I was wondering if the best early markets to target might be in the European Union. First of all, at least on the PR-side of things we seem to be a bit more into sustainability; more companies might want to get these just to get a good public reputation. But aside from that it might make more economic sense too.

So I tried a rough estimation.

TL;DR: I made a very, very rough estimation which suggests that if Tesla's original cost per mile number is accurate, it could be very successful in a handful of European countries, for companies that do not transport cargo internationally.

Making worst-case assumptions about the average costs at each step, switching to the Tesla Semi would be a net increase in costs of 19¢/mile on average.

Making slightly-more-lenient assumptions about electricity costs, switching would give a 28¢/mile savings on average (compared to their claimed 25¢/mile in the USA).

The best-case scenario for Tesla would be a trucking company in Norway that only delivers inside Norway, because then that number improves to somewhere between 59¢/mile to 80¢/mile.

Also, they need to give more context for the $200k+ fuel savings claim, because it seems a bit suspicious: they claim a savings of 25¢/mile, but fuel cost is only a fraction of that. So you would need to travel like a million miles before you reach that amount, which would take over two to three decades at the average distance covered by a truck each year.

I'm not an economist, and a lot of ridiculous assumptions were made in these calculation, so don't take it too seriously.

Still reading? Down the rabbit hole we go...

In the reveal video Tesla claims a cost of $1.51/mile for diesel vs $1.26/mile for their semi[0], so a 25¢/mile savings (I'm going to ignore the convoy savings for now). This assumes fuel costs of $2.50/gallon and 7¢/kwH.

Oh, BTW: the estimated average miles per year is 45k in the US[1]. So at 25¢/mile that would be $11.25k saved per truck in the US on average - which presumably includes costs saved on repairs. Again: where does that $200k+ fuel savings number come from?

Now, in Europe gas prices are (on average) much higher than the USA. What would be the price per mile here? Well, to estimate that that we must also look at how the price of electricity compares between Europe and the USA.

For diesel, I looked at globalpetrolprices.com[1][2]. It does not provide an average for all of the EU (nor prices per US state, for that matter). Truckers will often plan in such a way that they fill up in the countries on their route with lower gas prices, so let's err on the side of caution and make it $5/mile. To compare the relative difference I'll take the current average US price, which is $2.83/mile. So gas is 1.8x more expensive at the moment, on average.

Now, we do not know the MPG Tesla assumed for diesel trucks. Lets go with the worst-case comparison again, which would be 8 MPG. Increasing $2.83/gallon to $5.00/gallon, that mean be an increase of 27.12¢/mile. Making the improbably assumption that all other costs relevant to this calculation are equal, we can just add that to Tesla's number of $1.51/mile, and end up with $1.78/mile for diesel in Europe.

For electricity I looked up the official governmental statistics provided for electricity USA and European Union[3][4]. Taking the provided national averages, and converting the Euro to US dollars at the current rate of 1.00 to 1.18, I get these numbers:

EU: 15.51¢/kWh domestic, 8.01¢/kWh industrial (second half 2016)

USA: 12.90¢/kWh residential, 9.89¢/kWh transportation, 7.23¢/kWh industrial (August 2016 - more recent statistics exist but I figure we should compare the same time period)

Note that these numbers make Tesla's claim seem a bit fishy, since they assumed 7¢/kWh for the USA, which you don't even get with industrial scale costs.

Europe does not distinguish transportation from other sectors yet, but the worst-case scenario would be using their domestic prices compared to the USA's transportation prices. That would be about 1.5x more expensive, still not as much as diesel.

(I added industrial electricity prices because perhaps a large transportation company with a fleet of electric vehicles and their own charging stations would use so much electricity that they would need industrial energy contracts. At that point the comparison obviously gets a whole lot rosier)

We don't know how much of a factor fuel price is in the price per mile calculation of the Tesla Semi. If we take their claim of lower maintenance costs at face value, it should be a bigger portion of the total. Now, the even-worse-that-worst case scenario would be assuming it's all of it, since that would give the biggest adjustment, and that the relative difference is equal to the domestic price difference:

$1.26/mile * (15.51¢/kWh / 9.89¢/kWh) = $1.97/mile, for a net increase of 19¢/mile.

If we take the relative difference between domestic prices as our starting point, it becomes better again:

$1.26/mile * (15.51¢/kWh / 12.90¢/kWh) = $1.51/mile, for a net savings of 28¢/mile.

So, using the worst possible adjustment for diesel and electricity prices, worst MPG, and worse-than-worse price-per-mile adjustment for Tesla, the economic benefits of switching to these will still be bigger in Europe.

Now lets look at the country with (probably) the best numbers for Tesla: Norway. Despite being an oil-exporting country, it has the highest price per gallon (except Iceland), and lower price per kWh than the USA:

Diesel: $6.99/gallon, electricity: 11.30¢/kWh domestic, 6.28¢/kWh industrial

Keeping everything else worst-case-scenario for Tesla as before:

(6.99-2.83 $/gallon) / 8 MPG = 0.52¢/mile, for a total of $2.03/mile for diesel

$1.26 * 11.30 / 9.89 = $1.44/mile for Tesla, or 59¢/mile saved.

If we assume domestic-to-domestic, the ratio becomes 11.30/12.90. The worst case scenario here would be assuming equal percentage of price per mile as diesel:

$2.5/gallon / 8 MPG = 31.25¢/mile, or 31.25/1.51 = 20.7% of total price per mile

(($1.26 * 79.3) + ($1.26 * 20.7) * 11.30 / 12.90) / 100 = $1.23/mile, for a total of 80¢/mile saved.

... for a total of 80¢/mile saved.

Of course, a proper cost calculation would be much more complicated, since it would depend on the routes your transport company takes, where you are located, how big the company is, etc.

With so many countries I can only assume it requires more red tape to get their semi through all the required tests in Europe (even with EU-wide standards simplifying things there), but it would probably worth it for Tesla to target specific countries with higher fuel costs and lower electricity costs.

Tangent: in the process of looking this up, I discovered that fueleconomy.gov does not have a section for semi-trucks[5]. I wonder if that was blocked by the automotive industry on purpose.

[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nONx_dgr55I&t=14m

[1] https://hdstruckdrivinginstitute.com/semi-trucks-numbers/

[1] http://www.globalpetrolprices.com/diesel_prices/North-Americ...

[2] http://www.globalpetrolprices.com/diesel_prices/Europe/

[3] https://www.eia.gov/electricity/monthly/epm_table_grapher.ph...

[4] http://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-explained/index.php/..., http://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/product?code=nrg_pc_204&languag..., http://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/product?code=nrg_pc_205&languag...

[5] http://fueleconomy.gov/feg/search.shtml?words=semi