News
SpaceX CEO Elon Musk updates schedule for first orbital Starship launch
SpaceX CEO Elon Musk has presented the first significant update on the company’s Starship program since September 2019, offering a couple of new details about the status of the first orbital launch attempt of the largest and most powerful rocket ever built.
Unfortunately, above all else, the promised update was primarily a rehash of the broad-strokes vision of SpaceX’s Starship and Mars programs, as well as some basic details – most already known – about the rocket, its Raptor engines, and how it will be operated. Nonetheless, a large portion of the event was dedicated to audience questions, some of which actually extracted some specific details from the SpaceX CEO. Perhaps the single most important news: a rough but updated schedule for Starship’s first orbital test flight.
To be clear, a great many questions remain unanswered. Months after Starbase’s first orbital tank farm reached some degree of completion, SpaceX has yet to fill four main liquid methane (LCH4) tanks with even an ounce of fuel. Over the same period, the farm’s five liquid oxygen and nitrogen (LOx/LN2) tanks have been filled with thousands of tons of propellant and coolant. Why is still entirely unclear, save for speculation that SpaceX ran afoul of rudimentary methane storage regulations and is ever so slowly rectifying those errors with modifications. Without so much as a partially operational tank farm, SpaceX will be unable to attempt an orbital Starship launch, let alone start the process of qualifying a Super Heavy booster for flight with wet dress rehearsals (WDRs) and static fire tests.
Musk also failed to confirm or offer an educated guess as to which Starship and Super Heavy booster will support the first orbital test flight (OTF), whether the first OTF will truly reach orbit (rather than ‘just’ orbital velocity), and what will happen to Ship 20 and Booster 4 if – as a great deal of speculation suggests – they’ve fallen out of favor. If they’re to be replaced, it’s also unclear why that is or how long it might take to qualify a new ship and booster given that Super Heavy B4, for example, has yet to attempt a single static fire test a full six months after it first reached its full height.
Nonetheless, largely thanks to questions asked by members of the media, Musk did offer some valuable insight into Starship’s first orbital-class test flight. The SpaceX CEO says that he believes the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) could complete an environmental assessment of Starbase as early as March. In the same presentation, Musk stated that SpaceX would “hopefully [complete environmental reviews] a couple months.” A lack of environmental approval has been the single most important bottleneck of orbital Starbase launch operations for months. The FAA originally anticipated that those reviews would be complete by the end of 2021 but recently delayed the estimated date of completion to the end of February 2022. Another delay from February to March (or later) has been expected for weeks.
It’s unclear how seamless the whole process will be but SpaceX will also need to receive an FAA license for orbital Starship launches after clearing environmental reviews. That could take days, weeks, months, or even a year or more. If SpaceX doesn’t receive a Finding Of No Significant Impact (FONSI) on its Starbase environmental assessment (EA) and instead has to complete a far more extensive Environmental Impact Statement (EIS), Starbase could be stuck in bureaucratic gridlock well into 2023 or even 2024.
Thankfully, Musk is extremely confident in SpaceX’s alternatives. In the event that Starbase becomes indefinitely unusable, SpaceX has already received full environmental approval to launch Starship out of Kennedy Space Center Pad 39A. The company has already begun the process of assembling a Starship launch and catch tower offsite and Musk believes that a Pad 39A Starship launch site could be brought online in just 6-8 months if SpaceX refocuses all of its Starship resources onto Florida.
The CEO also says that SpaceX’s goal is to have the hardware needed for Starship’s first orbital test flight ready to launch around the same as regulatory approval is secured – “hopefully a couple months for both,” in Musk’s words. If Starship S20 and Booster 4 are still assigned to mission, that schedule is not difficult to believe. Starship has already completed virtually all of the ground testing needed to qualify it for flight, while – from the outside – Super Heavy has never looked more ready for static fire testing.
If SpaceX intends to use a different ship and booster, though, the company will have to cut the amount of time needed for final assembly and qualification testing by a factor of two or three relative to B4/S20. If the next ship and booster pair takes a similar amount of time as B4/S20, the hardware needed for Starship’s first orbital launch attempt might not be ready until August or September 2022. SpaceX will also need to build, test, qualify, and ship around three-dozen Raptor 2 engines, the production of which could singlehandedly take at least six or seven weeks at the current pace of production.
Ultimately, no matter where the cards currently in the air end up falling, it looks like SpaceX has an extremely busy – and hopefully fruitful – year of Starship development and testing ahead of it
Tesla released the Full Self-Driving v14 ‘Lite’ suite to owners of Hardware 3 or AI3 vehicles today, adding several new features to the vehicles that were once believed to be capable of unsupervised self-driving.
Now, Tesla has released this modified suite to older Tesla vehicles, adding plenty of new features and capabilities.
Here are the full release notes for the suite:
- Distilled the intelligence from HW4 V14 into HW3. This allows HW3 to directly learn how to handle scenarios using HW4 V14 as a guide. This process unlocks the improvements that have been made to HW4 including Reinforcement Learning (RL) and offline models for HW3.
- Improved both proactive and reactive responsiveness across a wide variety of categories including navigation handling, merges and forks, pedestrian interactions, traffic lights, and vehicle cut-in scenarios.
- Improved general comfort in nominal scenarios through fewer false slowdowns, smoother steering and more consistent lane centering.
- Introduced parking, unparking, and reversing capabilities.
- Added Arrival Options for you to select where FSD should park: in a Parking Lot, on the Street, in a Driveway, or at the Curbside.
- Speed Profiles are now available at all times, to further customize driving style preference.
These improvements, according to Tesla’s Head of AI, Ashok Elluswamy, help distill the driving behavior from AI4’s v14 series into both the camera and compute configurations of AI3.
Tesla Full Self-Driving v14 ‘Lite’ for older cars finally gets released
He added:
“It includes destination options and speed profiles on city roads, but more importantly significantly improved safety. We hope you’ll enjoy it, once the build ships wide.”
FSD v14 Lite is now rolling out to AI3 early-access customers. Based on the feedback, will rollout to more customers over the next few weeks.
This build distills the driving behavior from AI4’s v14 series into both the camera and compute config of AI3. It includes destination…
— Ashok Elluswamy (@aelluswamy) June 29, 2026
Tesla will continue to roll out the v14 Lite suite more widely in the coming weeks, the company said.
Tesla has finally released its Full Self-Driving v14 ‘Lite’ suite for older cars that equip the Hardware 3 or AI 3 chip, which have not been able to handle the newest versions of the company’s driver assistance software.
Tesla officially started releasing the v14 Lite suite to owners in the Early Access Program last night. The company’s Head of AI, Ashok Elluswamy, said that the rollout will continue over the next few weeks. The build distills the driving behavior from AI4’s v14 series into both the camera and compute configurations of an AI3 car.
🚨 Tesla is releasing v14 Lite for AI3 owners who are in early-access
This will give AI3 cars the ability to experience new FSD features like parking preferences. https://t.co/pp6Q5FOKoz pic.twitter.com/tqexMB8SVy
— TESLARATI (@Teslarati) June 29, 2026
It also includes a variety of new features that were available to AI4 cars running v14, including:
- Start Self-Driving from Park
- Arrival and Parking Options
- Speed Profiles
The release is highly anticipated because those owners with AI3 vehicles were early adopters into the FSD platform and were promised that their cars would be capable of achieving Full Self-Driving.
However, Tesla CEO Elon Musk admitted during the company’s recent Q1 Earnings Call that these vehicles would not be capable of achieving unsupervised Full Self-Driving, which is what Tesla had originally said.
Owners were not pleased with this answer, or the idea that their commitment to buying the suite outright for thousands of dollars would not yield the ability to drive without operating the car. Tesla gave some solutions for this, including a discount on a new car, or an upgrade to an AI4 or AI5 self-driving computer and new, upgraded cameras.
Tesla owners do not seem pleased with these options, as they require giving the company more money.
Nevertheless, it is important to note that Tesla came through for owners here by releasing v14 Lite before the end of Q2, something it had promised owners during the previous Earnings Call. Tesla has had trouble keeping up with timelines, but this is a big achievement for the team.
Tesla released what analysts believe the company will report in terms of deliveries and energy deployments for Q2, but the figures seem to confirm a long-standing theory on the company’s vehicle division.
For years, Tesla was just looked at as a car company. Now that it has established itself as a powerhouse in energy, AI, and tech as a whole, the company is now less hellbent on achieving quarterly growth, on a sequential basis, at least from a major standpoint.
Tesla topped out its annual deliveries in 2023 at 1.81 million, and in the two years since, the company has reported a decrease in deliveries for the entire 12-month term both times.
With Tesla delivering 358,023 cars in Q1, a 6.3 percent increase over Q1 2025, but falling short of Wall Street expectations at 365,000-370,000 units, the narrative around vehicle deliveries and their importance continued to change earlier this year. Some might say it is convenient, but others might say it is the typical evolution of a company that continues to change over time.
For Q2, Tesla’s delivery consensus estimates sit at 406,024 units, analysts believe. They were surveyed from Daiwa, DB, Wedbush, Cowen, Canaccord, Baird, Wolfe, BMP Paribas, Goldman Sachs, RBC, Evercore ISI, Barclays, Bank of America, Wells Fargo, Morgan Stanley, Truist, UBS, Jefferies, JPM, Needham & Co., HSBC, and William Blair.
Credit: Tesla
Tesla is also expected to report deployments of 13.8 GWh this quarter.
The change to Tesla’s overall narrative now leans less on vehicle deliveries and more on its other projects. Most notably, Tesla’s Robotaxi project has taken the priority over most of its other business ventures, and investors and the public are more concerned about the deployment of vehicles into the fleet, the operation of a driverless ride-hailing service, Cybercab production and operation, and expansion into new cities.
Tesla analyst realizes one big thing about the stock: deliveries are losing importance
This big narrative switch happened when Tesla indicated it was looking at making transportation a service by launching a ride-hailing service that will operate using Tesla’s Full Self-Driving suite. Once unsupervised operation begins, Robotaxi could be a new way for people to get around, all without a driver in their car.
Instead, they will rely on the billions of miles Tesla has accumulated from its real-world fleet.
It is important to note that Tesla remains significant in the automotive sector, and deliveries must continue as they have for years. Tesla still has a strong automotive business and needs to execute further on all facets to keep its investors happy.
Tesla Full Self-Driving v14 ‘Lite’ Release Notes: new capabilities and features
Tesla Full Self-Driving v14 ‘Lite’ for older cars finally gets released
