Tesla to bring electric semi truck production to Gigafactory Berlin

Elon Musk says that Tesla will bring Tesla Semi, its electric semi truck, to production at Gigafactory Berlin.

However, it will be important to start volume production in the US first.

The CEO attended the reopening of Gigafactory Berlin after it had to shut down for just over a week following an arson attack that crippled its power supply.

Tesla is currently only making the Model Y at Gigafactory Berlin.

Local German media are reporting that Musk mentioned at the event that Tesla is looking to build Tesla Semi at the factory:

“I think it makes sense to produce the Tesla Semi in Europe in Gigafactory Berlin.”

The CEO didn’t offer a timeline for the project. The automaker had yet to announce a new vehicle program beyond Model Y for the factory.

There’s probably a lot of work to be done before it can get there.

Tesla Semi is currently only in low-volume production at a facility outside Gigafactory Nevada.

In January 2023,  Tesla announced a massive expansion of Gigafactory Nevada to add production of Tesla Semi trucks and 4680 battery cells and to finally expand the factory to its originally planned size.

However, nothing happened with the factory expansion for a year. In January 2024, Tesla finally broke ground on the project, but it’s not clear when the automaker can start production of the electric semi truck.

Tesla isn’t likely to invest in production at another factory until it can sustainably produce the vehicle in volume at Gigafactory Nevada.

Electrek’s Take

I still have a lot of hope with the Tesla Semi program, but there have clearly been some incredible challenges that Tesla hasn’t been discussing.

There was the first multi-year delay between the prototype and production and now, it looks like there will be a multi-year delay between production and volume production.

I still remember when Elon said Tesla would ramp up Tesla Semi production to 50,000 units in 2024. I remember because it was less than a year ago that he said it.

I would be surprised if Tesla produces more than a few hundred Tesla Semi trucks this year and that might be optimistic.

Either Elon was not following the program close enough to say that or something wrong happened.