News
SpaceX resurrects California Starship factory plan just one year after abandoning it
Just nine months after scrapping temporary Starship facilities built at a Los Angeles port, the company has unexpectedly reconsidered that decision, restarting talks to build a steel Starship factory in California.
In March 2018, nearly two years ago, the public first became aware of SpaceX’s plans to build a Starship factory in Port of Los Angeles. Begun while Starship was still known as BFR (Big Falcon Rocket) and designed to be built almost entirely out of carbon-fiber composites, the company’s first in-house effort to build its next-generation rocket began in an unassuming tent erected on port property around December 2017. Unintentionally foreshadowing the future of both Tesla Model 3 and SpaceX Starship production, that temporary tent was completed in just a month or two and officially began supporting BFR prototype production in April 2018.
In December 2018, CEO Elon Musk rebranded BFR as Starship and revealed that SpaceX would take the extraordinary step of redesigning the fully-reusable rocket to use stainless steel instead of carbon fiber. One year after SpaceX began building carbon fiber hardware, Musk moved quickly to make the radical move to steel permanent, literally scrapping its BFR prototype tent and abandoning its lease of a separate facility that was meant to host a more permanent composite Mars rocket factory in the near future. Now, almost exactly a year canceling its Port of LA factory, SpaceX has returned with plans to build and finish new port-based Starship production facilities just a few months from now.
Completed in September 2018, the closest SpaceX ever got to producing its 2017 BFR iteration was a large ring-like composite structure, also known as a barrel section. Measuring some 9m (30 ft) wide and 4-6m (12-20 ft) long, both 2016, 2017, and 2018 variants of SpaceX’s next-generation fully-reusable rocket would have been assembled from a number of similar components — all to be built out of carbon composites with giant mandrels (a bit like inverse molds).
While it’s more than likely that SpaceX could have managed the feat, building a reusable orbital spacecraft like Starship out of carbon fiber posed a vast array of challenges. When Musk revealed that SpaceX would move from carbon fiber to steel in December 2018, the CEO went into some detail to explain several of those challenges and why the major change was thus worth the substantial body of work it would force the company to scrap and redo from scratch.
The two biggest hurdles for BFR were quite simple. From a technical perspective, carbon fiber is dramatically less temperature-resistant than most metals (especially steel), meaning that despite it offering a much higher strength-to-weight ratio on paper, almost every inch of the spaceship and booster’s exposed surfaces would have to be insulated. For Starship, this would be exceptionally challenging given that the spacecraft must fundamentally be able to survive numerous orbital-velocity reentries with little to no refurbishment in between. While a steel Starship would still need a proper heat shield on its windward half, the other half of its steel hull could likely be almost entirely unshielded thanks to the fact that most steels remain structural sound at much higher temperatures.
Beyond the “delightfully counterintuitive” technical properties that could make a steel Starship as light or even lighter than the carbon composite alternative, Musk also noted that a huge motivator for the switch was the fact that the cutting-edge composites SpaceX would have to buy were incredibly expensive. In September 2019, Musk stated that composites would have cost some $130,000 per ton, whereas a ton of the stainless steel SpaceX is now using can be purchased for just $2500. In simpler terms, from a material cost perspective, steel Starships and Super Heavy boosters could cost an incredible 50 times less than their carbon composite twins.
Port Factory 2.0
For now, it’s unclear exactly what SpaceX foresees for Starship’s newly re-proposed Port of LA factory. The same primary constraint remains: there is still no affordable way to ship full-scale 9m-diameter Starship hardware by road. The most likely explanation for the resurrected interest in port facilities is that SpaceX still wants to keep some major aspects of Starship manufacturing within reach of California’s vast aerospace talent pool, as well as the company’s own California headquarters, situated just 20 or so miles from Port of LA.
At the same time, SpaceX probably has all the space it could possibly want at its Hawthorne, CA headquarters after a massive Triumph facility was recently vacated, meaning that any intentional expansion in Port of LA is probably motivated by the need to transport massive rocket parts from California to Texas and Florida. Daily Breeze also reports that “SpaceX would manufacture its…Starship spacecraft and…Super Heavy [booster] on the property” if it receives approval, seemingly implying interest in full-scale rocket production at its prospective port factory.
Regardless of whether SpaceX wants to build smaller Starship subcomponents (i.e. nose cones, header tanks, fins, plumbing, crew compartments, etc.) or complete spaceships and boosters, the company is seemingly far more eager to get port facilities in place, this time around. Specifically, SpaceX told a city council member that it wanted to get a Port of LA facility up and running just 90 days after it expressed new interest in the concept.
To do so, SpaceX will copy the methods used to create both Tesla’s General Assembly 4 factory addition and its own massive Starship production space in South Texas, relying on Sprung Instant Structures to erect a massive semi-permanent tent or two in an extremely short period of time. Unfortunately, because of how abruptly SpaceX abandoned its Port of LA factory lease, the company will have to repeat the permitting and environmental review process from scratch, making it very unlikely that it will be able to begin construction within the next month or two.
Regardless, SpaceX certainly remains as agile as ever. Stay tuned for updates on this surprise resurgence of plans for a Port of LA Starship factory.
Check out Teslarati’s Marketplace! We offer Tesla accessories, including for the Tesla Cybertruck and Tesla Model 3.
Tesla has officially launched public Robotaxi rides in Austin, Texas, without a Safety Monitor in the vehicle, marking the first time the company has removed anyone from the vehicle other than the rider.
The Safety Monitor has been present in Tesla Robotaxis in Austin since its launch last June, maintaining safety for passengers and other vehicles, and was placed in the passenger’s seat.
Tesla planned to remove the Safety Monitor at the end of 2025, but it was not quite ready to do so. Now, in January, riders are officially reporting that they are able to hail a ride from a Model Y Robotaxi without anyone in the vehicle:
I am in a robotaxi without safety monitor pic.twitter.com/fzHu385oIb
— TSLA99T (@Tsla99T) January 22, 2026
Tesla started testing this internally late last year and had several employees show that they were riding in the vehicle without anyone else there to intervene in case of an emergency.
Tesla has now expanded that program to the public, but it is currently unclear if that is the case across its entire fleet of vehicles in Austin at this point.
Tesla Robotaxi goes driverless as Musk confirms Safety Monitor removal testing
The Robotaxi program also operates in the California Bay Area, where the fleet is much larger, but Safety Monitors are placed in the driver’s seat and utilize Full Self-Driving, so it is essentially the same as an Uber driver using a Tesla with FSD.
In Austin, the removal of Safety Monitors marks a substantial achievement for Tesla moving forward. Now that it has enough confidence to remove Safety Monitors from Robotaxis altogether, there are nearly unlimited options for the company in terms of expansion.
While it is hoping to launch the ride-hailing service in more cities across the U.S. this year, this is a much larger development than expansion, at least for now, as it is the first time it is performing driverless rides in Robotaxi anywhere in the world for the public to enjoy.
Tesla has scheduled its Earnings Call for Q4 and Full Year 2025 for next Wednesday, January 28, at 5:30 p.m. EST, and investors are already preparing to get some answers from executives regarding a wide variety of topics.
The company accepts several questions from retail investors through the platform Say, which then allows shareholders to vote on the best questions.
Tesla does not answer anything regarding future product releases, but they are willing to shed light on current timelines, progress of certain projects, and other plans.
There are five questions that range over a variety of topics, including SpaceX, Full Self-Driving, Robotaxi, and Optimus, which are currently in the lead to be asked and potentially answered by Elon Musk and other Tesla executives:
- You once said: Loyalty deserves loyalty. Will long-term Tesla shareholders still be prioritized if SpaceX does an IPO?
- Our Take – With a lot of speculation regarding an incoming SpaceX IPO, Tesla investors, especially long-term ones, should be able to benefit from an early opportunity to purchase shares. This has been discussed endlessly over the past year, and we must be getting close to it.
- When is FSD going to be 100% unsupervised?
- Our Take – Musk said today that this is essentially a solved problem, and it could be available in the U.S. by the end of this year.
- What is the current bottleneck to increase Robotaxi deployment & personal use unsupervised FSD? The safety/performance of the most recent models or people to monitor robots, robotaxis, in-car, or remotely? Or something else?
- Our Take – The bottleneck seems to be based on data, which Musk said Tesla needs 10 billion miles of data to achieve unsupervised FSD. Once that happens, regulatory issues will be what hold things up from moving forward.
- Regarding Optimus, could you share the current number of units deployed in Tesla factories and actively performing production tasks? What specific roles or operations are they handling, and how has their integration impacted factory efficiency or output?
- Our Take – Optimus is going to have a larger role in factories moving forward, and later this year, they will have larger responsibilities.
- Can you please tie purchased FSD to our owner accounts vs. locked to the car? This will help us enjoy it in any Tesla we drive/buy and reward us for hanging in so long, some of us since 2017.
- Our Take – This is a good one and should get us some additional information on the FSD transfer plans and Subscription-only model that Tesla will adopt soon.
Tesla will have its Earnings Call on Wednesday, January 28.
Elon Musk shared an incredible detail about Tesla Cybercab’s potential efficiency, as the company has hinted in the past that it could be one of the most affordable vehicles to operate from a per-mile basis.
ARK Invest released a report recently that shed some light on the potential incremental cost per mile of various Robotaxis that will be available on the market in the coming years.
The Cybercab, which is detailed for the year 2030, has an exceptionally low cost of operation, which is something Tesla revealed when it unveiled the vehicle a year and a half ago at the “We, Robot” event in Los Angeles.
Musk said on numerous occasions that Tesla plans to hit the $0.20 cents per mile mark with the Cybercab, describing a “clear path” to achieving that figure and emphasizing it is the “full considered” cost, which would include energy, maintenance, cleaning, depreciation, and insurance.
Probably true
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) January 22, 2026
ARK’s report showed that the Cybercab would be roughly half the cost of the Waymo 6th Gen Robotaxi in 2030, as that would come in at around $0.40 per mile all in. Cybercab, at scale, would be at $0.20.
Credit: ARK Invest
This would be a dramatic decrease in the cost of operation for Tesla, and the savings would then be passed on to customers who choose to utilize the ride-sharing service for their own transportation needs.
The U.S. average cost of new vehicle ownership is about $0.77 per mile, according to AAA. Meanwhile, Uber and Lyft rideshares often cost between $1 and $4 per mile, while Waymo can cost between $0.60 and $1 or more per mile, according to some estimates.
Tesla’s engineering has been the true driver of these cost efficiencies, and its focus on creating a vehicle that is as cost-effective to operate as possible is truly going to pay off as the vehicle begins to scale. Tesla wants to get the Cybercab to about 5.5-6 miles per kWh, which has been discussed with prototypes.
Additionally, fewer parts due to the umboxed manufacturing process, a lower initial cost, and eliminating the need to pay humans for their labor would also contribute to a cheaper operational cost overall. While aspirational, all of the ingredients for this to be a real goal are there.
It may take some time as Tesla needs to hammer the manufacturing processes, and Musk has said there will be growing pains early. This week, he said regarding the early production efforts:
“…initial production is always very slow and follows an S-curve. The speed of production ramp is inversely proportionate to how many new parts and steps there are. For Cybercab and Optimus, almost everything is new, so the early production rate will be agonizingly slow, but eventually end up being insanely fast.”
BREAKING: Tesla launches public Robotaxi rides in Austin with no Safety Monitor
Tesla Earnings Call: Top 5 questions investors are asking
