Tesla launches high‑volume production of the long‑awaited Semi truck in Nevada

TSLA opened its first factory for high-volume production of the Semi, its heavy-duty electric truck, in Sparks, Nevada, on Thursday evening, nearly a decade after the concept debuted on stage in 2017 . Dan Priestley, who leads the Semi program, said the plant is built to produce 50,000 trucks a year, or about 1,000 a week, and will bring more than 3,000 jobs to Nevada during the ramp . Electrek's framing was blunter: the truck is entering volume production seven years behind schedule . Elon Musk skipped the event to attend the White House state dinner for Xi Jinping and appeared by pre-taped video, calling the Semi a "breakthrough product for heavy shipping" .

The demand side arrived before the ribbon-cutting. Earlier in the week the ZET SCALE coalition, a shipper alliance that includes PepsiCo and MSFT, selected Tesla as its primary manufacturer for an initial order of 2,500 Semis, to be delivered starting this year and over the following 18 months, and trucking firm Einride separately agreed to order 500 . Customers named at the event included PepsiCo, US Foods, DHL, WattEV, ABF, Einride and IMC , and Reuters and Seeking Alpha reported that deliveries are starting with the 50,000-unit annual target reaffirmed.

The timing helps the pitch. US diesel prices hit record highs this month and are up nearly double from a year ago as the Iran war disrupts Middle East supply, which is the opening MarketWatch and Investor's Business Daily highlighted . Tesla quotes an estimated 500 miles per charge for the long-range version and 325 miles for the standard one, against 155 to 430 miles advertised by competing electric trucks, and says Semis in fleet service have shown 98% uptime .

The obstacles are cost and charging. Electric semis can cost two to three times more upfront than diesel rigs; the International Council on Clean Transportation puts the long-range Semi at around $290,000 . Tesla's site lists only two public megawatt chargers, in the Los Angeles area, and Priestley says the company plans to open 30 by year end . Musk has also said self-driving on the Semi should arrive around the end of this year or early next, a timeline to treat with caution given his record on autonomy deadlines, while Aurora and Kodiak are already testing driverless trucks . With Tesla shares down 16% this year per CNBC, investors will watch the weekly production rate, conversion of the ZET SCALE order into deliveries, and the charger buildout .