Investor's Corner
Is the trucking industry ready for Tesla? Experts weigh in
When Tesla CEO Elon Musk tweeted that Tesla will unveil an electric semi-truck in September, many in the trucking industry, and even Wall Street, took notice.
Electric vehicles will make up just 1 percent of the entire trucking market by 2020, but the EV trucking industry will grow to 10 percent just a decade later, according IHS Markit, an industry research firm. The percentages of all-electric trucks abroad will be slightly higher, with markets like the European Union, Japan, and China taking the lead.
“There is a certain amount of hype to Tesla’s announcement,” said Antti Lindstrom, an analyst at IHS Markit. “It doesn’t seem that long-distance trucking is ready for electrification right now.”
What will Tesla need to do to create a viable long-haul all-electric trucking industry?
Obstacles that Tesla will need to overcome for all-electric trucking success
Of all the freight transported in America, 70% is transported by the trucking industry, according to Apex Capital. Yet, if Tesla is to break into the trucking industry with all-electric vehicles, it will need to overcome a number of barriers.
Price is probably the number one factor of concern for all-electric long-haul trucks, as an all-electric semi- compared with a diesel truck will likely be much more expensive. “Tesla cars don’t need to prove an economic case to their buyers; Tesla trucks will,” Michael Baudendistel, a Stifel Financial Corp. analyst, wrote in a recent investor report. Yes, Teslas have been targeted thus far to a wealthy segment of the population, but, just as that will change with the introduction of the Model 3, so, too, can Tesla design a reasonably priced big rig when fuel versus charging costs are taken into consideration.
Tesla would have to create a marketplace for electric trucks. “Given the happily consolidated nature of the domestic truck manufacturing market, the prospect of a new competitive threat, from a company with previous success in disrupting established industries nonetheless, is undoubtedly unwelcomed news,” states Baudendistel. This year, however, Mercedes-Benz Trucks is bringing the world´s first all-electric heavy-duty truck to market in a small release. Moreover, Piper Jaffray analyst, Alex Potter, released a note this week revealing that he was downgrading the engine and truck manufacturers Cummins and Paccar — partly as a response to Tesla’s impending semi truck reveal. With Tesla’s proven history, the trucking sector can’t be that far behind for the company. Indeed, as early as 2011, Tesla was invited to testify at the Congressional hearing titled, “The American Energy Initiative.” Tesla spoke then about the need and timing for alternative energy vehicles, especially those powered by electricity. Tesla demonstrated how an entrenched culture like that of the U.S. automaker could be disrupted; trucking manufacturers today have every right to be paying attention.
“We have intentionally departed from the traditional automotive industry model by both focusing exclusively on electric powertrain technology and owning our vehicle sales and service network… If, however, you believe in the power of American innovation to fundamentally change and improve our individual lives and our larger societal interests, then there is no question the time is right to step up and support the development of a viable EV market in the U.S. and to encourage in word and deed the American companies fighting to establish EVs in the marketplace.”
Where would all-electric trucks go for service and repair? “This has been an inconvenience for Tesla cars,” Baudendistel told Trucks.com. “For trucks, though, if the wheels ain’t turnin’, you ain’t earnin’.” Tesla has demonstrated its ability to respond to current owner needs as they became apparent. As early as 2015, the company won an automotive repair satisfaction survey. It launched a Mobile Tire Service program to better serve owners who end up on the side of the road with a flat tire. In anticipation of the Model 3 release, Tesla will be expanding its mobile service capability to include sending technicians to an owner’s home or office for minor repairs. Tesla has the capacity to create a comparable response service and repair program for long-haul all-electric trucks.
The highway charging network for heavy-duty vehicles does not exist; there is no place to charge a long-haul electric truck. “You can’t put the cart before the horse,” Baudendistel said. “Widespread adoption hinges on the availability of fueling stations, and the infrastructure built for Tesla autos was not designed for Class 8 trucks.” Electric trucks currently in use for redistributing cargo require a far smaller range than a long-haul big rig and can be recharged at a central facility. They don’t require a network of charging stations along the nation’s highways. But with the vast Supercharger network that Tesla already has in place, it seems sensible to assume that Tesla would provide adequate comparable charging for fleets of all-electric trucks.
Yes, at this time, recharging electric vehicles is time consuming. “Battery swapping and refueling overnight are both options which would require significant additional investment in infrastructure and logistics,” Baudendistel said. Tesla considered but then discarded the idea of battery swapping with its electric cars. However, with the Electrify America initiative that Volkswagen is spearheading as a result of its diesel malfeasance court settlement, recharging times may drop considerably and quickly as R&D expands. Additionally, unlike an all-electric bus, with its long wheelbase and battery storage underneath, wouldn’t the height and breadth of a semi-truck be the right design for a battery pack that is replaced at a convenient stopping point? Tesla may reconsider battery swapping if the contextual conditions are right.
The trucking industry has expressed concern that batteries needed to power a semi- would be heavy, take up cargo room, and compromise range. Daniel Murray, vice president of research for the American Trucking Research Institute, told Trucks.com, “No one has clarified for us how much extra battery weight will accrue, which, of course, decreases revenue weight.” Baudendistel added, “We believe at least 600-800 miles of range is needed for the truck to be competitive in the line-haul market. We have heard indications that the Tesla semi’s range will be 200-300 miles, which would limit its addressable market.” Just this month, however, Panasonic’s President Kazuhiro Tsuga admitted the battery trade-off between energy density and safety is prodding his company, which partners with Tesla, to look at alternative battery power sources. And this year’s Battery Symposium in Japan, once a showcase for fuel cells and LIB cathode materials, saw a shift to discussions about solid-state, lithium-air, and non-Li-ion batteries. Thus, the current state of batteries for all-electric vehicles may look entirely different in a decade and may fit the needs of Tesla all-electric long haul transportation.
Diesel fuel is inexpensive these days, which limits the costs associated with current big rig transport. “The very low fuel prices we see now and will for a long time are making most alternative-fuel vehicles appear to be very expensive,” Murray said. That perspective may be a bit short-sighted, however, as, in August 2016, the EPA and NHTSA jointly finalized standards for medium- and heavy-duty vehicles through model year 2027. They are intended to improve fuel efficiency, cut carbon pollution, reduce the impacts of climate change, bolster energy security, and spur manufacturing innovation. Clearly, these are comparable goals to Tesla’s as outlined in the 2016 Master Plan Part Deux. Evolution toward all-electric long-haul transportation as spearheaded by Tesla may fulfill many of the upcoming standards so that fossil fuel costs become irrelevant.
Elon Musk as the world’s biggest advocate of electric-powered transportation
Yes, there are many reasons why an all-electric Tesla long-haul truck will be difficult to integrate into the current transportation sector. Then again, as Baudendistel concedes, “If nothing else, Elon Musk—and by extension, Tesla—is a great disrupter.” Tesla’s innovations, from company-owned stores, over-the-air vehicle updates, and autonomous driving features, to name just three, have forced the automotive and technology industries to new levels. So, although many in the trucking industry are skeptical, it has rarely been wise to bet against Elon Musk.
“We are keeping a watchful eye on Tesla as a new entrant,” Baudendistel admits. Even with obstacles to be overcome, he says, “Still, we wouldn’t count Tesla out long-term.”
Elon Musk
Tesla eyes supply partners for Optimus mass production
Tesla certified three Chinese suppliers for Optimus mass production, signaling its robot timeline is accelerating.
Tesla’s robotics team traveled to Ningbo, in China’s Zhejiang province, on September 16 and spent the following day auditing component suppliers for Optimus, according to a Bloomberg report cited by RobotAIGeek. The visit moved three manufacturers from provisional status to certified mass production partners: Tuopu Group, which handles actuators and chassis components, Ningbo Joyson Electronic, a sensor supplier, and Zhejiang Sanhua Intelligent Controls, which builds thermal management systems. All three already supply parts to Tesla’s electric vehicles, and the audit reportedly came with fresh orders that supply chain reports put at an initial batch of roughly 5,000 units.
Tuopu, Joyson, and Sanhua built their manufacturing base serving the automotive industry, where tolerances and volume requirements are already close to what a mass produced humanoid robot demands. Sanhua in particular has history here. Teslarati reported last October that the company had received a roughly $685 million order for linear actuators tied to Optimus, a volume industry watchers estimated could cover around 180,000 robots once production ramped.
Supply chain reports tied to this week’s audit put Tesla’s near term production goal at about 1,000 Optimus units a week by late September, rising to 2,000 to 2,500 units a week by the end of the year. That pace would put real weight behind the timeline Tesla has been building toward since May, when it wound down Model S and Model X production at Fremont to convert that floor space into a dedicated Optimus line targeting one million units annually. JPMorgan analysts who toured the factory in August confirmed the conversion took roughly four months, a pace Musk has called unprecedented for a facility that size.
New drone video shows Tesla’s Optimus Factory reaching a turning point
Fremont is only the first phase. A second, larger Optimus plant is rising at Gigafactory Texas, where drone footage shared by Joe Tegtmeyer last week showed the structural steel nearing completion on the north end of the building. Tesla has said that facility is meant to eventually support production of up to 10 million units a year, though volume output there is not expected before 2027.
Commercial sales of Optimus are still targeted for the second half of 2027, but production is expected to start well before then. JPMorgan analyst Rajat Gupta has said Tesla’s “Optimus Academy” program, which uses early units to collect real world training data inside Tesla’s own facilities, is expected to be running later this year. Bloomberg Intelligence analyst Ian Ma described the Ningbo audits as “a positive commercialization signal for China’s humanoid supply chain,” noting that sentiment could improve further if the visit leads to confirmed supplier nominations and larger orders. The Solactive China Humanoid Robotics Index rose about 1.4% on the news, though it remains down roughly 30% for the year.
Investor's Corner
New drone video shows Tesla’s Optimus Factory reaching a turning point
New drone footage shows Tesla’s dedicated Optimus factory steel frame nearing completion at Giga Texas.
Tesla’s dedicated Optimus factory at Gigafactory Texas is closing in on a finished steel frame, according to drone footage posted Thursday afternoon by longtime site observer Joe Tegtmeyer. In the video, Tegtmeyer said structural steel assembly is now about five column grids away from reaching the building’s north perimeter beam, putting the primary skeleton in its final stretch roughly six months after Tesla broke ground on the North Campus site in late March.
The Giga Texas Optimus Factory latest update … construction keeps moving fast!
Steel assembly is now only about 5 column grids from the north perimeter beam. Concrete is going in on the three upper floors, rebar is still being laid for more pours, and footing / grade-beam work… pic.twitter.com/qvFPvwnYzW
— Joe Tegtmeyer 🚀 🤠🛸😎 (@JoeTegtmeyer) September 17, 2026
Tegtmeyer’s footage shows concrete already going in on three upper floors while crews continue laying rebar and pouring grade beam footings at ground level. That kind of parallel work, steel rising at one end of the site while concrete sets at the other, is a scheduling approach Tesla used at the original Giga Texas building and appears to be repeating here to save time before the plant’s targeted 2027 production start.
Teslarati has tracked the building’s progress since Tesla confirmed construction was officially underway in May, when the first steel structure went up on what was then bare, reclaimed land. The facility is part of a more than 5.2 million square foot expansion of Giga Texas’s North Campus that Tesla has said will eventually run nearly the length of the existing vehicle factory, over 4,000 feet, while sitting somewhat narrower. Musk has pegged the long term output target at 10 million Optimus units a year once the line is running at full capacity, a volume that would dwarf the one million unit pilot line Tesla is standing up separately at its Fremont, California factory.
Tesla Giga Texas to feature massive Optimus V4 production line
The Texas facility sits alongside another major buildout on the same campus. Terafab, the joint Tesla and SpaceX chip fabrication plant that will eventually supply the silicon running Optimus units in the field. Housing robot assembly and chip production on the same grounds is a deliberate supply chain decision, cutting down on the shipping and lead time that would otherwise sit between the two.
Tesla has not given an updated timeline beyond its previously stated goal of bringing high volume Optimus production online at the site in the summer of 2027. Fremont’s smaller pilot line began mass producing the current Gen 3 robot in January, with that plant expected to build tens of thousands of units this year primarily to generate the real world data Tesla needs to refine the robot’s software before Giga Texas ramps up. Six months of visible construction progress, tracked almost entirely through Tegtmeyer’s recurring drone flights, gives the clearest outside look yet at how seriously Tesla is treating that 2027 deadline.
Investor's Corner
Tesla and SpaceX take “Terafab” Trademark fight to Federal Court
Tesla and SpaceX sue a small Illinois firm after cease and desist letters over Terafab.
Tesla and SpaceX are asking a federal judge to rule that their planned Terafab chip factory does not infringe a small Illinois company’s trademark, a request that arrives only after months of quiet negotiation broke down this summer.
The dispute traces to May 18, when Tesla filed three U.S. trademark applications for “Terafab” and “Tesla Terafab,” covering semiconductor chips and related chip making services. TERA-print LLC, a nanotechnology company that has held a federal trademark for “Tera-Fab” since 2021, responded five days later with a cease and desist letter. According to the lawsuit, first reported by Reuters, TERA-print argued that Tesla and SpaceX’s use of “Terafab” would confuse consumers familiar with its own trademark, which covers a desktop photolithography printer sold to researchers for sensor and bioengineering work.
What stands out in the filing is the timing of TERA-print’s own paperwork. One day before sending that cease and desist letter, on May 22, TERA-print applied to expand its existing registration to cover semiconductor materials, silicon chips, nanoelectronic devices and AI design services, categories it had not previously claimed. Tesla and SpaceX call that filing opportunistic in their complaint, noting it arrived two months after Tesla’s public Terafab announcement and just days after Tesla’s own trademark applications went in.
Elon Musk launches TERAFAB: The $25B Tesla-SpaceXAI chip factory that will rewire the AI industry
By June 10, TERA-print was threatening to sue for federal trademark infringement, false designation of origin and unfair competition, the complaint states. Rather than wait to be sued, Tesla, SpaceX and SpaceXAI met with TERA-print six separate times between June and August trying to resolve the dispute directly. Those talks collapsed, and the companies filed for declaratory judgment this week in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Texas, asking a judge to find that “Terafab” does not infringe TERA-print’s mark before TERA-print can file a claim of its own.
TERA-print isn’t backing down. The company told PCMag it discussed a settlement with Tesla as recently as September 2 and feels misled by what it called Tesla’s professed interest in settling. Its CTO, Andrey Ivankin, said TERA-print holds a Defense Department contract to fabricate semiconductors and partially owns Mattiq Inc., an AI company built on TERA-print’s products, and that the company will vigorously defend its rights.
Tesla and SpaceX argue the overlap is superficial. Terafab is planned as a $16.8 billion complex spanning roughly 100 million square feet at the Grimes County site SpaceX confirmed last month, built to produce chips for Optimus robots, Tesla’s AI computing needs and SpaceX’s orbital data center ambitions, a scale and purpose the companies say no reasonable consumer would confuse with a tabletop lab printer. TERA-print’s product line has stayed focused on lithography tools for biological and sensor research since it registered its mark in 2021.
The trademark fight is the second legal dispute tied to the Terafab project in the past week, following a separate SpaceX suit aimed at keeping company records about the facility out of public view, as KBTX reported. Whether construction proceeds under the Terafab name now depends on a federal judge in Austin.
Elon Musk drops a surprise update on Boring Company’s next big dig
Tesla eyes supply partners for Optimus mass production
