Introduced in 2017, the Tesla Semi electric long-haul truck was originally supposed to go into mass production in 2019, but the company only unveiled the production version of the vehicle at the end of 2022, and so far several dozen trucks have been distributed to a small number of customers. Some of them have started complaining about the rising cost of the Tesla Semi.
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As Electrek explains, the publication obtained a letter from the transportation company Ryder, which it sent to the California agency MSRC, which reviews projects that reduce air pollution in the state from vehicles. In it, the company notified that it would buy fewer Tesla Semi trucks than it had originally planned, but did not abandon its plans to spend the original $7.5 million on the project.
However, these funds will not be used only for the purchase of Tesla Semi trucks. Initially, Ryder expected to build four charging stations for these trucks, but now it has decided to increase their number to six. It is difficult to judge how this affected the redistribution of the budget within the project, but the number of purchased trucks will be reduced from 42 to 18 units. The company intends to have this number of vehicles by June next year. Moreover, Ryder warns California officials that the implementation period for the project to purchase Tesla Semi and build six charging stations at its facilities in this state is increased by 28 months. By the way, the capacity of the Megacharger charging stations required to work with Tesla Semi has been reduced from 750 to 600 kW under the project. This means less load on the energy infrastructure and certainly implies a reduction in the cost of their installation.
Ryder representatives cite delays in Tesla Semi production and rising truck prices in their letter. Since Tesla literally negotiates the cost of cars with a small number of customers privately with the current production method on the pilot line in Nevada, it is difficult to find out for sure. In 2017 prices, the Tesla Semi version with a range of 480 km cost $150,000, the version with a range of 800 km cost $180,000. At the same time, after Biden came to power, buyers were given the opportunity to offset up to $40,000 of the cost of purchasing a Tesla Semi in the form of tax deductions.
Based on the data discussed in the Ryder letter, the Tesla Semi could have increased in value several times. However, this publication on the pages of Electrek did not go unnoticed by the head of the Semi division Dan Priestley, who called the source’s conclusions wrong and also confirmed that Tesla’s schedule for bringing trucks to market is unchanged. This year, a new factory for their serial production in Nevada should be built, which will eventually be able to assemble 50,000 vehicles per year.