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SpaceX Hyperloop Competition: Top 3 teams duke it out for fastest pod
Hawthorne councilmembers, members of the California Assembly, and Hawthorne Mayor Alex Vargas were in attendance at the headquarters of SpaceX and The Boring Company for their jointly-hosted Hyperloop Competition 2.
The second such Hyperloop competition sponsored by Elon Musk, the eight months that separated them were filled to the brim with press coverage of The Boring Company (TBC), which has begun to seriously develop an experimental tunnel beneath a central street in Hawthorne, CA. Most intriguingly, TBC publicly acknowledged that it is now pursuing the development of its own form of Hyperloop technology, originally developed and released as a white paper by Elon Musk, albeit with tunnels rather than above-ground vacuum tube constructs.
Update: Watch Elon Musk award this team for having the fastest Hyperloop pod at 202 mph
The second competition was focused on one goal, above all others: top speed. The final three teams chosen for testing in SpaceX’s mile-long vacuum tube were as international as ever. Paradigm Hyperloop, a continuation of the Openloop team from Competition 1, is composed of 26 students from the northeastern U.S. and Canada, designed a pod that made use of air bearings to levitate and was intended to travel as fast as 200 mph through SpaceX’s test track. While not yet officially confirmed, a livestream suggested that their pod reached a maximum speed of approximately 100 km/h or 62 mph. While nowhere near its purported top speed, a member of Paradigm Hyperloop said that the team’s pod “levitated perfectly” and that the test generally went great. Their pod was one of the largest, weighing in at almost a metric ton.
SwissLoop, a team of 40 or so students from Swiss university ETH Zurich, developed a pod that levitated with permanent magnets and was propelled by compressed air, sort of like a rocket. SwissLoop’s SpaceX adviser, a mechanical engineer focused on reusing Falcon 9s on normal days, praised the group’s engineering and construction of the pod during a livestream on Facebook. SwissLoop experienced some technical difficulties while Musk waiting to provide the countdown in Swiss German, and he quipped about connectivity issues that the team was having with their pod. Musk later announced that due to those technical difficulties, SwissLoop’s pod would be removed for troubleshooting and WARR Hyperloop would conduct the second live test.
Pod problem. Developing futuristic transport isn't quick. #Hyperloop pic.twitter.com/QJAngYvCbP
— Jack Stewart (@stewart_jack) August 27, 2017
WARR Hyperloop, the victors of the first Competition, prepared their Pod ii to be tested on Sunday afternoon. One of the smallest pods at only 190 lb, the vehicle was intended to have a top speed of approximately 225 mph – a speed it was reported to be capable of reaching in 12 seconds. Designed by students from the Technical University of Munich, the pod was propelled with a 50 kW electric motor connected to polyurethane wheels. While the method of levitation was not specified, it is understood to be a system of permanent magnets similar to SwissLoop’s implementation. WARR is a German organization and stands for Scientific Workgroup for Rocketry and Spaceflight in English.
Elon Musk somewhat controversially revealed that The Boring Company had received “verbal approval” for an underground Hyperloop between Washington D.C. and New York City, appearing to acknowledge some form of back-room deal with the federal government. He later clarified in a series of tweets and replies that the approval was extremely preliminary and unofficial and that The Boring Company was hard at work beginning to form relationships with the numerous municipalities that would be involved along the proposed route. The several Hyperloop-related companies that formed following Musk’s white paper have been reluctant to make room for a new, Musk-headed competitor in the ring, but The Boring Company is aggressively pushing ahead with their demonstration tunnel in Hawthorne, CA and has successfully applied for the initial permits that will be required.
Mirroring Elon’s typically positive opinion of competition, he bid Hyperloop One and all other companies trying to revolutionize transportation the best of luck during Competition 2. Competition 2 is guaranteed to provide SpaceX and The Boring Company an inside glance at some of the best emerging engineering talent. Hosting the competition is quite possibly the most suave and effective method of recruitment one can readily imagine, with all promising teams generally being given private tours of both The Boring Company and SpaceX facilities.
I hope they and any others trying to advance transport technology succeed
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) August 27, 2017
Meanwhile, stay tuned for the two max speed pod tests to come later this afternoon. There is no live coverage from SpaceX itself, but SwissLoop has been kind enough to livestream several of the main events on their Facebook page. You can also follow a live Facebook stream here. Follow along live there and check back at Teslarati for coverage of the events!
Elon Musk
Tesla Semi finally has an FSD timeline and it’s waiting on the Cybercab
Elon Musk told investors Semi self-driving should start working by early 2027, per today’s earnings.
During Wednesday’s’ Tesla Q2 earnings call, an analyst asked Elon Musk when Tesla would look at autonomy for the Semi. His answer set a real timeline for the first time, noting that self-driving on the Tesla Semi is expected to start working “around the end of this year or early next year”.
Musk framed the delay as a matter of priority, not capability. Tesla’s self-driving team is currently focused on Model 3, Model Y, and Cybercab, the vehicles that make up the overwhelming majority of Tesla’s fleet. Since Semi trucks on the road remain a small fraction of that total even after the recent Nevada factory ramp, Musk said it made more sense to keep the software team’s attention on what he called “the march of nines of safety” for the higher volume vehicles first. Autonomous Semi development is “taking a bit of a backseat for the next six months or so,” he said, before adding that it “will definitely be working next year and in time for the scale-up to high production of the Tesla Semi.”
Tesla Semi’s official battery capacity leaked by California regulators
The timeline lines up with what’s already been showing up on public roads. In June, a Tesla Semi was spotted in Sunnyvale wearing a full validation rig, the same rooftop sensor array Tesla mounts on vehicles ahead of an FSD milestone.
A second unit was seen near Fremont days later with a matching camera suite and lens washers. Separately, Tesla analyst Nic Cruz Patane posted video this month of the production Semi’s exterior camera array, ten AI4 based units built directly into the truck rather than added later.
Tesla Semi AI4 cameras. The production version has 10 cameras on its exterior.
These trucks are designed to be autonomous. pic.twitter.com/GH3BamxIBQ
— Nic Cruz Patane (@niccruzpatane) April 14, 2026
Musk also gave the reason autonomy on the Semi matters in the first place, a persistent shortage of qualified truck drivers. “There is a really serious shortage of truckers,” he said on the call, framing a self-driving Semi as important both for addressing that shortage and for improving safety and comfort for the drivers running the truck today.
The timing also tracks with the Semi’s production reality. Tesla’s Q2 shareholder letter, dropped language promising the Semi would reach volume production this year. Musk pointed to 4680 battery cell output as the near-term constraint on Semi and Cybercab production. A software timeline landing in early 2027 gives Tesla’s autonomy team room to work while the hardware ramp catches up behind it.
It’s worth nothing that this isn’t necessarily a promise the Semi ships driverless next year. Musk’s own language, self-driving “working” by early 2027, describes internal validation catching up to hardware already riding on every production truck, not a public unsupervised rollout.
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 Semi finally has an FSD timeline and it’s waiting on the Cybercab
Tesla (TSLA) Q2 2026 earnings results: miss on EPS, beat on revenue
