THE FUTURE OF CARS A crowd of people sat in a large It was dark Suddenly a garage airplane hangar in November 2017 door opened Spotlights appeared in the night sky Two large silver semitrucks or semis drove in They parked in front of the audience Elon Musk the CEO of electric car company Tesla stepped out from the cab of the truck He introduced the Tesla Semi The audience cheered The Tesla Semi is the first all-electric semi Most semis are large and bulky They run on fossil fuels such as diesel They pollute the air Tesla revealed its semi in November 2017 in Hawthorne California
The average semi drives 45,000 miles 72,400 km in one year It can get 6 5 miles 10 5 km per gallon of HISTORY OF TESLA Tesla was founded in 2003 by five people including Elon Musk They named the company after the inventor Nikola Tesla Tesla made important discoveries in the field of electricity in the late 1800s and early 1900s The founders wanted to create electric vehicles that could match or beat gas-powered cars Tesla debuted its first car in 2008 The first model could travel 245 miles 394 km on a single charge Its top speed was 125 miles per hour 200 km h This range and speed were similar to a gas-powered car Since then Tesla has created more models of electric vehicles that are similar to gas-powered cars fuel That means a truck will use almost 7,000 gallons of fuel in one year But the Tesla Semi is an electric vehicle It can go 500 miles 800 km on a single charge Electric vehicles use a battery to power an electric motor They don’t run on fossil fuels They also don’t pollute the air Musk had another surprise The semi took a final lap around the airplane hangar
Lights turned off Rock music played Smoke filled the air A ramp dropped from the back of the semi Inside the truck headlights blinked on Lights slowly lit up the stage A sleek red car rolled down the ramp It drove across the stage The new Tesla Roadster had arrived The Tesla Roadster is a sporty convertible It has a glass top It can go from 0 to 60 mph 0 to 96 km h in just 1 9 seconds The Roadster can go over 250 mph 400 km h Like the Tesla Semi it is an electric vehicle From semis to sports cars electric vehicles are becoming more and more popular But electric vehicles are not a new development They have been around since the beginning of the automobile age THE FIRST ELECTRIC CARS William Morrison invented the first successful electric car in 1890 in Des Moines Iowa Other early cars were powered by gasoline or steam But electric cars were the most popular They were quiet and easy to fix
