Rumor: Tesla To Produce 2,500 Semis This Year (100/Week In December)

A very interesting set of rumors about the upcoming Tesla Semi electric truck was posted by Teslas enthusiast and investor Sawyer Merritt today.

According to the tweets (see at the bottom of this post), one of Tesla’s suppliers who is already engaged in the Model S/X/3/Y cars revealed that it started working on “stuff” related to Semi in Q4 2020.

The body of the Semi will be produced in the Tesla Factory in Fremont, California, but the final assembly is expected to take place at the Tesla Gigafactory in Nevada (initially) or Tesla Giga Austin in Texas (once it is completed).

“Whether final assembly will take place both in Nevada and Texas or eventually just switch to Giga Texas when the factory is done is unclear.”

Very interesting is the ramp-up roadmap:

RC (Release Candidate) series to be produced in May 2021
Pilot series production to start in July 2021
Series production to start in August 2021 (the day cab version)

About 350 vehicles will be produced by the end of August 2021. Then, the production rate will gradually increase to 100 per week by the end of 2021 and 500 per week by the end of 2022. Meanwhile, the company will introduce the sleeper cab version.

The projected annual production volume is:

2021: 2,500
2022: 10,000
2023: 25,000 (here the European version of the Semi to join the lineup)
2024: 25,000

As we can see, the production volume is expected to stabilize in 2023-2024 at 25,000 according to the rumor.

We can’t verify any of those numbers, but at least we have some data points to discuss and relate to. For sure, the first milestone of 2,500 units in 2021 would be pretty strong. No one has produced electric trucks of any type at such a high number in the U.S. yet.