Tesla Begins Deliveries of All-Electric Semi After Decade of Delays

Tesla has started handing over its first all-electric Semi trucks to customers, nearly a decade after unveiling the vehicle in 2017. The company announced the milestone at an event Thursday night at a new factory dedicated to the Semi, adjacent to its first Gigafactory in Reno, Nevada.

Tesla plans to build as many as 50,000 trucks a year at the plant — roughly 1,000 per week — and create 3,000 jobs for the local economy. The most capable version of the truck is expected to travel 500 miles or more on a single charge, depending on load size, and will cost just shy of $300,000 before incentives. Shorter-range variants will also be available. Tesla did not disclose the final sticker price, but executives said the truck will help fleet owners lower total cost of ownership, cut emissions and benefit from greater reliability.

Customers can take delivery whenever they are ready, though charging infrastructure remains a hurdle, a person familiar with the matter told TechCrunch on condition of anonymity.

One notable absence: CEO Elon Musk, who attended President Trump's state dinner with Chinese Premier Xi Jinping. Musk did pre-tape a segment that ran before the event, calling the Semi the "funnest truck to drive" and promising that Tesla's partial automation features — missing from the truck despite years of delays — will arrive in the "near future." He also pitched the economics: "a ton of sense economically, because the cost of electricity per mile is much less than the cost of diesel, especially in these crazy times."

A launch through years of setbacks

The Semi was originally slated for production in 2019. The pandemic, a global parts supply and semiconductor shortage, and changes made in response to pilot customer feedback all contributed to the delay.

Dan Priestly, head of Tesla's Semi program, and Lars Moravy, who leads most of Tesla's engineering efforts, detailed many of those changes during the 30-minute event — timed so a Semi that started at 3% battery would reach 60% while plugged into one of Tesla's megawatt charging stations. Tesla is also building an entire network of these chargers.

Some changes are substantial: Tesla has shaved roughly 1,000 pounds off the vehicle compared with the original version. Others are granular, like reducing the three different oils used in the Semi's drive axle to one. Moravy said the original axle design had "always frustrated" him and admitted Tesla tends to prioritize "super bespoke" designs. Motor redesign work and Tesla's lubricants team eliminated the other two oils. "Occasionally we get a little too far out there," Priestly said.

Tesla also fixed the side windows. The original pop-out design, which didn't fully open, had drawn criticism for years from truck drivers and automotive bloggers alike. Priestly offered a mea culpa on stage.

"We fully admit we were wrong about the windows," he said. "Turns out there's a lot of infrastructure in the world, whether it's a badge reader, or your toll booth, or you're talking to somebody on a call box. There's all kinds of stuff right at that height, and it became evident that we needed a roll-down window in order to make that infrastructure easier to interface with."

"It's okay to be wrong, Dan," Moravy added.

The 500-mile vindication

Tesla appears to have delivered on its 2017 claim of a 500-mile range while fully loaded — a target that drew years of derision. Bill Gates, the most prominent doubter, wrote in a 2020 blog post that electric big rigs would "probably never be a practical solution" because "batteries are big and heavy."

Without naming him, Priestly and Moravy poked fun at Gates on stage. "We're kind of ruthless about every watt-hour that we chase in these things, because there's this wonderful compounding effect, [which] is that if you make the vehicle more efficient, that means it's less battery you need to do the same amount of work, which means that you can take battery out of the vehicle, which is lower cost and lower mass," Priestly said.

"We had some naysayers, names shall not be mentioned," Moravy followed.

"But, pretty well-known names," Priestly responded.

"And at Tesla, we love when people tell us something's impossible. So we took that challenge," Moravy said.

The launch arrives at an awkward moment for Tesla's identity. Musk now describes Tesla as a robotics and AI company, even though nearly all revenue still comes from vehicle sales, and he has changed the company's mission to "build a world of amazing abundance" — a departure from the 2017-era mission of accelerating the world's transition to sustainable energy. Yet the event leaned on trucking's climate footprint: Priestly noted that heavy trucks produce 16% of emissions despite making up just 1% of vehicles on the road.

"We're super excited to be deploying these into our own operations because it's fulfilling the mission that we originally started out [with]," he said.

With Musk's economics pitch resting on cheaper electricity versus diesel, the Semi's commercial success now hinges on how quickly Tesla can scale production in Reno and build out the megawatt charging network fleets will need.