Tesla has finished raising its main steel structure for its Tesla Semi factory, which appears to be on track for production in 2025.
The Tesla Semi program has seen some significant delays, but it feels like it’s finally happening.
It was first unveiled in 2017, and it was supposed to come to market in 2020, but it only officially entered production in late 2022.
Despite unveiling a production version and officially starting production, the program didn’t move much.
In October 2023, we learned that Tesla had only built about 70 Tesla Semi trucks and the company was using them internally and with one main customer: PepsiCo.
In January 2023, Tesla announced an expansion of Gigafactory Nevada to build the Tesla Semi in volume.
However, more than a year later, we hadn’t heard much about the effort.
Earlier this year, Tesla finally started to move some dirt and get some construction going at the site of the new factory. It sounded like plans changed and instead of expanding the existing Giga Nevada as originally planned, Tesla started building a new factory next to the existing one.
In April, Tesla said that the plan is for the factory to be finished next year and start producing Tesla Semi trucks by ‘late 2025’.
Now, right before the end of the year, Tesla released an update on the progress at the plant (via Dan Priestley, head of the Tesla Semi program, on X):
Yesterday, Semi Factory Nevada topped off the main area of the building with the last major piece of structural steel! Fantastic design and execution by this construction team and our contractor partners with focus on safety and efficiency. This factory is going to rock!
He shared a few pictures:
The structure came together rather quickly, but there’s still more work to be done until Tesla can achieve production.
Tesla aims to set up the factory throughout 2025 and bring the Tesla Semi to production on the new lines by the end of the year.
Lately, we have reported that Tesla is also slowly getting Tesla Semi into the hands of other customers.
Things are trending in the right direction.
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