QUESTION ASKED: What Does Tesla’s Automated Truck Mean for Truckers?

On Thursday night, Elon Musk rolled out Tesla’s biggest gizmo yet: a fully electric semitruck. The Semi can go a whopping 500 miles between charges, hauling 80,000 pounds along the way. And it can sorta, kinda drive itself—on highways, anyway. The truck comes with Enhanced Autopilot, the second generation of Tesla’s semiautonomous technology, equipped with automatic braking, lane keeping, and lane departure warnings.

“Every truck we sell has Autopilot as standard,” Musk said of the Semi, which goes into production in 2019. “This is a massive increase in safety.”

Be that as it may, Tesla is having serious issues gearing up full-scale production on a simple midsize sedan — on an assembly line still suffering from issues worked out by Henry Ford a century ago.