Tesla is finally shipping the Semi to customers in volume, roughly nine years after Elon Musk first unveiled the electric Class 8 truck on stage in 2017. Speaking at a media event at the company's new dedicated Semi plant next to its Reno Gigafactory on Thursday, program lead Dan Priestly said Tesla is targeting an annual run rate of 50,000 trucks – about 1,000 units a week – and has already started delivering vehicles to the first commercial fleets, TechCrunch reported.
500-Mile Range, $299,000, And 3,000 New Jobs
The production Semi keeps the eye-catching central driving position but swaps the original pop-out doors and windows for more conventional roll-down glass, while shaving roughly 1,000 pounds off the design. Tesla is quoting 500+ miles of range fully loaded and pricing the standard truck just under $299,000 before incentives; a shorter-range configuration will follow. The Reno factory is expected to employ around 3,000 workers when it hits full output.
Priestly, refreshingly candid for a Tesla launch, told reporters "we fully admit we were wrong about the windows" and conceded the team "occasionally gets a little too far out there" on design. That is a rare public acknowledgement of the tortured timeline: original 2019 production slipped through the pandemic, chip shortages, supplier issues and a slew of revisions driven by feedback from pilot customers such as Pepsi and Frito-Lay.
A Megawatt Charging Network Is The Missing Piece
The bigger constraint now is charging. Tesla is building out a nationwide network of megawatt-class chargers to support the Semi – without them, buyers cannot run long, high-payload duty cycles. Priestly said customers can take delivery of trucks "when they're ready," but acknowledged the charging build is what will dictate how quickly a real fleet forms.
Racing A Reset Trucking Landscape
Tesla arrives late to a US trucking market that has changed under it. Einride's 500-Semi Amazon order announced this month is a preview of the kind of enterprise deals that will drive the ramp. Meanwhile, Aurora is now delivering 20 driverless trucks a week and Waabi is running 300-mile Dallas–San Antonio autonomous runs, meaning Tesla's electric edge will soon collide with an autonomy race it is not selling into first-party trucks.
Reporting based on coverage from TechCrunch.