Tesla poised to scale production of heavy-duty Semi trucks with opening of Nevada factory

Tesla opened its first factory for high-volume production of the Semi, a heavy-duty electric truck, in Sparks, Nevada, on Thursday, as CEO Elon Musk aims to push into big rigs.

Trucking firm Einride also recently said it agreed to order 500 Tesla Semi trucks for its fleet with some deployments planned this month.

Lars Moravy, Tesla's vice president of vehicle engineering, appeared on stage Thursday with Dan Priestley, director of Semi truck engineering, at the factory near Reno.

Priestley said the company plans to produce 50,000 Semi trucks per year there, or about 1,000 per week, and to bring "more than 3,000 jobs during that ramp period" to Nevada.

Priestley said Thursday that Semi trucks in fleet operations have demonstrated 98% uptime, and rarely needed to spend time out of service for unscheduled maintenance.