Tesla has been very secretive about the manufacturing of its Semi electric truck, which reportedly entered production in early October at a new building near the company’s Giga Nevada plant.
Back then, Electrek learned that the production equipment installed at Giga Nevada would enable a production of about five electric trucks per week. That would equate to roughly 250 Semi trucks per year, although Tesla has much bigger plans for the vehicle once it transfers production to Gigafactory Texas.
Last month, the EV maker revealed that it is aiming to ramp up Tesla Semi production to 50,000 units per year in 2024. Until then, however, it looks like the company’s manufacturing target for 2022 is much more modest at 100 Semi electric trucks.
Interestingly, this new tidbit of information has surfaced during the trial over Elon Musk’s CEO compensation plan at Tesla. The Wall Street Journal reported on November 15 that Robin Denholm, chair of Tesla’s board, revealed in her testimony yesterday at the trial that Tesla was targeting 100 Tesla Semi trucks this year.
“Tesla, for example, might produce 100 semitrailer trucks this year,” Denholm said, “years behind schedule.” This will obviously include the Tesla Semis that have already been built since October.
Tesla will hold a delivery event for the Semi on December 1 at Giga Nevada, according to a tweet from Tesla’s head of investor relations, Martin Viecha, and a poster shared by the automaker on social media yesterday. The image featured a frontal view of the production version of the Class 8 electric truck with the text “Semi Delivery Event Dec 01 | Giga Nevada” underneath.
The event will be attended by shareholders lucky enough to be picked in a random drawing organized by the automaker through the Tesla Shareholder Platform. As noted during the Q3 earnings call last month, Tesla CEO Elon Musk will also be present at the event. “We’ll be handing over our first production Tesla Semis to Pepsi on December 1. I’ll be there in person,” he said.
The first batch of Tesla Semi electric trucks will be delivered to Pepsi on December 1, with the food and drinks giant to use the vehicles at its Frito-Lay plant in Modesto and beverages plant in Sacramento (both in California).
Read the full article here