Tesla Semi cost per mile versus diesel truck
Tesla Semi cost per mile versus diesel truck now has 2 real numbers behind it, not company estimates. ArcBest, the freight company that owns ABF Freight, a less than truckload carrier that combines partial loads from several shippers onto 1 truck, ran a Tesla Semi on real revenue routes between Reno, Nevada and Sacramento, California for 3 weeks in 2025. The truck covered 4,494 miles, including a climb over the 7,200 foot Donner Pass, and averaged 1.55 kilowatt hours a mile, a measure of how much electricity it used to move the truck 1 mile. That beat a 2022 estimate from Tesla itself, 1.7 kilowatt hours a mile, and separate test results of 1.72 and 1.73 kilowatt hours a mile from DHL and Saia, 2 other carriers that ran their own tests. ArcBest has since bought 2 more Tesla Semis for ABF Freight.
Lower is better here, since this measures electricity used to cover 1 mile. The ArcBest figure comes from a real freight route including a mountain crossing. The other 3 are separate claims and tests from separate companies, not 3 measurements of the same run.
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| Tesla, 2022 estimate | 1.7 |
| DHL, own test | 1.72 |
| Saia, own test | 1.73 |
| ArcBest, 2025 real pilot | 1.55 |
Turning that efficiency into a dollar figure means multiplying it by an electricity price. At 14.19 cents a kilowatt hour, the average commercial electricity rate in the United States in June 2026, running a Tesla Semi at the efficiency ArcBest measured costs about 22 cents a mile, arithmetic done for this article from those 2 government figures. Diesel costs far more right now. The United States average on highway diesel price reached 6.285 dollars a gallon in the week of September 14 2026, more than double the 2.546 dollars a gallon it cost 1 year earlier. Divided by 6.3 miles a gallon, the average fuel economy for a Class 8 truck, the weight class that covers a fully loaded semi truck, that price puts diesel at about 100 cents a mile, also arithmetic done for this article. Diesel now costs roughly 4 to 5 times as much to run per mile as an electric semi at that commercial electricity rate.
Dan Priestley, director of Semi at Tesla, points to the same mechanism behind that gap.
EV heavy trucks provide lower costs per mile from fuel savings, reduced maintenance, and better uptime over diesel trucks.
Dan Priestley, director of Semi at Tesla. Source 2.
Both bars are arithmetic done for this article, not figures either source states directly. Electric multiplies the 1.55 kilowatt hours a mile ArcBest measured by the 14.19 cents a kilowatt hour commercial electricity rate the government reports for June 2026, source 1 and source 4. Diesel divides the 6.285 dollars a gallon current national average pump price by 6.3 miles a gallon average fuel economy, source 3 and source 5.
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| Electric, commercial rate | 22 |
| Diesel, current price | 100 |
Real freight deployments are already at fleet scale
Electric semi trucks are also moving past single pilots. Einride, a freight technology company, is deploying 500 Tesla Semis to haul freight for Amazon across 5 United States states, California, Texas, New Jersey, Illinois and Georgia, the largest public commitment to the truck to date. Einride operates roughly 250 electric trucks today and will operate roughly 750 once the deployment finishes, all managed through Saga, its own routing and charging software. Tesla prices the trucks from 260,000 to 290,000 dollars each depending on range, putting the hardware cost of the 500 truck order between 130,000,000 and 145,000,000 dollars, a total the reporting outlet itself calculated by multiplying that price by the truck count.
Einride states the before and after fleet totals as approximate, roughly 250 and roughly 750. The 500 trucks being added is the exact size of the Amazon deployment, and it accounts for the full gap between the 2 approximate totals.
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| Fleet, before deployment | 250 |
| Trucks being added | 500 |
| Fleet, after deployment | 750 |
Roozbeh Charli, chief executive of Einride, describes what the deployment proves.
This deployment is yet another proof point that we can execute at the scale our customers demand.
Roozbeh Charli, chief executive of Einride. Source 2.
What could still narrow the gap
The trucks both companies use come from the same dedicated factory next to Gigafactory Nevada, where the first Tesla Semi rolled off a high volume production line in April 2026. The diesel figure above is a national retail average measured for 1 week in a market that moved 32 cents in the week before it, so a large fleet buying diesel in bulk could pay less than that average, narrowing the true gap somewhat. Even so, the gap has widened over the past year, not shrunk, because the national diesel price more than doubled while the real world efficiency of the electric truck, tested on an actual freight route with a mountain crossing, held steady against every earlier claim.