Tesla is the most shorted stock on the market. Short sellers are losing their asses. So naturally, Wall Street, in an attempt to help out their buddies, write mostly negative articles about the company. They can turn literally anything into a negative, even positives. It's largely why Musk got pissed at some of the questions in the last quarterly conference call. Short seller investors kept asking the same financial questions that were answered in the financial report handed to them earlier in the day.
These "reports" about the Tesla Semi program "being dead", are based off of one Amateur financial analysts symptom, based off of the fact that the Semi was largely ignored in the conference call.
https://www.google.com/amp/s/seeking...esla-semi-dead
The guy is the literal definition of hack, as are 90%+ of the writers over at Seeking Alpha. Nevermind that the entire focus of every investor on the call was Model 3 production, but it's also been the sole focus of Tesla for almost a year now. Using this guys logic, the Roadster, S and X, Energy Storage, Solar cells and pickup are all dead projects as well.
The Semi project is very much alive. In fact, Musk said in that very quarterly earnings call that they'd likely beat their 500 miles range promise and should be close to 600 miles per charge.
The guy also focuses on the fact that they "only" have 2000 Semi preorders. Completely ignoring the fact that an industry he himself calls "extremely conservative" is going to tread lightly with new tech, and will want to test internally extensively before making major investments.
That said, some large buyers who have been a part of testing the early prototypes say that their number crunchers believe that the truck will pay itself off in under 2 years.
The only real concern with the program is how Tesla will distribute the charging infrastructure necessary throughout the country and world.
Personally, I think that won't be nearly the problem some make it out to be. I think those investing in the trucks will see the financial advantages of installing solar and storage along with charging infrastructure directly at their own facilities. Given Nearly 80 percent of freight in the U.S. is*moved less than 250 miles. The average length-of-haul in the trucking industry has dropped from about 800 miles 15 years ago to about 500 miles last year, according to the American Trucking Associations, a result of port expansions nationwide and the e-commerce boom. So a wholly owned charging solution should suit most customers.