It appears that Mr. Elon Musk—part-time moonshotter, full-time futurist, and the only man alive who might sell you a spaceship over the internet–has started hiring bodies to build that long-awaited electric behemoth he calls the Tesla Semi.
In the yesteryear of 2017, the thunder-chariot got first trotted out like a prize bull at a county fair. Mr. Musk promised it would revolutionize the roads, turn diesel to dust, and have us all sipping lemonade while electric trucks carried our groceries cross-country without a puff of smoke. Trouble is, that ol’ promise got itself caught in a tumbleweed and blown clear into the next decade.
Fast-forward through a heap of delays, enough hiccups to shame a whiskey still, and just a single truck dropped into the hands of PepsiCo in 2022, who’d placed their order so long ago, they probably forgot they did. Until recently, Tesla had less than a hundred folks hammering away on this project–hardly enough to fix a stagecoach wheel, let alone build a convoy of mechanical giants.
But lo and behold, change is afoot in Storey County. Reports say that more than a thousand new hands are gettin’ wrangled into Tesla’s Gigafactory–a place that’s shaping up to be less factory and more frontier boomtown. They’ll start churning out the elusive electric haulers before the end of 2025 and plan to make up to 50,000 a year if the winds are fair.
Tesla’s now listing job openings like a gold rush saloon listing poker tables–engineers, testers, grease monkeys, and folks to keep things from catchin’ fire. And so the Semi may finally roll out of the mythic realm and into the mud-splattered, pothole-ridden Middle Earth.
In short, Mr. Musk’s dream might be late, but it’s showing up with reinforcements. And if that ain’t progress, then I’m a Methodist.
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