Tesla Semi electric truck production to start ‘with limited volumes’ in 2020

After delaying the production of Tesla Semi by a year, Tesla has now announced that it plans to start production of its electric semi-truck with “limited volumes” in 2020

When unveiling Tesla Semi in 2017, Tesla started guiding the start of production in 2019.

However, Jerome Guillen, Tesla’s President of Automotive and the head of the Tesla Semi program, said when asked about the production of the electric truck earlier this year:

“Next year we will start production. We are very happy, we are driving the trucks extensively with so far, I think, quite amazing success, yes.”

It confirmed that Tesla was delaying the production of the electric truck to 2020.

Now with the release of its Q3 2019 earnings, Tesla confirmed that production is now planned for 2020, but it will be with “limited volumes”:

“We are planning to produce limited volumes of Tesla Semi in 2020.”

Interestingly, Tesla has also yet to confirm where it is going to produce the electric truck beyond the fact that it will be in the US.

They released this chart in their earnings report:

We heard rumors that Tesla plans to build the truck at Gigafactory 1 in Nevada.

That’s likely the case for the powertrain at least since all new Tesla powertrain production happens at Gigafactory 1, but there are also other rumors going around about Tesla partnering with an outside manufacturer for the production of the body of the electric truck.

CEO Elon Musk said that Tesla aims to manufacture 100,000 electric trucks per year.

Over the past two years, Tesla has been taking reservations for the electric truck and said that the production versions will have 300-mile and 500-mile range versions for $150,000 and $180,000 respectively.

However, Musk said that they found opportunities to extend that range during testing, and he said that the Tesla Semi production version will have closer to 600 miles of range.

Recently, a Tesla Semi prototype was spotted at a California Highway Patrol Inspection Center and the CHP reported that the electric truck prototype was “meeting or exceeding the range estimates.”