Tesla seems determined to kick off the production of the Tesla Semi sometime this year at its Nevada factory.

This was hinted at by the arrival of massive production equipment to the Semi’s manufacturing site near Giga Nevada.

New equipment

What appeared to be a massive stamping machine has been transported to the Giga Texas complex. Spotted by longtime drone operator and Tesla Semi advocate @HinrichsZane, the massive contraption is so large and heavy that a single semi truck and trailer were not enough to move it. Instead, the massive machine was shipped to the Semi factory using two diesel trucks and a triple trailer.

The machine was fully covered in the videos from Nevada, but based on its shape and size, it appears that it is a stamping press for the Class 8 all-electric truck. Tesla is a pioneer in the use of Megacasts in the automotive industry, so it makes sense for the company to use a Giga Press for the Semi’s production as well.

Ambitious goals

The Tesla Semi factory is expected to produce a whopping 50,000 units of the Class 8 all-electric truck annually when it is fully ramped. At that output, the facility would be one of the country’s highest-volume plants for semi trailers, electric or otherwise. In a video posted earlier this year, Dan Priestley, who leads the Semi program at Tesla, stated that the company is looking to achieve volume production over the coming quarters.

This should allow the Tesla Semi factory to mass produce the vehicle by 2026. Tesla CEO Elon Musk reiterated this timeframe recently, when he responded to a post on social media platform X about Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates being bearish about battery electric semi trucks.  “Tesla Semi will be in volume production next year,” Musk said in his post, which also included a laughing emoji. 

Check out the drone operator’s recent footage of the Tesla Semi factory in the video below.

Elon Musk is taking a firmer stance in the vision vs lidar debate for autonomous driving. In his more recent comments, the CEO is not just stating that using sensors like lidar is unnecessary to achieve self-driving. 

Musk is stating that using lidar actually makes self-driving cars more dangerous. 

Uber CEO’s comments

During a recent interview, Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi shared his thoughts on the autonomy race. As per the CEO, he is still inclined to believe that Waymo’s approach, which requires outfitting cars with equipment such as lidar and radar, is necessary to achieve superhuman levels of safety for self-driving cars. 

“Solid state LiDAR is $500. Why not include lidar as well in order to achieve super human safety. All of our partners are using a combination of camera, radar and LiDAR, and I personally think that’s the right solution, but I could be proven wrong,” the Uber CEO noted.

Elon Musk’s rebuttal

In response to the Uber CEO’s comments, Elon Musk stated that lidar and radar, at least based on Tesla’s experience, actually reduce safety instead of improving it. As per the Tesla CEO, there are times when sensors such as lidar and radar disagree with cameras. This creates sensor ambiguity, which, in turn, creates more risk. Musk then noted that Tesla has seen an improvement in safety once the company focused on a vision only approach. 

“Lidar and radar reduce safety due to sensor contention. If lidars/radars disagree with cameras, which one wins? This sensor ambiguity causes increased, not decreased, risk. That’s why Waymos can’t drive on highways. We turned off the radars in Teslas to increase safety. Cameras ftw,’ Musk wrote.

Musk’s comments are quite notable as Tesla was able to launch a dedicated Robotaxi pilot in Austin and the Bay Area using its vision-based autonomous systems. The same is true for FSD, which is quickly becoming notably better than humans in driving. 

Tesla has made a big change to its Online Design Studio, hoping to encourage car buyers to purchase Full Self-Driving with their vehicles.

Now, when you look at ordering a car on Tesla’s website, the portion of the page that formerly showed a render of Full Self-Driving capabilities has been replaced by a compilation of the suite’s performance in a variety of challenging scenarios.

It’s a great way to show off FSD’s impressive ability to work through road conditions that can even stump human drivers.

🚨 Tesla is now showing a Full Self-Driving demo on its Design Studio to help encourage people to buy the suite for their new cars pic.twitter.com/RwhqbSStzs

— TESLARATI (@Teslarati) August 24, 2025

The move is much better than what the page previously illustrated. Now, people can see the true capabilities of the FSD suite and what it could do to change their perspective on how vehicles can be. Instead of a vessel of transportation, FSD turns cars into a semi-autonomous mode of travel.

Tesla Full Self-Driving is statistically very safe, logging about ten times the number of miles between accidents as human drivers, based on recent data the company released.

Tesla Q2 2025 vehicle safety report proves FSD makes driving almost 10X safer

It is available for purchase in two different ways: an outright purchase for $8,000 or in a monthly subscription for $99. This enables the software to essentially do a vast majority of the legwork of driving. Drivers must keep their eyes on the road and be prepared to take over if an intervention is needed.

However, FSD has been proven to be a very accurate and safe way to travel. Tesla recently released a video of a drive from the Bay Area to Los Angeles, a nearly seven-hour trip, under FSD without a single intervention ever needed:

Tesla flexes its most impressive and longest Full Self-Driving demo yet

From a personal perspective, Tesla Full Self-Driving is a great way to travel because it truly takes a lot of the stress out of driving. In the past, I’ve used it during weekend Demo Drives to navigate around my town to see if it could handle some of the tougher traffic in my area. It became such an amazing and convenient alternative that when I went back to my car, I truly missed the advantage of having it.

I took a Tesla Model Y weekend-long Demo Drive – Here’s what I learned

However, I am picking up my Tesla Model Y this coming weekend and will enjoy it for the free three months before subscribing to the monthly program.