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First Look at a ride inside the Boring Company’s LVCC Loop as testing begins

Credit: eirunning85 | imgur

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Elon Musk’s Boring Company performed capacity testing in Las Vegas at its Las Vegas Convention Center Loop yesterday as the Sin City prepares to reopen with no restrictions on June 1st. In preparation for Las Vegas to welcome back travelers, visitors, and residents alike to the downtown area after over a year of quarantine, the Boring Company is preparing for the first days of operation with its newly constructed Vegas Loop, a public transportation option that aims to give travelers efficient express options to travel to and from the city’s most popular hotspots.

A fleet of Model 3, Model Y, and Model X vehicles was on the ground in Las Vegas, and eyewitnesses estimate around 50 Tesla electric vehicles were a part of the testing phase. Additionally, less than 500 people were a part of the tests that aimed to give the Boring Company and the LVCC officials some clarity on how the Loop would run once the city fills back up with people.

Credit: eirunning85 | imgur

One eyewitness, u/adjudicatedmonster on the r/BoringCompany subreddit, gave several details about what they saw while the testing phase was ongoing. One of the most notable parts of the test was the constant loop of vehicles working on merging and coexisting smoothly. This remains to be the most crucial part of the LVCC Loop’s effectiveness because, without smooth and uneventful travel, the Loop will not work efficiently. However, u/adjudicatedmonster said that boarding the vehicles and getting moving went “smoother than expected.” The Model X took the longest to board and get going, while the Model Y was unequivocally the most efficient.

Credit: jacksonjourneys | Instagram

Most cars were filled with three passengers, plus a driver who controlled the vehicle manually through the tunnel. u/adjudicatedmonster said the vehicles traveled around 30 MPH through turns and around 39 MPH on straightaways.

Video thanks to eirunning95 on imgur

The Boring Company also gave out souvenirs, like Boring Company hats and some lucky guests even got to operate Boring Company flamethrowers.

 

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As Las Vegas prepares to reopen on June 1st, there will be no restrictions on businesses or activities, according to KTNV, an ABC affiliate station in Las Vegas. Life is getting back to normal, and it is expected to be busy, considering the Sin City hasn’t had a normal week of business in over a year. In 2019, Las Vegas recorded over 42 million visitors, a far cry from the only 19 million that made their way to the city last year as the pandemic raged on. For years, public transportation has been a struggle for Vegas visitors. Limited options combined with high prices have made walking around the city a more viable option. However, the LVCC Loop from the Boring Company won’t break the bank, and it will get visitors from Point A to Point B in a fraction of the time. Projections estimate that the Loop will move 8,000 people every hour.

For now, the LVCC Loop will transport passengers across the Convention Center Campus that spans 73 acres big. Eventually, Vegas visitors and residents will have the ability to go from resort to resort and hotspot to hotspot thanks to The Boring Company’s Vegas Loop. More hotels and resorts continue to seek entrance into the Vegas Loop, with the most recent being Resorts World, located just off of the Vegas Strip.

What do you think? Let us know in the comments below, or be sure to email me at joey@teslarati.com or on Twitter @KlenderJoey.

Joey has been a journalist covering electric mobility at TESLARATI since August 2019. In his spare time, Joey is playing golf, watching MMA, or cheering on any of his favorite sports teams, including the Baltimore Ravens and Orioles, Miami Heat, Washington Capitals, and Penn State Nittany Lions. You can get in touch with joey at joey@teslarati.com. He is also on X @KlenderJoey. If you're looking for great Tesla accessories, check out shop.teslarati.com

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Tesla Model Y L gets suspension complaints in over odd issue China

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Credit: @TeslaNewswire/X

The Tesla Model Y L is arguably the most hyped trim of the all-electric crossover, other than the Performance configuration that comes with white-knuckle speed and sports car-level handling.

However, it is not all perfect. Tesla owners in China who took delivery of the Model Y L, denoted with an L to highlight its longer wheelbase, are experiencing what they are referring to as “collapsing” of the rear wheels, as suspension issues appear to be an issue with some of the builds.

The gap between the wheel arch and tire has narrowed to the point that “not even a single finger” could fit, according to a report from Car News China. The failures are not tied to a specific mileage, as one owner said that after just 9,000 kilometers (5,600 miles), they noticed the suspension issue when their car was fully loaded.

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Another one had the issue at 30,000 kilometers (18,640 miles) and noticed that the wheel gap shrank to two fingers, so not as drastic as the person who reported a similar issue at 9,000 km.

Tesla Model Y L is gaining momentum in China’s premium segment

Along with the visual recognition of the issue, others are saying the sagging is causing abnormal wear on the inside of the tires. Extra weight and instant torque already provide additional stress on the tires in electric vehicles during normal operation, so it is no surprise that this is another complaint.

There has been no recall issued by Tesla, and the company has not yet publicly acknowledged the issue.

Some are suggesting that owners use a “finger test” to self-diagnose whether there is an issue with the suspension. There should be four fingers between the tire and the wheel well; anything less than that starts to get dicey.

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Tesla Cybercab event gains steam ahead of massive launch

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Credit: TechOperator | X

Tesla is starting to truly tease and hype its groundbreaking Cybercab event, which takes place tomorrow in Austin, Texas. It will be the first time members of the public will be able to ride in a Cybercab, a vehicle without any manual controls, on public roads.

Tesla has been dropping some hype on X over the past several days, but this morning, the excitement has truly started to build up for the event. Although Cybercab has been unveiled before, this is truly Tesla’s announcement that it is ready to start offering autonomous rides for public passengers in its new ride-hailing-geared vehicle for the first time.

The hype has started with a variety of different social media posts that are a true indication that Tesla is preparing for something big. Teasing so much of the potential of Cybercab, including its ability to truly revolutionize how people hail rides for local travel, is what the big idea for the event entails. The time that many Tesla owners, fans, and investors have been waiting for is potentially here:

The event has remained slim on details. Even invitees are still awaiting true details about what the event will entail, where they’ll go, and what is in store for the evening. This is pretty typical for an event run by Tesla; they keep things under wraps for the most part until the very last minute.

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However, there is no secret about what the real intention of Tesla is for this event: it is going to be a huge reveal party for a vehicle that has no steering wheel and no pedals. It is a truly massive step for the company moving forward.

Speculation persists as to whether this is going to be an event that simply announces that rides will begin with the Cybercab, or it will be something more substantial. Tesla has said in the past that they plan to sell the Cybercab to the general public in what could become a great way to earn passive income by adding it to a more global fleet of Robotaxi-geared vehicles.

Tomorrow, the show begins in Austin, and the Cybercab goes live at some capacity; we just don’t know exactly how quite yet.

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SpaceX tells the FCC that Starship Flight 14 is going to orbit

SpaceX filed with the FCC for Starship Flight 14, its first true orbital launch attempt.

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SpaceX has asked the Federal Communications Commission for permission to fly Starlink terminals during Starship’s fourteenth flight test, and the filing lays out a genuine trip to orbit, something the program has never attempted.

Every Starship flight so far, including Flight 13’s successful splashdown in the Indian Ocean on July 24, has flown a suborbital arc that ends with the ship reentering the atmosphere within the same hour it launches. The FCC paperwork describes a mission profile built around an actual orbital insertion instead.

The payload is the other half of the story. Flight 13 carried 20 production Starlink V3 satellites, but because that mission never reached orbit, the satellites reentered along with the ship rather than joining the constellation, something Teslarati covered in detail after SpaceX released footage shot from one of those satellites as it drifted away from Starship in space. Flight 14 is designed to close that gap. If the orbital insertion holds, the roughly 20 V3 satellites onboard would separate into an operational orbit and could eventually go into service, each one rated for about 1 terabit per second of downlink capacity by SpaceX’s own account.

SpaceX announces new Starbase for ‘thousands of Starship launches annually’

Elon Musk first flagged the orbital attempt during SpaceX’s August 4 earnings call, the company’s first as a public entity following its June IPO under the ticker SPCX. He also floated catching the ship with the Starbase tower on the same flight, an idea he walked back on August 20, saying the catch attempt would more likely come “in a few months,” as Teslarati reported at the time. Flight 14 will instead target a splashdown for the ship in the Indian Ocean, the same recovery method used since Flight 12.

Hardware has been catching up to the ambition. Booster 21 completed a full 33-engine static fire on August 28, and Ship 41 finished its own six-engine test the week before. An airspace briefing circulated to pilots on August 20 listed September 15 as the target date, later than the end of August window Musk mentioned on the earnings call, though SpaceX has not confirmed a launch date publicly and Starship schedules routinely slip while hardware and FAA paperwork line up.

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The FCC filing itself does not guarantee a launch date. It covers communications authority, and not flight readiness, considering SpaceX still needs Ship 41 fully stacked and cleared by the FAA before Flight 14 can fly. But the filing is a real marker of intent and it puts a specific regulatory process behind what had so far only been Musk’s word on the earnings call.

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