News
SpaceX to give BFR update and announce a private Moon mission on Monday
SpaceX is set for a surprise event that is expected to revolve the announcement of a newly-contracted launch planned to send a private individual around the Moon with BFR, potentially queuing up a true race (back) to the Moon between SpaceX and NASA sometime in the early to mid-2020s.
Alongside the official announcement and a fascinating render revealing a dramatically-updated iteration of BFR’s spaceship upper stage, CEO Elon Musk cryptically hinted on Twitter that the private customer could be Japanese, as well as confirming that the spaceship as shown was indicative of a new BFR design.
We’re going to the Moon, people! What I wouldn’t give to be this passenger… https://t.co/11ahm2LhE8
— Darby Dunn (@RocketJoy) September 14, 2018
Most importantly, at least for anyone eager to learn more, SpaceX will be hosting an official webcast of the announcement, NET 6:00 pm PDT on Monday, September 17th (01:00 UTC, Sept 18). Given the extreme rarity of streamed SpaceX updates unrelated to launches, as well as the fact that all of those updates have been presented by Elon Musk, it’s safe to expect that this particular update will be no different.
With any luck, this announcement may actually be the BFR update Musk teased on Twitter in mid-July, and his quoted “in a month or so” ETA meshes well with an actual update roughly two months later, Musk-time accounted for. It’s also possible that this newly-announced space tourism contract is directly related to a similar announcement made in 2017 that would have instead launched “two private customers” around the Moon with Falcon Heavy and Crew Dragon – SpaceX’s official press release noted that both of those customers had “paid a significant deposit”.
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- Falcon Heavy visualized launching a Dragon 2 spacecraft, either Red Dragon or a circumlunar tourist mission (both now defunct). (SpaceX)
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- SpaceX’s BFR booster seen landing back at a heavily-upgraded Pad 39A as a Crew Spaceship (left) awaits its ride to orbit. (SpaceX)
Prior to Falcon Heavy’s launch debut in February 2018, Musk offered a new perspective on human missions with Falcon Heavy, stating that SpaceX had made an internal decision to skip over a human-rated Falcon Heavy and head directly for BFR, citing his feeling that development of the next-gen rocket was proceeding quite smoothly.
“What we decided internally is to focus our future efforts on BFR. If that ends up taking longer than expected, then we’ll return to the idea of sending a Crew Dragon on Falcon Heavy around the Moon. But right now it looks like BFR development is moving quickly and it will not be necessary to qualify Falcon Heavy for crewed spaceflight.” – Elon Musk, 5 February 2018
Discussed last week, the render SpaceX published alongside this fresh announcement featured a new variant of BFR, suggesting that the company is still iterating on the spaceship’s design. This helps to explain a roughly 6-12 months schedule delay for prototype spaceship hop tests and a full BFR’s first orbital mission, slipping slightly from NET H1 2019 (hops) and 2020 (orbit) to late-2019 and 2021, respectively.
Still, it’s believed that SpaceX is already building composite propellant tank and structural prototypes in a temporary tent set up at Port of Los Angeles, evidenced by massive stacks of boxes of materials (some empty and some not) necessary for composite manufacturing (prepreg, resin, industrial HVAC, etc.). Raptor, the critical propulsion system that will power both booster and spaceship, was said by Tom Mueller – VP of Propulsion Engineering – to have all but completed prototype Raptor testing, with eyes now on building and testing engines optimized for flight. Located in the Port of LA, a dedicated BFR factory is in the early stages of construction, and completion of the first phase (a smaller factory floor) could happen sometime between Q2 and Q4 2019.
Catch the event live at the webcast below and stay tuned for Teslarati’s on-site coverage.
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Elon Musk
SpaceX just combined Grok, Cursor, and X into one mega plan
SpaceXSI merges Grok, Cursor, and X Premium into one plan, raising questions for Tesla owners.
SpaceX Super Intelligence has rolled out The X Subscription, a single plan that combines Grok, Grok Bot, Cursor, and X Premium.
There are five levels, including a free plan that includes daily Grok access and a starter allowance for Cursor’s coding agents. Plus is $8 per month, Premium is $30, Super is $100, and Ultra is $200. Usage scales as you move up, with Premium offering four times the Plus allowance, Super 15 times, and Ultra 50 times. Annual billing brings the prices down a bit further, with Premium at $300 per year.
We’ve unified plans across Grok, Cursor, and X Premium.
Introducing The X Subscription. https://t.co/SvkrVvBa0p
— SpaceX Super Intelligence (@SpaceXSI) October 12, 2026
The $30 Premium tier is where SpaceXSI says it packs the benefits of SuperGrok, Cursor Pro, and X Premium+, which previously added up to $90 per month. Grok Bot, the agent that handles tasks like ordering food or managing a calendar, is included from Premium upward but not on Plus. Paid plans share one weekly usage pool across Grok and Cursor, and each plan includes at least twice the coding usage of the comparable Cursor plan. Third party models in Cursor remain available on Premium and above, but they are billed separately at API list prices.
That last detail matters because of what has happened around Cursor this year. SpaceX exercised its option to buy the company for $60 billion in June, and the deal closed in August. Weeks later, OpenAI said it will cut Cursor’s access to its models on November 12. Bundling Cursor with Grok usage gives SpaceXSI a reason to steer developers toward its own models.
Tesla integrates Grok Bot into its vehicles for the ultimate personal assistant
For Tesla owners, the connection is Grok Bot. Tesla brought it into its vehicles last month, and at that point access inside the car was limited to SuperGrok Heavy subscribers. Grok Bot is now enabled across every Cybercab and the rest of the Model Y Robotaxi fleet. Neither SpaceXSI nor Tesla has said how the new plans change inside the car access for owners, or whether a $30 Premium subscription now covers Grok Bot in a personal Tesla. That is the question owners will want answered first.
The company is also changing its name along the way. The rollout follows the rebrand Musk announced on October 4, when he said SpaceXAI would become SpaceXSI, and the plan page now carries that branding.
The X Subscription is available to new customers starting now, and SpaceXSI says it will reach everyone globally over the next few days. Existing SuperGrok, Cursor, and X Premium subscribers do not have to switch. The option to move will appear gradually in billing settings, with a prorated refund for the unused time on the old plan. Switching is permanent once the accounts are unified, and old plans are closed to new sign ups.
Energy
Taiwan power firm bets big on Tesla Megapacks as AI data center thirst grows
Taiwan’s Apollo Power orders 260 Tesla Megapacks, betting AI data centers will need more electricity.
A Taiwanese power company has ordered 260 Tesla Megapack 2XL units, roughly 1GWh of storage, betting that electricity rather than chips will decide how fast AI data centers come online. Apollo Power signed the contract with Tesla’s Taiwan energy arm on October 8, according to the company’s filing with the Taiwan stock exchange.
The filing says the units are meant for behind the meter storage and resilient grid projects, with delivery in batches from the end of 2027 and sites operating in 2028. Apollo and Tesla did not disclose a price, citing a confidentiality agreement. Apollo plans to pay for the equipment through a cash capital increase and bank financing, and it noted the purchase is not revenue and does not mean it holds firm orders from its partners.
Biggo reported that only about 33 units are under signed customer contracts, with roughly 150 more in negotiation. The same report put total project investment near NT$130 billion, but that figure includes installation work, with the equipment itself making up about 40 to 50 percent. In other words, a large share of this order is Apollo reserving supply ahead of demand. Apollo’s chairman told local media global large storage supply is tight, which is why the company locked in the units early, according to Yahoo Taiwan Finance.
Apollo also launched an AI data center and grid resilience alliance with Phison, Gigabyte and Shihlin Electric. The pitch rests on a pilot at Phison’s Zhunan plant, where Apollo and Tesla Energy Taiwan installed grid forming Megapack 2XLs in June. Tesla Energy Taiwan general manager Sun Hsiao-Han said the project went from demo to 1GWh in four months, and that Tesla Energy has deployed more than 50GWh worldwide.
Taiwan’s cabinet has approved amendments that would require large energy users to install their own generation and storage, which gives enterprise storage a regulatory tailwind.
The deal fits a pattern Teslarati has tracked. Tesla’s Megablock targets 1GWh commissioned in 20 business days, a pitch aimed squarely at fast moving data center builds. Megapacks already back xAI’s Colossus in Memphis and a 400MW AI campus in Brazil. Sun Media adds that Megapack 2XL was named among the first products in Nvidia’s DSX Ready qualification for battery storage in AI factories.
Deliveries are more than a year away, so the real test is how much of that 260 unit order turns into signed customer contracts.
For a century, the car has asked the same thing of its owner, which is basically to pay attention. Even the best ride-hailing app like Uber or Lyft only moved the problem into someone else’s hands. You stopped driving, but you still sat in a stranger’s car, while half listening, and wondering whether to take a phone call in the car without being rude. The Cybercab has no wheel, no pedals and no driver. With Grok @bot now live inside it, it becomes something else entirely, and I think that matters more than the fleet count that everyone is tracking.
Grok @bot is an agent, not a voice assistant. A rider signs in once, and from then on can say what they need and watch it happen. Order dinner from a favorite restaurant. Fill the grocery cart. Move money, answer email, adjust a calendar, push a work project forward. Tesla engineer Yun-Ta Tsai confirmed it is enabled across every Cybercab and the rest of the Model Y fleet, and Tesla’s own pitch is that Full Self-Driving handles the commute while Grok handles the errands.
Think about what that does to a thirty minute ride. Uber sells you a trip, while Waymo sells you the same trip in a more private setting. Tesla is selling the thirty minutes themselves, returned to you with an assistant attached. Errands that used to eat a Saturday get done between pickup and drop off. The ride stops being dead time between two places and becomes a place of its own.
Tesla integrates Grok Bot into its vehicles for the ultimate personal assistant
Best of all, your Bots follow you into any Cybercab, and presumably your own Tesla, then logs you out automatically when you step out. Anyone can bolt a chatbot onto a screen, but much harder to own the vehicle, the autonomy stack and the assistant at once. It also quietly ties SpaceX’s Super Intelligence business to Tesla’s fleet, after Tesla converted its xAI stake into SpaceX equity. The relationship between those two companies is getting harder to describe as separate.
This is also where the hard questions start, because an agent that can spend your money in a vehicle other people also ride in needs some answers. How does it handle a voice it shouldn’t trust? What gets recorded, who can see it, and for how long? What happens when a rider leaves halfway through a task?
If Tesla gets those answers right, the scoreboard changes. We have been counting Cybercabs and wait times. The more telling number may be what riders accomplish per trip. That is data almost no one else will ever have, and it is the real reason to watch Grok @bot.
What do you think? Leave me a comment.
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