Tesla Chief Elon Musk has just provided an update on the company’s plan regarding the Semi’s volume production.
Tesla delayed the Class 8 electric semi-truck production ramp-up for another year, Wall Street Journal reports citing CEO Musk’s statement at an energy conference in Austin, Texas.
However, the Tesla boss withheld any further information regarding what higher-volume production would entail for the Semi.
“Chief Executive Elon Musk said the company doesn’t expect to begin producing its new electric semitrailer truck in larger volumes until the end of next year, citing battery-supply constraints.”
The Wall Street Journal
Plan changes
Additionally, he stated it would take roughly a year to scale up Semi production during the Q3 2022 earnings call in October.
Therefore, the production ramp was initially scheduled for late 2023 or early 2024.
“We’ll be ramping up Semi production through next year. As I think everyone knows at this point, it takes about a year to ramp up production. So, we expect to see significant — we’re tentatively aiming for 50,000 units in 2024 for Tesla Semi in North America. And obviously, we’ll expand beyond North America. And these would sell — I don’t want to say the exact prices, but they’re much more than a passenger vehicle.”
Tesla CEO Elon Musk said at that time
Considering that Tesla only had a limited volume production line in Gigafactory Nevada for the Semi, the initial target seemed overly unattainable. True enough, Tesla is now updating it, saying that the volume production would not likely happen until late 2024.
In retrospect, Tesla first unveiled the Semi five years ago. It commenced initial customer deliveries in December 2022, following a series of delays in the program. Notably, Tesla originally planned to do so in 2019.
See Also:
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Tesla’s move to delay the volume production of the Semi should not be surprising, as Giga Nevada expansion is still ongoing.
It would be odd for Tesla to deliver more than a few thousand Tesla Semi trucks in 2024 unless production increases significantly. Undoubtedly, being that far off a production target is not a good image for both the automaker and its CEO.
