Tesla has started volume manufacturing of its battery-electric Class 8 Semi truck in Nevada as it prepares to increase US commercial deliveries and enter Europe in 2027, FreightWaves reported. The company’s third-quarter earnings presentation listed installed annual capacity of 25,000 trucks at the factory. However, Tesla gave no quarterly production or delivery totals for the Semi, leaving the pace of the ramp-up unclear: installed capacity is not a measure of current output.
The company also updated its performance claims for the truck. Chief executive Elon Musk said the highest-specification version could travel 500 miles at a gross combination weight of 82,000lb, consuming 1.7kWh per mile. He said that amounted to one-third of the energy required by a comparable diesel truck carrying the same payload. Tesla presented that efficiency as an operating-cost advantage in a market where energy accounts for a substantial share of expenditure per mile.
European expansion remains targeted for 2027. According to FreightWaves, Semi programme head Dan Priestley told September’s IAA Transportation conference in Hannover that Tesla intended to arrange customer demonstrations in the first half of that year, followed by initial customer deliveries by year-end. Those trucks will come from Nevada. Priestley previously said no decision had been taken on a European Semi factory, pointing to available manufacturing capacity in Nevada.
Tesla has separately outlined plans to start deploying more than 100 Megacharger charging stalls across Europe in 2027, each offering capacity of up to 1.2 megawatts. Its latest earnings presentation supplied neither a revised European delivery timetable nor an allocation of trucks for that market. The production announcement therefore adds a manufacturing milestone without clarifying the scale of the initial European rollout.
The move follows Tesla’s selection as lead supplier for a 2,500-truck battery-electric Class 8 order announced in September, FreightWaves reported. The order is being co-ordinated through ZET SCALE, the Zero-Emission Truck Shipper-Carrier Alliance Leading Electrification, organised by Catalyst Mobility and Smart Freight Centre. Tesla also revised its 2026 capital expenditure guidance to approximately $20 billion, covering investment in manufacturing, artificial intelligence, robotics and energy infrastructure.