Horizon Motor debuted its Class 8 electric semi at ACT Expo 2026 as a direct challenger to the Tesla Semi, focusing on practical usability improvements. It features a conventional two-seat cab and a dual-plug CCS1 charging system for broader infrastructure compatibility, enabling full charges in under an hour.
The truck delivers a 350-mile range, a 29,000-pound curb weight, and is already operating with a California fleet customer, with delivery timelines of 120–150 days. Horizon also plans to integrate solid-state batteries in the future, potentially boosting range or reducing weight.
Clean Trucking spoke with CEO Sean Jones, who also provided a full walkaround of the vehicle.
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Jay Traugott
I'm here at Act Expo 2026 in Las Vegas. And behind me is the Horizon Motor Class eight battery electric semi. Is this better than the Tesla Semi? That's about to begin production sometime this year. We're about to find out when I speak to the CEO Sean Jones.
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Jay Traugott
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00;00;21;26 - 00;00;37;21
Jay Traugott
So, Sean, last year we were here at Act and you had a really cool lineup, but he also told me something new was going to be coming for this year, and I think it's right behind us. So yeah. Tell me, what is this here? Super excited about this thing. This is our new class eight semi truck. It's literally.
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Sean Jones
Hot off the press. We got the last pieces together, test drove it, put it on the truck and it came to the show.
00;00;43;09 - 00;00;44;23
Jay Traugott
So it's it's debut.
00;00;44;25 - 00;00;46;15
Sean Jones
Right here at the show. It's got all.
00;00;46;15 - 00;00;47;26
Jay Traugott
Of our latest stuff in it.
00;00;47;28 - 00;00;51;06
Sean Jones
For kilowatt battery. We expect to get at least 350 miles.
00;00;51;06 - 00;00;51;29
Jay Traugott
Out of it.
00;00;52;00 - 00;01;08;28
Sean Jones
Fully loaded. What we did was we took all of the we listened to all the blurbs and everything, what people didn't like about the Tesla Semi. And then we incorporate that into ours. So we have two seats, we have this, we have that, and we should, according to all of our math, we should have more torque.
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Jay Traugott
So you're saying this is could potentially be the dark horse of the class eight EV semi markets?
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Sean Jones
Yes.
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Jay Traugott
Okay. How much is this a way.
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Sean Jones
29,000 pounds.
00;01;20;02 - 00;01;25;11
Jay Traugott
29,000 pounds. Well no one ever said EVs are well wait wait wait.
00;01;25;16 - 00;01;45;16
Sean Jones
But it's also a it's a heavy road tractor and that's what it's designed for. But fortunately we've signed an agreement to buy up to one gigawatt of solid state batteries. And when that agreement goes through, we should be able to start swapping our vehicles over to the new solid state. So we have the choice of either dropping half the battery weight or doubling range.
00;01;45;16 - 00;01;50;27
Jay Traugott
Right now. Tell the audience why solid state batteries are the superior choice. It's mostly.
00;01;50;27 - 00;02;01;27
Sean Jones
Just sheer energy density for weight. So is are what we use now. We went to those because they're practically indestructible. They'll charge all the way up to 100%, all the way down to 5%. Just don't care and they won't catch fire.
00;02;01;29 - 00;02;03;08
Jay Traugott
Yep. That's important.
00;02;03;09 - 00;02;11;18
Sean Jones
The new solid state batteries have twice the energy density for the same weight. If you look at one, you know it's different until you picked it up.
00;02;11;20 - 00;02;15;08
Jay Traugott
So what's the production calendar looking like on this? I think we're.
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Sean Jones
Probably about 120 days, 150 days from time of ordered to the time of delivery.
00;02;20;23 - 00;02;23;20
Jay Traugott
And you said this one is already going to a customer, correct?
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Sean Jones
Yes. This one is actually the first production unit. It's going out to a customer next week in California. They're going to try it out, tell us what they like, what they don't like, because we still have time to do minor tweaks to it before we start taking orders. When it comes to charging, the US standard for charging is called one, and you can find these charge points all over the country ChargePoint, all these all these things.
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Sean Jones
Now one ChargePoint can handle 250kW. But when you're talking about big batteries, that would take a long time to charge. So what we do is we put in multiple CSN. So this chart, this thing can take more than one plug at once, and it can take it in almost any charge point. And so you can charge this truck up in less than an hour by just plugging in more than one point at a time.
00;03;08;00 - 00;03;22;07
Sean Jones
And it's a big advantage over the companies, particularly Tesla, that have a very special charge point that only certain chargers that have can only handle that much current. This thing can charge up pretty much anywhere.
00;03;22;09 - 00;03;40;19
Sean Jones
So left hand mirror has a little safety things on, tells you if something's coming up or you're about to run into something. Unfortunately, we have to replace this with mirrors because US does not allow us to use pure cameras. Yet when we designed this truck, we really thought that that was going to be changed by the time the truck shipped to us.
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Sean Jones
Made sure the driver had a little door there so you can grab tickets or remove tickets. And then over here are your lighting controls and your horn controls. Windows obviously. Parking brake. You have a separate switch, both either for the trailer parking brake or the tractor parking brake. This is just basically your tire pressures and your. So you can constantly see whether or not you have a tire that's low or what the pressure is.
00;04;02;11 - 00;04;24;01
Sean Jones
And we have an add on so that if the trailer is also enabled, you can monitor the tire pressures on the on the trailer. These are air pressures for your air brakes. And this is basically your little control panel that has your climate controls, cruise controls, all that sort of thing. And then it also gives you a you can change these panels.
00;04;24;01 - 00;04;35;17
Sean Jones
So you're looking at different things. I really don't think that after a little while, the driver is going to care what his battery temperature is. So he can change that to have different types of controls and different things to view.
00;04;35;18 - 00;04;41;22
Jay Traugott
Now behind me, it looks like there's a lot of space for, yeah, relaxing and getting some shut eye.
00;04;41;23 - 00;05;02;20
Sean Jones
It's not a full sleeper cab. It's basically it's a half cab. So the idea is that the driver has to do a longer run. We didn't put a full sleeper in it because we don't think that these trucks infrastructure is really there for long haul. Yet in electric we think that these it's more set up for either day use or maybe a day and a half use.
00;05;02;20 - 00;05;14;12
Sean Jones
So we gave them a sleeper. But we didn't give it like a full on sleeper cab because we just don't feel like the infrastructure is there yet for people to start running these things, you know, a thousand miles.
00;05;14;14 - 00;05;22;24
Jay Traugott
So just looking ahead at this current state of the market, where do you see things heading in the next year, maybe five years?
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Sean Jones
I mean, electric just can get bigger and bigger. It's by far the best ROI that you have. I mean, you're talking about normally like 60% fuel savings and right now you're talking almost 80% fuel savings. And these things are such simple vehicles compared to diesel. I mean, you've got a battery, you've got a motor, you've got some controllers.
00;05;41;16 - 00;06;04;01
Sean Jones
And I was at the some of the presentations about the new diesel trucks and what they're doing to try and make them more efficient. And basically they're just adding a lot more complexity to everyone in these things. And so simplicity and stable fuel prices in so much cheaper fuel, I think the electric is going to win, except that some places electric doesn't work.
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Sean Jones
I mean, it's not going to work for long haul thousand mile trips. It just doesn't. The infrastructure is in there. So there's places where diesel is going to be around for a long, long time.
00;06;13;09 - 00;06;15;29
Jay Traugott
Do you see hydrogen being in that space anytime soon?
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Sean Jones
We actually built a hydrogen fuel cell truck back in 2019. And just the complexity of those things and trying to get the the fuel cells to not fail after 60,000 miles. And the testing that you have to do on the tanks regularly in the hydrogen, the best case is even with diesel of the price now is at three times the price for per mile.
00;06;44;15 - 00;10;07;26
Sean Jones
And so we just, you know, we could not figure out a way that our customers could make money with it. And then it would be a it would be a maintenance nightmare for us because they're very complicated systems.
