After a nine-year delay, Tesla, Inc. (TSLA.US) Semi has finally begun taking orders and entered mass production.

Nine years after that 2017 launch event, Tesla, Inc. (TSLA.US)'s Semi electric heavy truck has finally reached its own mass-production line: in September this year, the company completed its first dedicated Semi factory in Sparks, Nevada, with orders from ZET SCALE, Einride, WattEV, QX Logistics and IMC Logistics already in the queue. Also this week, a Semi caught fire on California Interstate 880, closing one direction of the highway for about 10 hours, adding a question mark to this just-started ramp-up curve. Production level still undetermined The Sparks factory sits next to Tesla, Inc.'s largest battery plantGigafactory Nevadaand covers about 167,000 square meters. Semi project lead Dan Priestley said: "This is not an ordinary assembly plant, but the closest we can get to 'raw materials in, finished product out.'" Priestley gave a designed capacity of 50,000 units per year; Tesla, Inc.'s October 21 third-quarter report listed installed annual capacity for the Semi at 25,000 units, and the company has so far not disclosed actual output. The first truck rolled off the line in April, with a mass-production delivery event held on September 24; batteries for production vehicles have switched from externally sourced 2170 cells to self-produced 4680 cells. Price: balanced out through operating costs The Semi's "reported price" is about US$260,000 for the 325-mile standard version and about US$290,000 for the 500-mile long-range version, excluding subsidies; a new diesel tractor of the same class typically sells for US$150,000 to US$200,000. It should be noted that Tesla, Inc. has never officially published a Semi price; the US$290,000 figure comes from a customer quote reported by Electrek in February this year. The price gap is made up through operating costs: the long-range version has a claimed range of 500 miles at 82,000 pounds fully loaded and energy consumption of 1.7 kWh/mile; a comparison shown by Tesla, Inc. at the mass-production event indicates that diesel heavy trucks cost about US$0.50 to US$0.80 per mile to run, while the Semi can hold steady at US$0.20 to US$0.25. On the competitor side, the Freightliner eCascadia has a claimed range of up to 230 miles and peak charging of 270 kW, while the Volvo VNR Electric has 275 miles and 250 kW; PACCAR Inc (PCAR)'s Kenworth and Peterbilt also sell electric models. The Semi leads in range and charging power, but all three have products that have been on the road for several years and established service networks. Two qualifications on the 2,500-unit mega-order The largest order came from the ZET SCALE alliance on September 222,500 units, described as the largest single purchase in the history of North American electric Class 8 trucks, reportedly with participation from Microsoft Corporation and PepsiCo, Inc. But this order has two qualifications: Tesla, Inc. is the "primary OEM" rather than exclusive, with Kenworth, Volvo and RIDE listed as secondary suppliers; the alliance also did not say how many of the 2,500 units will materialize as Semis. In other words, this is a procurement framework, not an order locked in for Tesla, Inc. Among the other orders, Einride ordered 500 units in August, WattEV ordered 370 units in May (mainly for short-haul at the Port of Oakland), and IMC Logistics ordered 50 units this month. Sudden collision incident Local time on Tuesday, a Semi caught fire in the southbound lanes of I-880 near Hayward, California. There was no collision and no other vehicles involved; the driver safely evacuated and told highway patrol officers the truck "just caught fire" and that he did not know why. The California Highway Patrol closed I-880 in both directions for about 10 hours citing "hazardous chemical smoke risk"; patrol officers initially warned the battery could keep burning for 15 to 18 hours, but actual handling was faster than estimated. The identity of the vehicle operator has not been confirmed, Tesla, Inc. did not respond, and the cause is still under investigation. This is the second Semi fire in two years to cause a California interstate closure. In August 2024, a Tesla, Inc.-owned Semi caught fire near Emigrant Gap on I-80; the NTSB later determined that the vehicle went off the road, struck delineator posts and trees, and the battery was ignited, with firefighters using about 50,000 gallons of water and lanes closed for as long as 15 hours. The difference is that this time there was no collision, so the investigation focus falls on the vehicle itselfthe battery pack, high-voltage system, drive unit, or a tire/brake fire that spread. According to National Fire Protection Association data, from 2018 to 2022 U.S. fire departments handled an annual average of 15,462 large truck fires (about 42 per day), with the vast majority of fleets being diesel vehicles; Tesla, Inc. claims its vehicles experience one fire per 140 million miles. But for a model that has just entered mass production and still has a small fleet, a single collision-free fire is itself a high-weight sample. Morgan Stanley: the math rests on software subscriptions Institutional interest in the Semi is more on the software side. Morgan Stanley analyst Andrew Percoco calculated in a September research note: at an autonomous-driving subscription fee of US$0.85 to US$1.00 per mile and 18,000 miles driven per month, an autonomous Semi could generate US$12,000 to US$18,000 in software revenue per month; if 82,000 units are deployed in 2040, software revenue alone would reach US$17 billion (excluding vehicle and charging revenue). On that basis, Morgan Stanley raised its bull-case target price to US$840 from US$820, maintained its base case at US$400 and an "Equal-weight" rating. The premise of this logic is the realization of autonomous drivingMusk says the goal is to offer an autonomous Semi in 2027, which currently remains option value.