The company is navigating a turbulent period marked by a sharp decline in electric car sales and a recall of its pickup truck over build-quality issues. Against this backdrop, the US manufacturer has revived its plans for the Tesla Semi, an electric lorry whose launch has already been postponed several times. Dan Priestley, the head of the programme, announced in a YouTube video on 28 April 2025 that the Nevada plant will begin assembling the first units for sale – until now, only prototypes have been produced for testing – by the end of the year, with a gradual increase in output expected in 2026. The factory, located next to Tesla’s Nevada Gigafactory, is set to have an annual production capacity of 50,000 units.
Construction of the facility is well advanced, with the building’s structure nearly complete. Tesla is currently working on the interior and plans to install production machinery and assembly lines over the course of 2025. During the fourth-quarter 2024 earnings call, Lars Moravy, Tesla’s vice president of vehicle engineering, confirmed that "we just completed the roof and walls of the Semi factory last week in Reno" and that the company is preparing to install all equipment in the coming months.
The Tesla Semi has faced multiple delays since it was first unveiled in 2017. Production was originally scheduled for 2019 but has been pushed back several times. Recently, some customers have reported further postponements. In a letter to California’s Mobile Source Air Pollution Reduction Review Committee (Msrc), Ryder requested a 28-month extension of its contract, citing “delays in Tesla’s product design, vehicle production, and drastic changes in Tesla’s product economics”. As a result, Ryder scaled down its commitment, reducing the number of Semi units to be deployed from 42 to 18.
Tesla has already carried out some limited deliveries of the Semi. In December 2022, it handed over several units to PepsiCo and its subsidiary Frito-Lay. More recently, the company delivered two additional lorries to Saia, a major Less Than Truckload transport firm operating in the US with a fleet of around 5,000 commercial vehicles. Sugar, Saia’s executive vice president of operations, confirmed that during a test earlier this year the Tesla Semi achieved an energy efficiency of 1.72 kWh per mile.
