Tesla Semi

Tesla officially launched high-volume production of the Tesla Semi last night at its new dedicated factory in Nevada, a plant it says can build 50,000 electric trucks per year.

The Class 8 truck was unveiled in 2017 with production promised for 2019. Seven years later, Tesla says deliveries “start now,” and it detailed a heavily redesigned truck in a 13-post thread on X.

Tesla has lined up at least 11 Semi electric trucks wearing customer logos outside its new Nevada factory, a clear sign that the automaker plans to parade its fleet customers at tonight’s Semi launch event.

A drone flyover of the plant shows trucks branded for PepsiCo, US Foods, DHL, WattEV, ABF, Einride, IMC, OK Produce, and a few others parked in a neat row by the factory.

Tesla has been named the primary truck supplier for the largest electric Class 8 order in US history: 2,500 battery-electric trucks bought through a new shipper alliance called ZET SCALE.

The order on its own would nearly double the number of electric Class 8 trucks on US roads, and the alliance says it’s targeting more than 10,000 over time.

Tesla is going to operate public Megacharger sites at three electric truck depots it doesn’t own. Forum Mobility, one of the largest heavy-duty charging operators in the US, says Tesla will run public Megacharging at three of four new California depots it’s about to break ground on.

The move comes as Forum brings another 30 MW of heavy-duty charging online and sits on reservations for more than 330 Tesla Semis. It’s the clearest sign yet that Tesla’s Semi charging network is getting built through partners, not just Tesla-owned stations.

Tesla revealed the European specs for its Semi electric truck, and they don’t match the version already in production in the US. The truck will offer up to 550 km (342 miles) of range at 40 tonnes fully loaded.

Tesla Europe posted the numbers today, days before the company plans to formally launch the Semi in Europe at the IAA Transportation show in Hannover.

Tesla has a packed September ahead of it, with two confirmed and one rumored product launches. For a company that has gone so long without new products, it would be a big month… if all three of those products hadn’t been launched years ago already.

Einride is putting 500 Tesla Semis on US roads, the largest commitment to Tesla’s electric truck that anyone has made public.

That will takes the Swedish freight company from roughly 250 deployed electric trucks to about 750. First deliveries start next month, with the rest arriving in phases over 24 months.

Elon Musk says Tesla expects to have self-driving working on the Tesla Semi “probably around the end of this year or early next year.”

Going by Tesla’s record on self-driving deadlines, it is: their jobs are safe for a long time.

Paper Transport (PTI) announced today that it is evaluating the Tesla Semi Long Range in dedicated operations in the Chicago market, becoming the latest fleet to put Tesla’s electric Class 8 truck to work in daily freight.

The Wisconsin-based carrier, which has logged more than 87 million miles on compressed and renewable natural gas, is adding battery-electric to a sustainability push it has been running for over 15 years.

A Tesla Semi was involved in its first known fatal crash, killing two people on U.S. 50 in Nevada on Sunday morning.

The driver of the Class 8 electric truck reportedly fell asleep before rear-ending two passenger vehicles stopped at a red light, according to preliminary statements from investigators.

Tesla’s Semi program lead Dan Priestley shared a video of the electric truck holding its line on icy winter surfaces, sliding under control rather than skidding out of it.

The clip is a rare look at the Tesla Semi’s Vehicle Dynamics Control (VDC) system doing exactly what an electric drivetrain is supposed to do better than a diesel one: catch a heavy rig before it gets away from the driver.

ArcBest (ARCB), the multibillion-dollar logistics company, is purchasing two Tesla Semi electric trucks for its ABF Freight fleet after a successful 2025 pilot program that averaged 1.55 kWh per mile over 4,494 miles.

The purchase marks a significant step beyond piloting and into actual fleet investment for the less-than-truckload (LTL) carrier, which is now expanding its electric Class 8 testing across a broader operating footprint.

Covenant Logistics, one of the largest trucking companies in the US with a fleet of over 2,600 tractors, completed a two-week evaluation of the Tesla Semi in California — including a loaded run over the notorious Grapevine pass on I-5.

The company’s VP of Sustainability and Innovation, Matt McLelland, said the driver “was amazed at the performance of the Tesla Semi and felt a level of confidence that was hard to match in a diesel truck.”

California’s Air Resources Board has officially confirmed the Tesla Semi’s battery capacities through a regulatory filing — and they’re smaller than what Elon Musk originally suggested back in 2022.

The CARB Executive Order A-374-0095, signed on April 15, reveals that the Long Range Semi carries an 822 kWh usable battery pack while the Standard Range comes in at 548 kWh, both using NCMA lithium-ion chemistry with Tesla’s 4680 cells.

Two California port trucking operators have ordered a combined 60 Tesla Semi trucks through Forum Mobility, the charging infrastructure provider backed by Amazon and CBRE. It marks one of the largest Tesla Semi fleet commitments to date from the drayage sector.

The orders come from Big F Transport, which committed to 40 units, and NICA Container Freight Line, which ordered 20. Both fleets will operate out of Forum Mobility’s new charging depot under development in Rancho Dominguez, California.

Trevor Milton, the convicted fraudster who founded Nikola Motors, took to LinkedIn to attack Tesla Semi’s economics with a point-by-point takedown. Despite his near-total lack of credibility, a couple of his arguments actually hold up.

Milton, who was convicted of securities fraud for lying to investors about Nikola’s electric truck technology, posted a lengthy comment on a LinkedIn post about Tesla ramping Semi production, claiming he “knows EV trucking probably better than anyone.”

Tesla has produced the first Semi truck off its new high-volume production line at Gigafactory Nevada, marking a critical milestone for the long-delayed electric truck program.

The automaker shared an image of the truck on its official Tesla Semi account on X, confirming volume production is now underway at the dedicated 1.7-million-square-foot factory.

MDB Transportation, a Southern California drayage operator, has launched a three-week pilot running a Tesla Semi on active port freight lanes — marking the second port trucking company to put the electric Class 8 truck to work hauling containers.

The Compton-based carrier is testing the Semi in one of the most demanding urban freight environments in the country, tracking energy efficiency, cycle time, and driver experience throughout the deployment.

Tesla Semi program lead Dan Priestley took Jay Leno on an extensive tour of the production-intent electric truck, revealing significant engineering details — including 1,000 lbs of weight savings that bring the 500-mile version to payload parity with diesel trucks.

The episode is packed with new technical information about the powertrain architecture, charging capabilities, and production readiness as Tesla prepares to ramp its dedicated Semi factory outside Reno, Nevada, to 50,000 units per year.

Tesla has opened its first Megacharger station to Semi customers at a new location in Ontario, California, marking a significant milestone in its push to build a charging network for electric trucks.

The opening comes as Tesla ramps up Semi production at its dedicated Nevada factory and accelerates its plan to deploy 66 Megacharger locations across the US.

Tesla has updated its “Find Us” map with 64 new Megacharger locations across 15 states, giving the clearest picture yet of the charging network it is building to support the Tesla Semi.

Combined with 2 sites already operational, the map now shows 66 total locations covering major freight corridors from the West Coast to the East Coast.