuels to electric alternatives, investigated Musk’s claim that new megachargers will pack the Semi with 400 miles’ worth of juice in just 30 minutes.

Those numbers represent an energy transfer that Electrek called “more than 10 times more powerful than Tesla’s current Superchargers,” which take half an hour to give the Model S sedan 170 miles worth of juice.

Tesla has a history of aiming high and then pulling back.

Last month, while announcing a record quarterly loss of $619 million, the car maker postponed its year-end goal of producing 5,000 Model 3s a week until the first quarter of 2018.

By announcing prices for the Semi, Tesla answered the biggest question it didn’t address at the late-night unveiling of the futuristic hauler in a Hawthorne, Calif., airport on Nov. 16.

The missing price tag caught up with Tesla after last weekend, pounded by skeptical notes from Wall Street analysts. But on Friday, the see-saw resumed as Tesla shares rose 0.9 percent after the Semi’s pricing was revealed on Thanksgiving Day, with the three traditional truck makers dropping.

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