[Stay on top of transportation news: Get TTNews in your inbox.] Elon Musk has long relished trolling those who’ve doubted him and Tesla. In 2018, he vowed to send “short shorts” to hedge fund manager David Einhorn, who’d been betting against Tesla’s stock. A couple of years later, the company actually listed satin trunks as a gag gift for sale on its website. Musk heard “various forms of ‘you’re a fraud,’ ” he told the crowd at Tesla’s Model Y unveiling in 2019. His defiant retort: “You can drive that fraud!” The Tesla CEO’s latest reveling had to do with the Semi, the heavy-duty truck that took five years to go from prototype to production. “Some people have said this was impossible,” Musk said during a Semi manufacturing event in Nevada last month. “But, uh, you can drive it.” The reasons for this proverbial victory lap were clear. Weeks earlier, Tesla handed off its first Semis to PepsiCo, which took delivery of 15 of the big rigs for its massive Frito-Lay facility in Modesto, Calif. The purpose of the late January event in Nevada was to announce a $3.6 billion investment to expand the use of Tesla’s existing factory near Reno to build more battery cells, as well as Semi trucks. Host Seth Clevenger speaks with autonomous vehicle pioneer Don Burnette about the pros and cons of driverless cars and trucks. Hear the program above and at RoadSigns.TTNews.com. Third of a three-part series on autonomous vehicles. Hear Part I here, and Part II here. While those were causes for celebration — something Musk can afford to do again, the way Tesla shares have soared this year — there’s still a lot of uncertainty as to just how meaningful the Semi will be to Tesla’s business. PepsiCo representatives confirmed they’d taken delivery of all 15 trucks ordered as part of a $30.8 million project for which California’s Air Resources Board picked up half the check. It remains unclear how much the Semi costs, or whether any other customers who ordered trucks from Tesla a half decade ago have managed to get their hands on them. Tesla didn’t mention the model in its quarterly production and deliveries release last month, then referred to the Semi being in pilot production in its earnings deck. While Musk offered an update during the earnings call on when he expects Tesla to be making Cybertrucks in volume — not until next year — he didn’t have anything to say about the Semi. Sightings of Semis on the side of the road in Sacramento and getting towed from a Nevada highway have lit up the message boards and social media networks where pro- and anti-Tesla flame wars have been fought for years. Image