Tesla publishes European specs for the Semi: 550 km at 40 tonnes, 800 kW charging
Days before IAA Transportation in Hanover, Tesla put the European specification of the Semi on its national websites: one Standard Range tractor, up to 550 km of range at 40 tonnes gross combination weight, 1.0 kWh/km, three rear-axle motors good for 800 kW, and Megacharger charging at up to 800 kW that returns about 60% of range in half an hour. Deliveries from 2027. No price, no order button — and, as our own calculation shows, one mandatory 45-minute break is enough to finish a full nine-hour driving day.
Tesla has published the European specification of the Semi on its national websites, days before the truck's commercial launch at IAA Transportation in Hanover. Until now the company had given European buyers nothing concrete: no range figure, no charging power, no delivery date. That changed this week, and the numbers are specific enough to work with.
What Tesla states
One version is listed — a Standard Range tractor. Tesla quotes up to 550 km of range at 40 tonnes gross combination weight, which is the fully loaded figure rather than an empty-tractor best case. Stated consumption is 1.0 kWh/km. The powertrain is three independent motors on the rear axles delivering up to 800 kW of drive power, about 1,088 hp.
Charging runs on the Megacharger at up to 800 kW, which Tesla says returns about 60% of range in half an hour. The tractor's kerb weight is 9,100 kg. Within a 40-tonne combination that leaves 30,900 kg for the trailer and its load.
Tesla does not publish a battery capacity. At a stated 1.0 kWh/km and 550 km of range, the usable pack works out at roughly 550 kWh — a derived figure, not a quoted one.
What 550 km means for a driving day
Range figures for trucks are only useful against driving-time rules, so here is the arithmetic. Under EU Regulation 561/2006 a driver may drive 4.5 hours before taking a 45-minute break, with a normal daily maximum of nine hours. Trucks are speed-limited to 90 km/h and average closer to 80 km/h in real traffic.
That puts the first 4.5-hour block at roughly 360 km — comfortably inside 550 km, with around 190 km left. The mandatory 45-minute break then coincides almost exactly with the half-hour Megacharger session that adds about 60%, or roughly 330 km. The driver starts the second block with some 520 km available and needs about 360.
The conclusion matters more than the individual numbers: on Tesla's own figures, a Semi finishes a full nine-hour driving day on one charging stop, and that stop falls inside a break the driver has to take anyway. The charging time is not lost time. That is the argument this specification is built to make.
The power take-off is the underrated part
The specification that will matter most in day-to-day operation is the least headline-friendly: an electric power take-off of up to 25 kW, roughly 34 hp, which can feed a refrigerated trailer's climate unit directly from the tractor.
Fleets that switched to electric tractors have until now kept a separate diesel generator running on the trailer to keep the cooling going — an awkward compromise that undercut both the emissions case and the maintenance case. The ePTO removes it. For refrigerated transport that is a bigger change than the range figure.
What Tesla does not say
Three things are missing, and each of them matters. There is no price. There is no order button — fleet operators get a contact form that asks how many N3 trucks they run, which reads as qualification rather than sales. And there is no Long Range variant in the European listing, while the American range does have one.
Nothing has been said about the European Megacharger network either. An 800 kW charging stop is only worth planning a route around if the chargers exist along that route, and a tractor that depends on 800 kW is a different proposition in a country with a dense public network than in one without.
What this means for the European truck market
Interest is real and already documented: Swedish freight operator Einride has ordered 500 Semis, the largest order for the truck so far. Delivery from 2027 puts the Semi into a European market where DAF, Volvo and Scania have had electric tractors on the road for several years — this is a late entry into a segment that is already competitive, not the opening of a new one.
Our own catalogue currently holds nine electric truck models from those three manufacturers. The Semi is not among them, and it will not be until Hanover confirms the European specification. We do not add a vehicle to the catalogue on a pre-launch page; the figures above are Tesla's own statements ahead of a trade show, and specifications ahead of a trade show have a way of moving.