Trucks tend to have lots of idle time - truckers like their comms and climate control to work while they’re waiting to get loaded, for one.

Also, you might have a local truck used in more than one back to back shift.

It sounds like Tesla has a lot to prove to skeptical truckers, so a big number on range can head off some criticism.

I think what people are saying is that there are a lot of 80-100 mile trips that this can serve, where the criticisms aren’t really a big issue. But more range still means expanded use cases.

It doesn’t have to prove anything to truckers. It’s not for truckers. It’s for large companies that want to reduce their transportation costs. They don’t care about you, the driving experience, how inconvenienced you might be, etc.

In general, companies _do_ care somewhat about worker convenience; poorly designed inconvenient things slow everything down. Particularly with trucking, actually, I'd have thought; I'm not sure how it is in the US, but there's an acute shortage of truckers in much of Europe (particularly post-Brexit), so employers won't necessarily want to annoy them for no good reason.

But why buy a truck that has such a narrow use-case? Economic situations can change a lot over the lifetime of a semi, and not being able to drive longer routes is a notable limitation.

Many trucks have even more narrow use cases than their range. Some are built specifically for particular types of cargo. Typically these trucks are purchased when the business has a specific need, and I suspect that this truck will only be considered by buyers with that specific need.

I don’t know. Probably the same reasons people buy small day cabs today.