Tesla’s Semi factory in Nevada to have first trucks in production by end of 2025

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(Reuters) -Tesla, in an update on Semi, said that the first units of the electric trucks will be on the production line by the end of 2025 at its Nevada gigafactory campus.

Dan Priestley, who leads the Semi program at Tesla, said in a video posted to YouTube on Monday, that the factory has an annual capacity of 50,000 units, adding that the company will prepare for high volume production over the next few quarters.

“First units are set to be on the line by the end of this year, and we’ll be ramping the factory throughout 2026,” Priestley said.

Tesla, which has been looking to build a truck-making business for years, had said it would have the Semi in production by 2019. In October 2022, CEO Elon Musk told investors that his goal was to make 50,000 Semis in 2024.

Tesla’s plans to ship components from China for the Cybercab and the Semi in the United States were suspended after President Donald Trump raised tariffs on Chinese goods amid a trade war, Reuters exclusively reported earlier this month.

The EV maker was ready to absorb the additional costs when Trump imposed the 34% tariff on Chinese goods, but could not do so when the tariff went beyond that, leaving shipping plans suspended.

Trump raised additional tariffs to 84% on April 9 and has since increased that to 125%, bringing the total tariffs on Chinese goods exported to the U.S. to 145%.

Tesla last week said that it would reassess its growth forecast in three months because it was “difficult to measure the impacts of shifting global trade policy on the automotive and energy supply chains” and that “changing political sentiment could have a meaningful impact on demand for our products in the near-term.”

(Reporting by Juby Babu in Mexico City; Editing by Alan Barona)