A Tesla Semi heavy-duty electric truck. Photo courtesy of Tesla.
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The Tesla Semi has been a bit of a confusing model or project. The electric semi truck was unveiled nearly a decade ago with various specific specs and details that made it sound like it was almost ready to hit the road and reach mass sales. Countless pilot projects and delays later, it seems that the big truck is genuinely starting to move into the market. There’s even news now that it is going to Europe.
We don’t yet have details on pricing or specs, but those will be released at the IAA Transportation conference coming up September 15–20 in Hannover, Germany.
Pilot production of the Semi just started at the end of 2022, about five years after it was first unveiled. We interviewed the man behind the Semi program, former president Jerome Guillen, in Tesla’s offices in Fremont, California, back in 2019. It seems that he eventually got tired of his project being delayed and moved on. However, the Semi lives on. Following the Semi being in pilot production for about four years, Tesla began high-volume manufacturing of the electric truck at “Gigafactory 1” in Nevada on April 29, 2026.
