Tesla's Semi Factory Opens in Sparks. The Customer List Is the Real Story.
Tesla cut the ribbon on its dedicated Semi factory in Sparks, Nevada today, September 25. The facility is 1.7 million square feet, sits next to Gigafactory Nevada, and it represents something that felt genuinely uncertain a few years ago: Tesla actually building Semis at scale.
The customer list is serious freight, not pilot programs
The Semi Rollout event wasn't just a factory tour. Tesla brought out a customer lineup that covers real freight volume: PepsiCo (the anchor customer since first deliveries in December 2022), U.S. Foods, DHL, WattEV, Einride, LTS, Nevoya, OK Produce, ABF Freight, and HMD. That's food distribution, third-party logistics, and established freight carriers. Not a collection of friendly press photos.
Einride placed a 500-unit order in August 2026, the largest single Semi commitment at the time. Their first deployments are already planned for this month across California, Texas, New Jersey, Illinois, and Georgia. And IMC Logistics followed with a 50-truck California order also in September. These aren't exploratory commitments.
ABF Freight is the name I'd watch. PepsiCo and Einride have predictable routes and were always going to be early adopters. ABF is a conventional less-than-truckload carrier. Their presence suggests the calculus is starting to work for operators who don't get to cherry-pick routes.
What "many thousands" actually means
Tesla Semi program director Dan Priestley said Tesla expects to build "many thousands" of Semi units in 2026. Outside estimates put that in the 5,000 to 15,000 range. That's a wide spread, and honestly "many thousands" covers most of it without committing to anything specific.
For context: Tesla unveiled the Semi in 2017 with a 2019 production target. They missed that by several years. So I'm not pretending the ramp is guaranteed. But a dedicated 1.7 million square foot facility in Sparks is a materially different situation than trying to fit Semi production between Model 3s and Model Ys at Fremont. A factory built for one product tends to actually build that product.
The livestream ran on X at 6 p.m. PDT tonight if you want to watch the full handover.
EU FSD: no October vote, December is the next shot
Separate news worth noting. The October 6 EU FSD vote that some people were expecting isn't happening. The TCMV 119th meeting includes only a 25-minute continuation of discussion, not a vote. December 2026 is now the earliest date for an EU-wide decision.
Seven EU countries have approved FSD Supervised as of September: Netherlands, Lithuania, Estonia, Denmark, Belgium, Slovenia, and Czechia. That's roughly 53 million people, about 12% of the EU population. EU-wide authorization requires at least 15 of 27 member states representing 65% of the bloc (around 292 million people). Tesla is less than halfway there on population.
The safety numbers Tesla is working with are strong. FSD Supervised covered over 1 million kilometers per day in approved countries as of September 1, and Tesla reported it was 4.1 times less likely to be involved in a crash than manual driving across 100 million kilometers on EU roads. But France has already rejected it, and speed-limit compliance is the sticking point for several other governments. France alone is a significant population bloc to have as a hard no going into December.
More than 70,000 EU customers were using FSD Supervised as of September 1. The data is accumulating. Whether that's enough to move the holdouts by December is the actual question.
Source: Teslarati