A very interesting set of rumors about the upcoming Tesla Semi-electric truck was posted today by Teslas enthusiast and investor Sawyer Merritt.
According to the tweets (see bottom of this post), one of Tesla’s suppliers who was already working on the Model S / X / 3 / Y cars, revealed that in Q4 2020 he was talking about ‘things’ related to Semi starts working.
The body of the Semi will be manufactured at the Tesla plant in Fremont, California, but the final meeting is expected to take place at the Tesla Gigafactory in Nevada (initially) or Tesla Giga Austin in Texas (once completed).
“Whether the final meeting will take place in Nevada and Texas or eventually just switch to Giga Texas when the factory is finished is unclear.”
Very interesting is the ramp road map:
- RC (Release Candidate) series will be produced in May 2021
- Lead series production starts in July 2021
- Series production begins in August 2021 (the day cabin version)
About 350 vehicles will be manufactured 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 is launching the sleeping cabin version.
The projected annual production volume is:
- 2021: 2 500
- 2022: 10,000
- 2023: 25,000 (here is the European version of the Semi to join)
- 2024: 25 000
As we can see, the production volume is rumored to stabilize at 25,000 in 2023-2024.
We can not verify any of these numbers, but we have at least some data points to discuss and to relate to. For sure, the first milestone of 2,500 units in 2021 would be pretty strong. No one has ever manufactured such a large number of electric trucks in the US.