Tesla Shorts Predict Death of Tesla Semi, Company Predicts Range Boost

One self-described Tesla short over at Seeking-Alpha is predicting the stillborn death of the Tesla Semi, but the company is apparently speaking about how to improve it.

An article published on crowd-sourced financial publication Seeking-Alpha this week referenced a quote from company CEO Elon Musk as a sign that the Tesla Semi truck won’t come to fruition. The quote was said during an exchange with CNBC’s Phil Lebeau during Tesla’s Q1 earnings call, which went like this:

LeBeau:

“With the Tesla Semi, how many reservations do you guys now have approximately? And where are you in the process as far as the development and the rollout of the first model in terms of timeline, when you guys expect that to happen, et cetera?”

Musk:

“I actually don’t know how many reservations we have for the Semi. About 2,000? Okay. I mean, we haven’t really tried to sell the Semi. It’s not like there’s like an ongoing sales effort, so sales – orders for Semi are like opportunistic, really companies approaching us. Yeah, it’s not something we really think about much.”

While Musk does appear to be a bit flippant in regards to the semi from this quote, it’s important to note that he’s talking about the reservations – not the truck itself. He’s saying they sold 2,000 trucks without advertising it. Besides, it’s hard to say if Tesla was expecting more reservations at this point, or if 2,000 is roughly on par with what they thought demand for an electric semi would be.

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Meanwhile, in the same call, Musk apparently said the truck would be able to get 600 miles of range on a full charge while carrying an 80,000 load instead of 500. That doesn’t seem like something he’d do if he thought the truck didn’t have much of a future, if you ask us. The semi also featured in Tesla’s 2018 promotional video it released this week, so all signs point to the semi being slated for production.

Whether or not Tesla can deliver on the semi’s specs remains to be seen, as does how long it may take to get delivered, but we’d be very surprised to see the electric automaker not go ahead with it.