Tesla

Tesla Semi Rollout May Be Delayed As Elon Musk Says There’s Battery Cell Constraints

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Elon Musk has raised doubt about the rollout of Tesla Semi this year by saying that they are facing battery cell constraints. Musk said this in a new comment on the micro-blogging site Twitter. Tesla Semi is an electric freight-hauling semi-trucks that has already seen several delays. It was first supposed to be available in the market way back in 2019. Things appeared to have changed recently and it looked that the Tesla Semi is very close to production. But battery cell constraint has once again forced the company to delay its production and it has now been pushed to 2022.

Last summer, Tesla employees received a mail from CEO Elon Musk stating that it is time to begin the production of the Tesla Semi. However, the mail did not mention any particular timeline. Later, the company indicated that the production of the electric truck will pick pace this year and some customers will receive deliveries. The plan looked like materializing with new prototypes of Tesla Semi spotted for the first time in the recent past. The company had unveiled two prototypes in the year 2017. Most importantly, PepsiCo recently said that they are expected to receive 15 electric trucks from Tesla by the end of the year. Despite all the development that suggested the production of Tesla Semi in large number, Musk has now said that it is likely to be pushed to 2022.

The production of the Tesla Semi has been associated with the new Tesla 4680 battery cell. The new battery was unveiled last year during its ‘Battery Day.’ The delay is mostly because of the requirement of high energy. The truck requires over 5 times the number of power required by its electric cars. The company, on the other hand, decided to prioritise the production of electronic vehicles to increase the revenue. Earlier, Musk had outlined the plan to used lower energy density cells for vehicles that demand low power and use higher energy cells in products that require higher energy like Semi and Cybertruck.