Tesla's next trick will be an electric semi truck

Not content with planning the colonisation of Mars and building cars that can drive themselves, Elon Musk is also getting into the truck-building business, confirming via Twitter that his Tesla company is readying an electric semi truck too.

The truck is going to be unveiled in September, Musk says... and that's just about everything we know about it so far. The Tesla CEO did add that the company's engineers have done an "amazing job" on it and that the vehicle is "seriously next level".

Make of that what you will. After his initial tweet, Musk went on to say that a pickup truck would also be appearing within the next 18-24 months, so it would seem Tesla's portfolio of electric vehicles is due a serious expansion in the next couple of years.

All part of the master plan

Musk didn't mention autonomous driving technology directly, but it's likely to be included in some form, considering Tesla's cars are so far down the self-driving road. We've also seen self-driving big rigs tested out by some of Tesla's rivals. With set routes down big, well-marked roads, putting autonomous tech inside trucks is relatively easy.

The idea of a Tesla truck isn't completely new: Musk did mention it in one of his "master plan" posts 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," he wrote at the time.

In one other bit of Elon-Musk-making-announcements-on-Twitter news, the entrepreneur has said the final version of the Model 3 automobile is going to be shown off in July. We already have a pretty good idea of what the car looks like, of course, but the vehicle we see in three months will be exactly what customers are going to get at the end of the year.

David Nield
Freelance Contributor

Dave is a freelance tech journalist who has been writing about gadgets, apps and the web for more than two decades. Based out of Stockport, England, on TechRadar you'll find him covering news, features and reviews, particularly for phones, tablets and wearables. Working to ensure our breaking news coverage is the best in the business over weekends, David also has bylines at Gizmodo, T3, PopSci and a few other places besides, as well as being many years editing the likes of PC Explorer and The Hardware Handbook.