Tesla Semi manufacturing begins with Pepsi getting the primary deliveries • TechCrunch

Tesla CEO Elon Musk tweeted Thursday that manufacturing on its long-delayed all-electric semi truck has began with the primary deliveries starting in December.

The automaker launched an all-electric Class 8 truck prototype, dubbed Tesla Semi, throughout a splashy November 2017 occasion held in Hawthorne, California, on the grounds of the corporate’s design studio and Musk’s different firm, SpaceX.

The reveal got here greater than a yr after Tesla launched a vehicles growth program, which was steered by Jerome Guillen, a former Daimler govt who joined the corporate in 2010. Guillen left Tesla in 2021 just some months after his place was modified from president of the corporate’s total automotive enterprise to a extra slim position main Tesla’s heavy trucking unit.

Tesla initially deliberate to start out producing the semi truck in December 2019. Nevertheless, this system suffered repeated delays.

Final yr following Guillen’s departure, Tesla pushed manufacturing of the Semi truck program to 2022 as a consequence of provide chain challenges and the restricted availability of battery cells, the corporate mentioned throughout its second-quarter earnings report. As of January 2021, the corporate had completed engineering work on the Semi and was on observe to start deliveries that yr. However even then Musk warned that the provision of battery cells may restrict the corporate’s capability to supply the Semi.

The delays haven’t prevented the corporate from touchdown reservations, which have been $5,000 on the unveiling, from quite a lot of high-profile firms, together with Anheuser-Busch, Pepsi, Walmart and UPS. Musk tweeted that Pepsi, which ordered 100 vehicles again in December 2017, would be the first buyer to obtain the automobiles.

Deliveries to Pepsi are anticipated December 1, Musk mentioned.