Tesla Semi wins 2,500-truck electric Class 8 order — SkimNews
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- ZET SCALE placed the 2,500-truck order through a new shipper alliance launched by Catalyst Mobility and the Smart Freight Centre, with Tesla winning the primary OEM slot via competitive RFP and Kenworth, Volvo, and RIDE named as secondary suppliers — meaning the full 2,500 won't all be Semis.
- Microsoft and PepsiCo are among the founding shippers in ZET SCALE, which targets more than 10,000 electric Class 8 trucks over time and will deploy the initial batch across 10 freight hubs spanning Los Angeles, Stockton, Bakersfield, Seattle/Tacoma, Houston, Dallas, San Antonio, Chicago, Atlanta, and the Newark/New York area.
- ZET Financial, the alliance's financing arm, issues purchase orders and runs a "ZET Lease" program built to absorb residual-value risk — the exact barrier Catalyst Mobility CEO Michael Berube flagged when he said "you can have good technology and still not have a market."
- Tesla inaugurated its new Nevada Semi factory the same week, a plant with 50,000-truck annual nameplate capacity, though analysts expect only 5,000 to 15,000 Semis delivered in 2026 at roughly $290,000 per Long Range truck — making production, not demand, the binding constraint.
- IMC Logistics separately ordered 50 Tesla Semis — Standard Range (325-mile) trucks for port drayage and Long Range (500-mile) units for Southern California-to-warehouse runs — roughly doubling its zero-emission fleet while keeping a blended mix of hydrogen fuel-cell, renewable-diesel, and battery-electric trucks.
Why it matters: The residual-value risk that kept US fleets from committing to electric trucks at scale gets absorbed by ZET SCALE's lease program, unlocking 2,500 orders now. For Tesla, the constraint flips from demand to production — its new Nevada plant can build 50,000 Semis a year, but analysts expect only 5,000-15,000 in 2026.
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