Here's your Forbes Daily Briefing for Monday, February 9th.

Today on Forbes, Tesla's semi is finally hitting the road.

The timing couldn't be worse.

Elon Musk spent Tesla's last earnings call crowing about the electric vehicle makers planned

transformation into an AI and humanoid robotics powerhouse.

He mentioned the upcoming release of the cybercab, a two-door EV, he claims will be sold

without a steering wheel or pedals, assuming regulators approve, and the death of the company's

model X crossover and model S sedan, the car that kick-started the company's success.

What he failed to mention, and no one bothered to ask about, was literally the biggest model

rollout in Tesla history, the electric semi that's due in the first half of the year.

The company built at least 200 as part of a test program in 2023, for which Tesla provided few details.

Given the timing of its release this year, it's not surprising it was left out of the call.

While U.S. consumers will probably still buy more than 1 million new EVs this year,

even as that segment could see a double-digit percentage drop from $1.28 million in 2025,

demand for electric class 8 semis will be just a fraction of that volume.

Anne Rundle, vice president of Trucking Industry Consultant, ACT Research, told Forbes, quote,

it's sort of a wild card, but we see it for 2026 at pretty low numbers, just under 1,400

units. It's a tough sell now that the Trump administration has basically gutted any type of support.

The truck, along with Tesla's two-door cybercab electric car, goes into production in the first

half of the year, according to the company's fourth-quarter

earnings report. It also shows a map of so-called mega-charger stations Tesla plans to build

across the U.S. in 2026, specifically designed to repower the semi's massive battery pack that holds

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