Tesla Semi All-Electric Truck Arriving in September

Tesla CEO Elon Musk says his company will unveil its electric tractor-trailer truck this September, calling the vehicle “seriously next level” and praising the Tesla team for doing “an amazing job.”

He also revealed that Tesla will show off an electric pickup truck in “18 to 24 months,” and that the next Tesla roadster sports car will be a convertible.

Musk said last year in its second quarter earnings report that the company would be unveiling the Tesla Semi as well as a Model X-based Tesla minibus at some point in 2017.

“We expect to unveil those for the middle of next year, maybe the next six to nine months type of thing. And then [we’d] have a better, more fleshed-out plan for when those would enter production,” Musk said on the call last August.

Tesla Semi truck unveil set for September. Team has done an amazing job. Seriously next level.

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) April 13, 2017

The Tesla CEO had mentioned a possible unveiling in 2017 when he announced the vehicles in his updated “Tesla Master Plan” - a follow-up to the goal-specific mission statement that he published for the company back in 2006.

As reported by Business Insider, this isn't the first time we've heard Tesla express interest in building a semi-truck.

Again, Musk first announced the semi-truck project in his “Master Plan, Part Deux” released during July of last year.

“We believe the Tesla Semi will deliver a substantial reduction in the cost of cargo transport, while increasing safety and making it really fun to operate,” Musk wrote in the plan.

Musk said in February that the company was making progress on its semi-truck. Jerome Guillen, Tesla's vice president of programs, is leading the company's semi-truck product.

Tesla CTO JB Straubel has also discussed the role Tesla can play in the trucking industry.

“I can’t say too much about the new products and the things we are developing, but from a pure technology point of view, everything that we’ve done on vehicles translates directly into trucks,” Straubel said at a forum in 2016.

“There’s no reason that today you can’t make a very compelling electric truck.”

Musk will have some competition in the electric trucking space.

Daimler, Mercedes' parent company, first showed off its electric truck in November. Guillen actually led Daimler's semi-truck program before joining Tesla in 2012.

Daimler is currently testing the vehicle, which can drive 124 miles on a single charge, on public roads in Germany. The company said in February it was talking to 20 potential customers about its electric truck.

The Nikola Motor Company has emerged from a state of being unknown to unveiling plans for the first-ever 2000 horsepower (HP) electric class 8 semi-truck, called the Nikola One (named after Nikola Tesla).

Nikola has also revealed its hydrogen-electric semi-truck which they are claiming has a total operating range of up to 1,200 miles.

Let the competition begin.

Related: Autonomous Trucking Overlooks Skilled Labor Need