More Tesla Semis Spotted Near Giga Nevada

More Tesla Semis Spotted Near Giga Nevada
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Tesla is ramping-up production as thousands of units were ordered/reserved over the past years.

There are more signs and visual confirmations that Tesla is ramping-up production of the Semi (all-electric Class 8 semi truck) near the Giga Nevada plant.

The Tesla Semi entered an “Early production” stage in Q3 2022 (turned “Pilot production” in Q4), which means that it’s produced in a small/limited volume.

It’s difficult to say how many units were produced, but it appears that Tesla moved from single-digit numbers, to two-digit numbers. Most recently, Twitter user Zanegler (@HinrichsZane) reported that in total he saw up to 38 Tesla Semi, presenting short videos with several white Semi at the Tesla’s facilities.

“By my count we are up to 38 of these. Just the beginning of a tsunami.”

We can’t confirm whether Tesla really produced nearly 40 units already (some of them were delivered to customers), but we would not be surprised.

 

Here is another view:

 

What is important is that the Tesla Semi (currently equipped with 2170-type cylindrical battery cells) is just at the beginning of its journey.

The company has a very ambitious production target of up to 50,000 Tesla Semi per year.

However, to produce so many electric trucks, Tesla must first build a proper factory for the truck. It was announced in January that such a factory will be built in the Giga Nevada complex, alongside 100 GWh/year production line for the 4680-type cylindrical battery cells):

Tesla Giga Nevada: Expansion Plans

Again, it’s hard to say whether 50,000 trucks per year is possible, but even at 3,650 units per year (a more reasonable rate for this year, we guess), we are talking about 10 units leaving the factory every single day. That would probably be more than the total EV truck production in North America by all other companies combined.

The main bottleneck for the Tesla Semi might be the batteries. Assuming up to roughly 1 MWh per truck (the 500-mile version), a few thousand of such vehicles would potentially consume a tenth of the total battery production of the Giga Nevada site (2170-type), currently around 40 GWh/year.

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