Tesla just started mass-producing the electric semi truck it first showed off in 2017 - but building the trucks may turn out to be the easy part.
At an invite-only, livestreamed event in Sparks, Nevada, Tesla announced that the Semi has entered high-volume production, nearly nine years after the concept debuted on stage in late 2017. A handful of fleet managers, all men, walked across the stage to be publicly thanked for their orders while techno music played. Musk skipped the event - his second consecutive vehicle debut missed in a row - because he was attending a White House state dinner for Chinese President Xi Jinping. In a pre-taped video, he called the Semi "a driver's truck" and "a sports car in truck form."
Musk has spent the past year telling investors Tesla is really a robotics and autonomous-driving company, chasing a $20 trillion valuation - nearly four times Nvidia's current market value. Shipping an actual delivery truck to actual trucking fleets is a reminder that Tesla still runs an old-fashioned manufacturing business, one where success depends on infrastructure Tesla doesn't fully control: the heavy-duty chargers fleets need to keep these trucks running routes, not just parked at a factory event.
A truck that took nine years to reach mass production isn't exactly evidence that the charging network needed to support it will arrive any faster.