It took nine years, several missed deadlines, and more than a few raised eyebrows – but Tesla’s Semi truck is moving from concept to conveyor belt.
On April 29, the official Tesla Semi account on X posted: “First Semi off high volume line,” alongside a photo showing a white Semi rolling off the production line with hundreds of workers assembled in front of it. The image captured what Tesla’s critics long doubted would ever arrive: an electric Class 8 truck built not in prototype batches, but on a dedicated industrial line.
First Semi off high volume line pic.twitter.com/fI1AdQrJFH
— Tesla Semi (@tesla_semi) April 29, 2026
The transition marks a shift from smaller-scale production builds to industrial-scale manufacturing at a dedicated 1.7-million-square-foot facility adjacent to Gigafactory Nevada. According to TeslaNorth, the dedicated Semi factory is designed for an annual capacity of 50,000 trucks, though the company will ramp up those numbers over time.
The Specs
As The Dallas Express reported in February, Tesla announced the final production specifications for the Semi, which will be available in two different models. The Standard Range model can travel about 325 miles at a full 82,000-pound load while keeping its curb weight under 20,000 pounds. The Long Range version pushes that range to 500 miles but adds roughly 3,000 pounds, bringing the empty weight to around 23,000 pounds.
According to Tesla’s Semi website, both trucks support up to 1.2 MW of charging and use about 1.7 kWh per mile. Additionally, the versions come with an 800-kW tri-motor setup that produces over 1,000 horsepower and can charge at “Megacharger speeds,” adding roughly 60% of range for drivers in about 30 minutes.
The 2026 production model features some big updates compared to the early units delivered to PepsiCo in 2022. Tesla has reportedly since reduced the truck’s weight by approximately 1,000 pounds and has added a 7% improvement in aerodynamic efficiency.
Tesla is quoting $290,000 for the 500-mile Long Range version and roughly $260,000 for the Standard Range, reportedly making it the lowest-priced “Class 8 battery electric tractor” on the current market.
Musk has warned that initial production of Cybercab and Semi will be very slow, per ElectricVehicles.com, but will be “ramping up, and going exponential towards the end of the year and certainly next year.”
Part of Tesla’s Bigger 2026 Plans
The Semi production milestone comes just days after Tesla’s first-quarter earnings call, during which CEO Elon Musk said the company had “just started production of Cybercab, and we’ll begin production of our Tesla Semi soon.”
n February, the Cybercab’s first production unit rolled out of the Gigafactory in Austin, Texas – a two-seat electric vehicle with no steering wheel or pedals, designed from the ground up to operate autonomously on Tesla’s Full Self-Driving (FSD) software, with Musk confirming a price point of $30,000 or less before 2027.
On New Year’s Day, Tesla had another landmark FSD moment, as reported by The Dallas Express. A Washington state Tesla owner completed what was widely described as the first fully autonomous coast-to-coast drive using Tesla’s FSD Supervised software – 2,732.4 miles across 24 states with no human disengagements, including during nearly 30 Supercharger stops.
