2,500 electric Class 8 trucks ordered through ZET SCALE, Tesla primary OEM

Catalyst Mobility, the clean-transportation nonprofit that renamed itself from CALSTART effective September 14, 2026, and the Smart Freight Centre said on September 22, 2026 that a coalition of shippers organized through their ZET SCALE program has enabled an order for 2,500 battery-electric Class 8 trucks. The release calls it the largest electric truck order to date in the United States and says the single deal nearly doubles the US electric Class 8 fleet. After what the release describes as the alliance's independent, competitive request for proposals, evaluated on price, range, charging capability and production capacity, the alliance selected Tesla as its primary original equipment manufacturer for the initial 2,500 trucks; the release says the alliance also includes Kenworth, RIDE and Volvo as secondary OEMs "that carriers can utilize as additional options that may meet their specific operational needs."

The buyer of record is a lessor. ZET Financial, which the release calls a strategic partner to the alliance, is issuing the purchase order for the initial 2,500 trucks in what the release labels RFP 1 and will deploy them through its fair market value lease program, a structure the release says eliminates residual-value risk for the fleet operator. Founding shippers, per the release, include Microsoft and PepsiCo, "among others, each supporting the initiative through different levels of engagement and demand signaling." The release names no carriers, gives no delivery schedule and no price, and says the first round's freight hubs will primarily be in ten places: Southern California/Los Angeles, Northern California/Stockton, Central California/Bakersfield, Seattle/Tacoma, Houston, Dallas, San Antonio, the Chicago area, Atlanta, and Northern New Jersey/Newark/New York City. The release says the program is jointly operated by the two nonprofits and that the alliance's ambition "runs to 10,000 trucks and beyond."

The two Catalyst Mobility documents disagree on the organization's own shape. The September 22 release's About paragraph describes Catalyst Mobility as "formed through the combination of CALSTART and Forth," while the September 14 rebrand release says Forth, a national nonprofit working to advance transportation electrification, "will be combining with Catalyst Mobility at the start of 2027."

The claims and what sits under them

The ZET SCALE program page on Catalyst Mobility's site, as read on September 23, 2026, describes the alliance as "a demand-driven collaboration accelerating the deployment of up to 10,000 Class 8 battery-electric trucks across North America" and says more than 15 leading shippers are already engaged, "contributing information and helping design cost-effective zero-emission deployments on their lanes." Under "Some of the shippers engaged in ZET SCALE include:" it names Brambles/CHEP, IKEA, Microsoft and Red Bull, "And many others." The page then adds a sentence the release does not carry: "Program participation does not imply a procurement obligation." The same page calls the 2,500 trucks "now under contract" and "the largest electric truck order in North American history," where the release says "to date in the United States."

Tesla Semi's account on X posted on September 22 that Tesla was selected as the primary OEM for the largest electric Class 8 order in the US by ZET SCALE, "a new shippers' alliance," and continued: "With 2,500 Semis on order, this will double the entire US electric Class 8 fleet." That is two notches past the document the post links. The release assigns the 2,500 to the order, with three secondary OEMs available to carriers and no split among the four stated, and it says "nearly doubles." In the release, Dan Priestley, director for the Tesla Semi program, keeps to the narrower claim: "We are proud to have been the primary selection in this RFP and look forward to giving shippers and carriers a new competitive edge."

The release links the words "nearly doubles the U.S. electric Class 8 fleet" to the ZET dashboard on Catalyst Mobility's Zeroing in on Zero-Emission Trucks page, a Tableau viz whose static render carries a chart headed "Cumulative U.S. ZET Deployments and Truck Stock by Vehicle Segment (2017–2025)" with six segment rows. The HD Truck row reads 2,509 deployments against a truck stock of 5,437,522, and the footer says the data is reflective as of December 2025. Against 2,509, an order of 2,500 is the arithmetic behind "nearly doubles." HD Truck is CALSTART's segment label: the series' June 2026 market update says it characterizes the Class 2b through Class 8 market in six segments, cargo vans, MD step vans, MD trucks, HD trucks, refuse trucks and yard tractors, and neither document says the HD Truck segment is the same thing as Class 8. The dashboard's stated total of 72,309 deployments from 2017 through 2025 matches its six rows summed.

Michael Berube, Catalyst Mobility's president and CEO, put the alliance's theory in one line in the release: "You can have good technology and still not have a market." Priestley's claim for the truck is operating cost: "The Tesla Semi is designed for lower cost per mile operations than diesel." The release asserts that the aggregated demand "has reduced electric truck prices through large-scale volume orders" and gives no price for the trucks.

Where this lands in the Semi order book

Among the Tesla Semi orders The Duck Curve has covered, the previous high mark was Einride's 500 trucks, to be phased in over 24 months starting September 2026 on US corridors, which Einride called the largest Tesla Semi deployment to date when it announced the deal on August 18, 2026 (Einride to deploy 500 Tesla Semis). Käppeli Logistik AG's single tractor, ordered at IAA Transportation in Hannover on September 15, 2026 with delivery planned for 2027, is the European end of the same order book (Käppeli Logistik orders its first Tesla Semi). The ZET SCALE order is five times Einride's, if every truck in it turns out to be a Semi, which the release does not say.

The release is dated September 22; Tesla's Semi factory event is dated September 24. Tesla Semi's account posted on August 24, 2026 that the inauguration of its new Semi factory in Nevada would follow in September, over a poster reading "Semi Rollout, September 24th 2026, Semi Factory Nevada."

Electrek, reporting the order on September 22, reads the alliance's numbers the same way: "It sounds like Tesla is primary, not exclusive, so the full 2,500 won't all be Semis." Electrek also reports that IMC Logistics, a drayage operator, said the same day it is adding 50 Semis to its California fleet.

Outlook

The September 24 factory event is the next place a delivery cadence for the 2,500 could surface, since neither the release nor Tesla Semi's post gives one. The program page says new hubs are to be identified in future phases and that the alliance is recruiting partners for future deployment rounds, so a second RFP, and the split of the first among Tesla and the three secondary OEMs, are the numbers to watch. The release words 10,000 as an ambition; the program page's "now under contract" figure is 2,500.