PepsiCo's Trucks Were a Pilot. Tesla's Semi Status Word Is Not "Volume."

A Class 8 truck in a PepsiCo yard is a customer pilot. Tesla’s own capacity table, as of the last shareholder update this desk opened, still has a dash where an annual capacity would go. The word “volume” is in the first-quarter outlook. It is not in the second-quarter outlook sentence.

The company is Tesla. The pickup is Cybertruck. Storage is Megapack.

Confirmed

What was said at the November 16, 2017 unveil, and what the site said a week later

The Verge (Zac Estrada, November 17, 2017) reported the Thursday-night event in Hawthorne. It says Mr. Musk promised a range in the neighborhood of 500 miles, and that he claimed a 400-mile range with 30 minutes of charging. It says Tesla said the truck delivers at least semi-autonomous capability, and that Enhanced Autopilot is standard. It describes four motors, on the two rear axles. Those are The Verge’s account of the trucks shown and of his remarks. The story does not print a price.

TechCrunch (Darrell Etherington, November 23, 2017) says the prices were newly on Tesla’s website: $150,000 for 300 miles, $180,000 for 500 miles, and a Founders Series at $200,000, with the full amount due to be among the first 1,000 production trucks. A base reservation was $20,000. TechCrunch says Tesla touted 0–60 in 20 seconds with an 80,000-pound load, and the ability to hold 65 mph on a 5 percent grade. It says the truck was targeting an initial release sometime in 2019.

Label: The Verge is the unveil night. TechCrunch is the website a week later. “Expected” prices and a 2019 target are the company’s claims, as those outlets reported them. They are not a 2022 invoice, and they are not a 2026 production rate. This desk did not open a 2017 sentence that states an unloaded 0–60 time. That figure is not supplied here.

PepsiCo reserved 100. That was 2017

CNBC (December 16, 2022) says PepsiCo ordered the Semis in 2017. Ars Technica (Ashley Belanger, December 2, 2022) says Pepsi ordered 100 trucks when the Semi was shown in 2017. A reservation of 100 is not a delivery of 100.

December 1, 2022, was a handover. December 16 was a fleet count

Ars, published December 2, says that the day before, at a Tesla plant in Nevada, Mr. Musk announced that the first heavy-duty Semi had been delivered to PepsiCo. Ars says Tesla announced the Semi would go into production in 2023, and described a liquid-cooled charger capable of 1 megawatt. Ars attributes two sentences to him, via a Reuters report this desk did not open: “If you’re a trucker and you want the most badass rig on the road, this is it,” and a likening of the truck to “an elephant moving like a cheetah.” Ars says he described three motors, one at highway speed and two for acceleration. The Verge’s 2017 account said four motors. This page does not merge those into one specification.

Ars says he did not say how much the trucks can haul, what they will cost, or when Tesla would build hundreds for the companies that reserved them in 2017. Ars says Reuters reported a test haul of 500 miles at 81,000 pounds, a figure that includes the truck and the cargo. Ars says a PepsiCo driver brought snacks to the event in a Semi. Ars says Mr. Musk had previously promised 50,000 Semis in North America in 2024. The date of that promise was not in a document this desk opened. It stays Ars’s attribution.

CNBC’s December 16 story is Mike O’Connell, a PepsiCo vice president, interviewed by Reuters, as CNBC reports the interview. He said PepsiCo was deploying 36 Tesla trucks so far, 15 in Modesto and 21 in Sacramento, and planned to roll out 100 in 2023. He said the trucks PepsiCo was taking were the 500-mile version, that he did not know when Tesla would deploy a 300-mile truck, that a Frito-Lay load was running about 425 miles, and that heavier soda loads were about 100 miles. PepsiCo declined to share the price. CNBC quotes Oliver Dixon of Guidehouse saying Tesla had not offered payload and pricing.

Label: Ars is the December 1 announcement, written the next day. CNBC is PepsiCo’s account two weeks later, of 36 trucks in use, not of 100 delivered on December 1. “Will go into production in 2023” and “50,000 in 2024” are claims Ars reported. They are not the 2026 capacity table. A 425-mile snack route is O’Connell’s operating description. It is not the 500-mile unveil claim, and it is not a Tesla test certificate this desk opened.

What the shareholder updates say in 2026

The letters use different status words. The capacity cell is a dash in each one. None of them prints a Semi delivery count.

Label: The three updates. “Volume” is in the Q4 and Q1 outlook sentences. The Q2 outlook sentence says “production starting in 2026” and does not contain that word. This page does not turn the missing word into a finding that volume production was cancelled. The Q2 highlights still say production is on track this year. The table still says Commissioning, and the capacity is still a dash. The letters do not define “Tooling,” “Pilot Production,” or “Commissioning” beyond the shared footnote that installed capacity is not the current production rate, and that construction includes buildout and tool installation.

The October 2, 2026 production release says its vehicle counts are passenger vehicles. It does not name the Semi. Third-quarter financial results were scheduled for October 21 and were not out when this page was checked. They are not on the Q3 page.

Claims / reporting / speculation

The 500-mile range, the 2019 production target, the 2023 production announcement Ars reported, the 50,000-in-2024 promise Ars attributed to him, and “volume production” in the Q1 letter are claims dated to the document that holds them. O’Connell’s 36 trucks and the 425-mile and 100-mile routes are PepsiCo’s operating account as of December 16, 2022. A dash in the capacity cell is the absence of a number, not a production rate of zero that Tesla printed.

On October 15, 2026, a Semi was one of the vehicles under the new Roadster in the demo. That lineup is the reveal. A truck used as a prop is not the Nevada factory’s status.

On the map

Tesla is the company. Cybertruck is the pickup, including the recall populations that are not deliveries. Megapack is the storage business that shares the Q2 outlook sentence with the Semi. The Q3 vehicle table, which does not name this truck, is the Q3 page.

Sources

Checked October 19, 2026.

A Reuters page on the December 1 event returned 401 and was not used. The Reuters sentences in the Ars story stay attributed to Ars’s account of Reuters.