On June 20th, it was reported that the latest recall notification for Tesla’s electric heavy-duty truck Semi showed that the company may have only produced 36 electric trucks in the last 3 months.
At a press conference held in December last year, Tesla CEO Elon Musk excitedly announced that the Tesla electric heavy truck Semi had begun delivery to PepsiCo, calling the Semi “the toughest truck on the road.” He positioned the Tesla Semi as an important step in global carbon reduction, and predicted that in the future, people will replace dirty fuel trucks with cleaner, quieter electric trucks.
The Tesla electric heavy truck Semi made its debut in 2017 and was originally planned for production in 2019. After four years of waiting, the Semi finally received its first delivery.
However, a recall notice issued last week by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) shows that Tesla is still working to increase production of this electric heavy truck, and may only produce one truck within two weeks.
The recall notice states that Tesla trucks produced between November 30, 2022 and March 15, 2023 need a software update. According to reports, this update addresses a software vulnerability that allows drivers to ignore the warning that the door is not locked.
The recall notice also disclosed the number of products involved in this recall, a total of 36 vehicles.
This number is consistent with the number of Tesla electric heavy trucks that PepsiCo currently claims to own. In February of this year, Mike O’Connell, vice president of PepsiCo’s supply chain, said, “We have 15 trucks in Modesto… and then we will deploy 21 trucks in Sacramento.”
This is the second recall event launched by Tesla Semi. In mid-March, the NHTSA issued a recall notice involving Tesla trucks produced between November 30, 2022 and February 28, 2023. The time interval between the two recall notices means that Tesla only produced one electric heavy truck within 15 days.
Of course, some of the electric heavy trucks produced by Tesla may not be included in the recall notice. In addition, Tesla has been increasing production of electric heavy trucks since mid-March. But these data show that the company is far from its initial goal of producing 50,000 trucks in North America by the end of 2024.
According to data from the National Automobile Dealers Association (NADA), US companies purchased a total of 254,000 heavy trucks in 2022.
In the first quarter of 2023, Tesla produced nearly 441,000 electric vehicles worldwide.
The company is increasing its investment in truck production, investing $3.6 billion to expand the facilities of the Nevada Super Factory. There were reports in March of this year that a new production line in Nevada plans to produce five electric heavy trucks per week.
However, Musk himself downplayed the Semi production targets he announced earlier. At a meeting in Texas last week, Musk believed that it will not be until the end of next year that Tesla will be able to start mass-producing the Tesla Semi. He mentioned the problem of battery supply.
Musk also said, “The future demand for electrification will increase significantly, and we will do our best to meet the demand.”
