Tesla Semi Fleet Grows As PepsiCo Takes Delivery Of Another 50 EV Trucks

May 21, 202411:24 UTC

EV giant Tesla Inc TSLA is delivering 50 more Semi-trucks to PepsiCo Inc. PEP, Semi Truck Engineering senior Manager Dan Priestly said.

What Happened: Starting last week, Tesla has started delivering an additional 50 Semi trucks to PepsiCo at its Fresno, California facility, Priestly said at the Advanced Clean Transportation Expo event in Las Vegas, Nevada, on Monday. The company is looking to build more trucks this year including for its own operations, deliveries to PepsiCo as well as for some other customers, he added.

Tesla launched the semi-truck in 2017 and delivered a few to PepsiCo in December 2022. A PepsiCo spokesperson told Benzinga in January that the company has a total of 36 Tesla Semis deployed in its fleet, some of which are based out of Frito-Lay’s Modesto facility in California. With 50 more, PepsiCo’s fleet will expand to 86 Semis.

Why It Matters: The Tesla Semi is still in pilot production at Tesla’s gigafactory in Nevada. The company is currently building a high-volume Semi factory at Giga Nevada with the first vehicles planned for late 2025. For external customers, vehicles will start rolling out in 2026, Tesla executive Lars Moravy confirmed at the company’s first-quarter earnings call last month.

Talking about the delay in getting to production, Priestly said at the expo, “There’s been some questions on timing but Tesla has a specialty and that is turning the impossible into merely late.” The upcoming Semi factory will have an eventual target capacity of 50,000 units a year, he added.

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