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Elon Musk crashes SXSW to debut SpaceX Falcon Heavy montage
In an unsurprising surprise, SpaceX CEO Elon Musk made good on his Friday promise and debuted the first official footage of Falcon Heavy’s inaugural flight, pieced together by none other than the co-creators of the science fiction show Westworld. Words cannot do justice to the breathtaking highlight reel:
Among an array of incredible visuals included in the new video are unseen perspectives of the launch, the side boosters’ synchronized landings at LZ-1 and 2, and even the impressive demise of the rocket’s center core after it missed the drone ship and slammed into the ocean surface. Not to be forgetten, the extraordinary mission also featured the iconic Starman in the driver’s seat of Musk’s very own Tesla Roadster, placed into an orbit around the sun that is likely to remain stable for hundreds of millions of years.
Pragmatically speaking, the launch was also an incredibly successful technology demonstration that all but completely validated the many hundreds of thousands of work hours SpaceX engineers have put into perfecting the design of Falcon Heavy – a success that sent whiplash-inducing reverberations throughout the political, industrial, and journalistic aerospace communities. For price unfathomably small relative to the prices NASA has floated for its own heavy-lift rocket (likely no less than $3 billion a launch), previously silent voices at the upper echelons of political power and spaceflight journalism have since openly praised SpaceX’s success and begun rather loudly spitballing about the massive rocket’s potential uses in both the civil and military spheres of space exploration. If SpaceX’s truly incredible achievements over the last few years had failed to make an impression, consider Falcon Heavy one last enthralling and unapologetic wake-up call.
Invited by Musk to attend the launch in person at SpaceX’s mission control, Westworld producers Jonah Nolan and Lisa Joy gathered their own firsthand footage and drew from SpaceX’s own internal recordings of the historic (and beguilingly absurd) launch. The above video or ‘trailer’ is the result. It does an absolutely flawless job of capturing the emotional intensity and visceral excitement shared by those who watched the launch live, either in Florida or elsewhere. Musk crashed SXSW’s Westworld panel to introduce the clip, but he also gave a brief speech that perfectly encapsulates at least part of the reason that the launch became so immediately iconic and uplifting:
“Life cannot just be about solving one miserable problem after another – that can’t be the only thing. There need to be things that inspire you, that make you glad to wake up in the morning and be part of humanity. That’s why we did this!”
Done it, they have. Together, humanity is capable of great things, and the value of a helpful reminder of this sometimes opaque fact of life is truly incalculable.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9sc3T8yN4mA
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Tesla (NASDAQ: TSLA) reported its earnings for the first quarter of 2026 on Wednesday afternoon. Here’s what the company reported compared to what Wall Street analysts expected.
The earnings results come after Tesla reported a massive beat on vehicle deliveries for the second quarter, delivering 489,126 vehicles and building 451,758 cars during the three-month span.
This was a major shock for those on Wall Street as they anticipated somewhere around 400,000 deliveries for the quarter, and showed Tesla still has plenty of demand for its vehicles around the world and in the U.S. despite losing the $7,500 EV Tax Credit last year.
Tesla Q2 2026 Earnings Results
- Non-GAAP EPS – $0.33 reported vs. $0.53 expected
- Revenues – $28.236 billion reported vs. $26.4 billion expected
- Free Cash Flow- -$1.092B
- Profit -$ 4.751B
Tesla (beat/missed) analyst expectations, so the market response to the company’s quarter is what we will look for next.
Tesla shares closed today down just over 1 percent, trading at $374.01.
In the past, it has been anyone’s guess with what Tesla shares will do after they report earnings. Strong quarters have resulted in sharp drops, while lackluster quarters have seen the stock shoot up considerably.
Tesla will hold its Q2 2026 Earnings Call in about 90 minutes at 5:30 p.m. on the East Coast. Remarks will be made by CEO Elon Musk and other executives, who will shed some light on the investor questions that we covered earlier this week.
You can stream it below. Additionally, we will be doing our Live Blog on X and Facebook.
Q2 2026 Earnings Call https://t.co/zZS6ii2TWK
— Tesla (@Tesla) July 22, 2026
Tesla is about to make parking in busy parking lots at businesses and other points of interest less stressful than ever by allowing drivers more control over where they park and how, CEO Elon Musk confirmed on X.
Tesla has been working to improve the parking performance of vehicles utilizing the Full Self-Driving suite, but now it is looking to add more customization, allowing drivers to choose the specific space they park in, but also potentially the orientation the car pulls into the spot:
It’s coming soon
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) July 21, 2026
Musk has reiterated on X twice over the past several weeks that Tesla is working to make things with the FSD suite based more on the driver’s specific preferences and behaviors that were seen in past drives.
Essentially, it sounds like if you tend to park away from a business to avoid other vehicles, Tesla FSD will soon recognize that preference of yours and start parking further away as well. Additionally, the prospect of assigned parking spaces has been something many owners have voiced concerns about.
Living in a community with assigned parking spaces makes using FSD incredibly difficult as it will rarely park in the correct spot when there are so many to choose from. This is also pertinent in work settings where there are sometimes assigned parking spaces.
The updates to Tesla’s Full Self-Driving suite in terms of listening to driver preferences with parking are also extending to routing. Tesla announced yesterday that with the release of its 2026 Summer Update, it was adding Automatic Navigation and Preferred Routes:
Tesla reveals 2026 Summer Update with crazy fixes to Nav and more
Tesla has always maintained the idea that any human input is bad input, and that, ideally, Tesla Full Self-Driving will always make the right decision. Of course, this is all in theory, but the issue is that so many of Tesla’s interventions have come because it does something that is not necessarily wrong, but perhaps not what the driver would prefer.
Taking these preferences into account will help Tesla alleviate some of the potentially unnecessary interventions that drivers perform.
Tesla is starting to prepare for the launch of the Optimus robot in its smartphone app, new coding strings show. Elon Musk has referred to Optimus as what will be the greatest-selling product of any kind of all time, and now, Tesla is getting ready for its launch.
Tesla’s smartphone app had several first-time mentions of the Optimus program, according to Tesla App Updates, who intially reported on the appearance. Here’s what they found:
A Dedicated “Robot” Phone Key Authentication
Tesla is working on a Bluetooth Low Energy, or BLE, authentication that is specifically for robots. This does not only apply to Optimus, though, as Robotaxi, which is Tesla’s autonomous ride-hailing platform, might also identify vehicles within the fleet as robots as well.
Tesla shows rapid teardown of Model S and X lines, paving the way for Optimus at Fremont
Essentially, pairing your phone as a key to anything Tesla identifies as a robot to a “whitelist” of authorized devices. Optimus, Robotaxi, or other products that fall into this category will only respond if the device trying to communicate with it is authorized.
This is a great security feature that will eliminate at least face-value and low-level threats.
Home Data Collection and System Alerts
This appears to be somewhat of a neural network for Optimus within your house. There will be a dedicated screen that asks for consent to collect both video and spatial data while Optimus performs in-home tasks. Everything from vacuuming, washing dishes, dusting, and other activities will be tracked.
There will also be a comprehensive alert system that will track everything from low battery to mechanical issues.
Other Changes
Most of the changes tracked in this particular app update are related to Tesla’s 2026 Summer Update, and include things such as image assets for new features, a preview of the new custom wraps feature, and other unique features.
You can check out our coverage on what is included with the 2026 Summer Update here:
Tesla reveals 2026 Summer Update with crazy fixes to Nav and more
Tesla (TSLA) Q2 2026 earnings results: miss on EPS, beat on revenue
Tesla is about to make parking in busy lots less stressful than ever
