As SpaceX CEO Elon Musk so succinctly put it in a post-Falcon Heavy press conference, “I’m trippin’ balls here.” Following a truly stunning inaugural launch of the heavy-lift rocket, during which two of three first stages performed a simultaneous landing back on Earth, Elon’s own Tesla Roadster began its trip to deep space and Mars.
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- Tom Cross and Thaddeus Cesari photobomb Falcon Heavy ahead of its historic launch. (Tom Cross)
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- Tom Cross busy at work – taking photos of Falcon Heavy, in this case! (Thaddeus Cesari)
In attendance at the historic event was Teslarati’s launch photographer, Tom Cross, who took full advantage of the opportunity by capturing some truly incredible photos. Below is a gallery of some of the best stills from both Tom’s distant viewing point and remote cameras placed at the launch pad.
Tom has managed to capture Falcon Heavy’s inaugural launch from start to finish, ranging from liftoff, booster separation, booster landings, and much more.
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- Falcon Heavy clears the top of the strongback in a spectacular fashion. Two of the rocket’s three manifested missions are now for the USAF. (Tom Cross)
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- Falcon Heavy is effectively three times cheaper than its closest competition. (Tom Cross)
After clearing the launch pad, something Elon Musk famously stated would be the point after which he considered the launch a success, Falcon Heavy rapidly accelerated on its way to orbit, passing one of the riskiest points of rocketry (Max-Q, peak atmospheric pressure) soon after.
Falcon Heavy roars off the pad. (Tom Cross)
Last but not least (at least regarding what’s visible from the ground), Falcon Heavy’s two side boosters successfully separated from the center booster of the rocket and began their return to Cape Canaveral. After boosting back, they reentered into the main bulk of Earth’s atmosphere and performed a truly incredibly landing, synchronized as if they were performing an elaborate aerospace ballet. Tom managed to capture these events in impressive detail from at least several miles away. Before beginning landing procedures, Falcon 9 (and Heavy) boosters effectively surf the atmosphere, using their considerable surface area to glide towards the pad while their titanium grid fins provide additional accuracy and stability.
Finally, both boosters came to a near-simultaneous stop at their separate launch pads. (Tom Cross)
Described perfectly in the post-launch press conference, Elon Musk stated that the synchronized landing was probably the coolest thing he had ever seen, and I have to agree with him on this point. With his exceptional coverage of this historic moment, Tom Cross has truly outdone himself and produced some utterly iconic photographs of Falcon Heavy’s inaugural launch.
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- Falcon Heavy explodes off of Pad 39A in a spectacle of fire, Roadster in tow. (Tom Cross)
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- After 11 long years, Falcon Heavy has at least truly become real. (Tom Cross)
In the meantime, Roadster, Starman, and Falcon Heavy’s upper stage (S2) are performing their own form of orbital ballet. SpaceX is likely less than an hour away from commanding the final relight of S2’s Merlin Vacuum engine, a burn that will, at last, send the eccentric payload on its way into deep space and Mars. At least during the several remaining hours of battery power, SpaceX is hosting an ongoing livestream of Roadster and its multiple camera views as it orbits the Earth and prepares to depart from Earth. Catch the stream live at the link below.
Follow along live as launch photographer Tom Cross and I cover these exciting proceedings as close to live as possible.
Teslarati – Instagram – Twitter
Tom Cross – Instagram
Eric Ralph – Twitter
Elon Musk
Tesla confirmed HW3 can’t do Unsupervised FSD but there’s more to the story
Tesla confirmed HW3 vehicles cannot run unsupervised FSD, replacing its free upgrade promise with a discounted trade-in.
Tesla has officially confirmed that early vehicles with its Autopilot Hardware 3 (HW3) will not be capable of unsupervised Full Self-Driving, while extending a path forward for legacy owners through a discounted trade-in program. The announcement came by way of Elon Musk in today’s Tesla Q1 2026 earnings call.
🚨 Our LIVE updates on the Tesla Earnings Call will take place here in a thread 🧵
Follow along below: pic.twitter.com/hzJeBitzJU
— TESLARATI (@Teslarati) April 22, 2026
The history here matters. HW3 launched in April 2019, and Tesla sold Full Self-Driving packages to owners on the understanding that the hardware was sufficient for full autonomy. Some owners paid between $8,000 and $15,000 for FSD during that period. For years, as FSD’s AI models grew more demanding, HW3 vehicles fell progressively further behind, eventually landing on FSD v12.6 in January 2025 while AI4 vehicles moved to v13 and then v14. When Musk acknowledged in January 2025 that HW3 simply could not reach unsupervised operation, and alluded to a difficult hardware retrofit.
The near-term offering is more concrete. Tesla’s head of Autopilot Ashok Elluswamy confirmed on today’s call that a V14-lite will be coming to HW3 vehicles in late June, bringing all the V14 features currently running on AI4 hardware. That is a meaningful software update for owners who have been frozen at v12.6 for over a year, and it represents genuine effort to keep older hardware relevant. Unsupervised FSD for vehicles is now targeted for Q4 2026 at the earliest, with Musk describing it as a gradual, geography-limited rollout.
For HW3 owners, the over-the-air V14-lite update is welcomed, and the discounted trade-in path at least acknowledges an old obligation. What happens next with the trade-in pricing will define how this chapter ultimately gets written. If Tesla prices the hardware path fairly, acknowledges what early adopters are owed, and delivers V14-lite on the June timeline it committed to today, it has a real opportunity to convert one of the longest-running sore subjects among early adopters into a loyalty story.
Elon Musk
Tesla isn’t joking about building Optimus at an industrial scale: Here we go
Tesla’s Optimus factory in Texas targets 10 million robots yearly, with 5.2 million square feet under construction.
Tesla’s Q1 2026 Update Letter, released today, confirms that first generation Optimus production lines are now well underway at its Fremont, California factory, with a pilot line targeting one million robots per year to start. Of bigger note is a shared aerial image of a large piece of land adjacent to Gigafactory Texas, that Tesla has prominently labeled “Optimus factory site preparation.”
Permit documents show Tesla is seeking to add over 5.2 million square feet of new building space to the Giga Texas North Campus by the end of 2026, at an estimated construction investment of $5 billion to $10 billion. The longer term production target for that facility is 10 million Optimus units per year. Giga Texas already sits on 2,500 acres with over 10 million square feet of existing factory floor, and the North Campus expansion is being built to support multiple projects, including the dedicated Optimus factory, the Terafab chip fabrication facility (a joint Tesla/SpaceX/xAI venture), a Cybercab test track, road infrastructure, and supporting facilities.
Credit: TESLA
Texas makes strategic sense beyond the existing infrastructure. The state’s tax structure, lower labor costs relative to California, and the proximity to Tesla’s AI training cluster Cortex 1 and 2, both located at Giga Texas and now totaling over 230,000 H100 equivalent GPUs, means the Optimus software stack and the factory producing the hardware will share the same campus. Tesla’s Q1 report also confirmed completion of the AI5 chip tape out in April, the inference processor designed specifically to power Optimus units in the field.
As Teslarati reported, the Texas facility is intended to house Optimus V4 production at full scale. Musk told the World Economic Forum in January that Tesla plans to sell Optimus to the public by end of 2027 at a price between $20,000 and $30,000, stating, “I think everyone on earth is going to have one and want one.” He has previously pegged long term demand for general purpose humanoid robots at over 20 billion units globally, citing both consumer and industrial use cases.
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 miss on vehicle deliveries for the first quarter, delivering 358,023 vehicles and building 408,386 cars during the three-month span.
As Tesla transitions more toward AI and sees itself as less of a car company, expectations for deliveries will begin to become less of a central point in the consensus of how the quarter is perceived.
Nevertheless, Tesla is leaning on its strong foundation as a car company to carry forward its AI ambitions. The first quarter is a good ground layer for the rest of the year.
Tesla Q1 2026 Earnings Results
Tesla’s Earnings Results are as follows:
- Non-GAAP EPS – $0.41 Reported vs. $0.36 Expected
- Revenues – $22.387 billion vs. $22.35 billion Expected
- Free Cash Flow – $1.444 billion
- Profit – $4.72 billion
Tesla beat analyst expectations, so it will be interesting to see how the stock responds. IN the past, we’ve seen Tesla beat analyst expectations considerably, followed by a sharp drop in stock price.
On the same token, we’ve seen Tesla miss and the stock price go up the following trading session.
Tesla will hold its Q1 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.
Q1 2026 Earnings Call at 4:30pm CT https://t.co/pkYIaGJ32y
— Tesla (@Tesla) April 22, 2026
Tesla confirmed HW3 can’t do Unsupervised FSD but there’s more to the story
Tesla isn’t joking about building Optimus at an industrial scale: Here we go
