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SpaceX teases Crew Dragon capsule and spacesuit details in new video
Over the past few weeks, conference presentations given by SpaceX employees like Joy Dunn and Paul Wooster have kicked off with an updated intro reel including unseen slow-motion footage of Falcon Heavy and detailed looks at the company’s spacesuit and Crew Dragon capsule.
Those in the habit of catching SpaceX launches live will be readily familiar with the company’s intro reel – it’s marked the start of live coverage for nearly every webcast in the past three or more years. The current intro reel has remained more or less unchanged since the first successful Falcon 9 booster recovery in December 2015, and this updated intro reel will be a breath of fresh air for what is still admittedly an amazing video. Still, it’s hard to say “no” to slow-motion footage of Falcon Heavy.
Most recently shown at an MIT Media Lab conference during SpaceX Principal Mars Development Engineer Paul Wooster’s presentation, the new reel has – somewhat unsurprisingly – been built around the incredibly successful inaugural Falcon Heavy launch, as well as some more recent footage of the company’s Cargo Dragon docking with the International Space Station. Additional clips show what appears to be details of the finalized Crew Dragon – set to debut in late 2018 – and a closeup of SpaceX’s internally-designed spacesuit. Sticking out as the only truly unusual snippet, the end of the new reel features parts of the animation SpaceX released in 2016 during the debut of their Mars rocket, the Interplanetary Transport System (ITS), which has since been replaced with the similar but different BFR.
While entirely possible that the inclusion of ITS footage in an intro reel clearly updated since 2018 is intentional, it seems more likely that SpaceX has yet to publicize this new video partially because they don’t yet have a similar animation featuring their updated Mars rocket and spaceship. CEO Elon Musk’s recent comments on the encouraging progress being made with the design and construction of the first BFR prototype suggests that such an updated animation could be just around the corner, if not full-up teaser photos of the construction progress. Set to begin suborbital hop testing as early as the first half of 2019 and orbital launches by end of 2020, SpaceX’s Mars ambitions may still feel far away, but the tech that could make them real is already undergoing preliminary construction and testing.
Sooner still is SpaceX’s upcoming debut of Crew Dragon, the spacecraft that will eventually both carry astronauts to the ISS and later replace Cargo Dragon. Initially intended to land near the launch pad on legs, akin to Falcon 9, SpaceX has since canceled that work, largely due to numerous delays that would have almost certainly been incurred in the process of NASA certification of such a new and unproven technology. Instead, Musk made it clear that SpaceX would instead put its time, energy, and money into the development of BFR and BFS, sidestepping NASA’s sometimes-smothering and counterproductive paternalism for the time being.
Crew Dragon will instead be recovered after landing in the ocean, a disappointing concession that is at least partially cushioned by SpaceX’s recent successes and growing expertise with the reuse of their similarly sea-recovered Cargo Dragons. While ocean-recovery certainly won’t lend itself to ease of reuse quite as readily as powered landings, SpaceX will likely be able to significantly drop the cost of Crew Dragon launches in the future by efficiently refurbishing each recovered capsule. Less likely but still a possibility, the company could adopt something similar to the fairing-catcher Mr Steven – essentially a giant net aboard a highly-maneuverable boat – to recover Crew Dragon without submerging the spacecraft in saltwater. As of March 2018, at least according to NASA’s Kennedy Space Center director, SpaceX is still on track to conduct its first uncrewed launch of Crew Dragon as early as August 2018, with the first crewed mission following in December 2018 if all goes well.
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- ITS was much wider and taller than the updated BFR, making it considerably easier to develop. (SpaceX)
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- BFR’s booster and spaceship, tiny human for scale. (SpaceX)
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- Astronaut Bob Behnken emerges from the hatch of a SpaceX Crew Dragon spacecraft in manufacturing at SpaceX’s headquarters and factory in Hawthorne, CA. (SpaceX)
SpaceX’s spacesuit is a critical component of their crewed spaceflight efforts, and has been designed and built in-house to ensure that astronauts can survive the emergency depressurization of a Crew Dragon capsule, evidenced by Musk’s recent suggestions that senior suit engineers successfully survived stints in a vacuum chamber while wearing it. Thanks to the staggering success of Falcon Heavy and its iconic Starman and Tesla Roadster payload, SpaceX’s spacesuit will undoubtedly be a badge of honor for all future astronauts who fly aboard Crew Dragon.
Starman gives one final farewell to Earth as he departs for deep space aboard Musk’s Tesla Roadster. (SpaceX)
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Tesla is showing us that Cybercab mass production is well underway
Tesla’s Cybercab drives itself off the Gigafactory Texas line in a striking new production video.
Tesla has provided a first look from inside a production Cybercab as it drove itself off the assembly line at Gigafactory Texas. The video footage, posted on X, opens on the factory floor with robotic arms and assembly equipment visible through the Cybercab windshield, and follows the car through a branded tunnel marked “Cybercab”, before autonomously navigating itself to a holding lot.
The first Cybercab rolled off the Giga Texas production line on February 17, 2026, with Musk writing on X, “Congratulations to the Tesla team on making the first production Cybercab.” April marked the official shift to volume production. The Giga Texas line is being prepared to produce hundreds of units per week, with 60 units already spotted on the Gigafactory campus earlier this month.
Purpose-built for autonomy
Cybercab in production now at Giga Texas pic.twitter.com/Y9qG3KyWBa
— Tesla (@Tesla) April 23, 2026
The Cybercab was first revealed publicly at Tesla’s “We, Robot” event in October 2024 at Warner Bros. Studios in Burbank, California, where 20 pre-production units gave attendees rides around the studio lot. Musk said he believed the average operating cost would be around $0.20 per mile, and that buyers would be able to purchase one for under $30,000. The two-seat design is deliberate. Musk noted that 90 percent of miles driven involve one or two people, making a compact two-passenger vehicle the most efficient configuration for a fleet-scale robotaxi. Eliminating rear seats also removes complexity and cost, supporting that sub-$30,000 target.
Tesla’s annual production goal is 2 million Cybercabs per year once several factories reach full design capacity. The Cybercab has no steering wheel, no pedals, and relies entirely on Tesla’s vision-based FSD system. What the video shows is the first evidence of that system working not as a demo, but as a production reality, driving itself off the line and into the world.
🚗 Our first ride in Tesla Cybercab last October: pic.twitter.com/kGqIqgJPRn https://t.co/BITCXFhbVd
— TESLARATI (@Teslarati) April 22, 2025
Elon Musk
Elon Musk’s last manually driven Tesla will do something no other production car will do
Elon Musk confirmed the Roadster as Tesla’s last manually driven car, with a debut coming soon.
During Tesla’s Q1 2026 earnings call on April 22, Elon Musk made a brief but notable comment about the long-awaited next generation Roadster while describing Tesla’s future vehicle lineup. “Long term, the only manually driven car will be the new Tesla Roadster,” he said. “Speaking of which, we may be able to debut that in a month or so. It requires a lot of testing and validation before we can actually have a demo and not have something go wrong with the demo.”
That single statement is the entire Roadster update from yesterday’s call, and while it represents another timeline shift, it comes as no surprise with Tesla heads-down-at-work on the mass rollout of its Robotaxi service across US cities, and the industrial scale production of the humanoid Optimus.
The fact that Musk specifically framed the Roadster as the last manually driven Tesla is significant on its own. As the rest of the lineup moves toward full autonomy, the Roadster becomes something rare in the Tesla-sphere by keeping the driver in control. Driving enthusiasts who buy a $200,000 supercar are not doing so to be passengers. They want the physical connection to the road, the feel of acceleration under their own input, and the experience of controlling something with that level of performance. FSD, however capable it becomes, removes that entirely. The Roadster signals that Tesla understands this distinction and is building a car specifically for the people who consider driving itself the point.
Tesla isn’t joking about building Optimus at an industrial scale: Here we go
The specs for the Roadster Musk has teased over the years are genuinely unlike anything in production. The base model targets 0 to 60 mph in 1.9 seconds, a top speed above 250 mph, and up to 620 miles of range from a 200 kWh battery. The optional SpaceX package takes it further, rumored to add roughly ten cold gas thrusters operating at 10,000 psi, borrowed directly from Falcon 9 rocket technology. With thrusters, Musk has claimed 0 to 60 mph in as little as 1.1 seconds. In a 2021 Joe Rogan interview he went further, stating “I want it to hover. We got to figure out how to make it hover without killing people.” Tesla filed a patent for ground effect technology in August 2025, suggesting the hover concept has not been abandoned. The starting price remains $200,000, with the Founders Series requiring a $250,000 full deposit. Some reservation holders placed those deposits in 2017 and are approaching a full decade of waiting.
With production now targeted for 2027 or 2028 at the earliest, the Roadster remains Tesla’s most audacious promise and its longest-running delay. But if what Musk is testing lives up to even half of what he has described, the demo alone should be worth waiting for.
Elon Musk says the Tesla Roadster unveiling could be done “maybe in a month or so.”
He said it should be an extraordinary unveiling event. pic.twitter.com/6V9P7zmvEm
— TESLARATI (@Teslarati) April 22, 2026
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.
Tesla is showing us that Cybercab mass production is well underway
Elon Musk’s last manually driven Tesla will do something no other production car will do
