Tesla poised to scale production of heavy-duty Semi trucks with opening of Nevada factory
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In this article Tesla is officially opening its first factory for high-volume production of the Semi, a heavy-duty electric truck, in Sparks, Nevada, as CEO Elon Musk aims to push into big rigs. The company first unveiled its Semi in 2017, and started selling the trucks in very limited quantities to early customers, including anchor client PepsiCo ., in 2022. A livestream of Thursday's ribbon-cutting event is scheduled for 9 p.m. ET, or 6 p.m. local time. The factory opening comes as Tesla's core business of electric vehicles faces increased competition across the globe, and as soaring diesel costs present a potential opening for a transition to EVs in commercial trucking. Tesla has struggled to gain much traction with its angular steel Cybertruck, a smaller pickup that it first delivered to customers in 2023. On Tuesday, industry coalition ZET SCALE said it "selected Tesla as its primary original equipment manufacturer" for an initial order of 2,500 trucks, with the aim of ordering more than 10,000 electric trucks from an array of providers. Trucking firm Einride also recently said it agreed to order 500 Tesla Semi trucks for its fleet with some deployments planned this month. On Tesla's last earnings call in July, Musk told investors that the company's automated driving systems (known as FSD, or Full Self-Driving) would be available for the Semi in the near future, but he...
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