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SpaceX ships Starship’s 200th upgraded Raptor engine
A day after revealing the completion of the 200th Falcon upper stage and Merlin Vacuum engine, SpaceX has announced that it also recently finished building Starship’s 200th upgraded Raptor engine.
Starship – and Raptor, by extension – has yet to reach orbit and is likely years away from scratching the surface of the established success and reliability of the Falcon upper stage and MVac. But compared to MVac, Raptor is more complex, more efficient, more than twice as powerful, experiences far more stress, and is three times younger.
And Raptor 2 isn’t the first version of the engine. Before SpaceX shipped its first Raptor 2 prototype, it manufactured 100 Raptor 1 engines between the start of full-scale testing in February 2018 and July 2021. By late 2021 or early 2022, when Raptor 2 took over, the total number of Raptor 1 engines produced likely reached somewhere between 125 and 150 – impressive but pale in comparison to SpaceX’s Raptor 2 ambitions.
From the start, Raptor 2’s purpose was to make future Raptors easier, faster, and cheaper to manufacture. The ultimate goal is to eventually reduce the cost of Raptor 2 production to $1000 per ton of thrust, or $230,000 at Raptor 2’s current target of 230 tons (~510,000 lbf) of thrust. As of mid-2019, Musk reported that each early Raptor 1 prototype cost “more” than $2 million for what would turn out to be 185 tons of thrust (~$11,000 per ton). It’s not clear if that ever appreciably changed.
In response, SpaceX strived to make Raptor 2 simpler wherever possible, removing a large part of the maze of primary, secondary, and tertiary plumbing. In 2022, CEO Elon Musk confirmed that SpaceX had even removed a complex torch igniter system for Raptor 2’s main combustion chamber. All that simplification made Raptor 2 much easier to build in theory, and SpaceX’s production figures have more than confirmed that theory. Despite those simplifications, SpaceX was also able to boost Raptor 2’s thrust by 25% by sacrificing just 1% of Raptor 1’s efficiency.
Beginning with its first delivery in February 2018, SpaceX produced the first 100 Raptor 1 engines in about 36 months. In the first 11 to 12 months of Raptor 2 production, SpaceX has delivered 200 engines. That translates to at least six times the average throughput, but the true figure is even higher. In June 2019, Musk stated that SpaceX was “aiming [to build a Raptor] engine every 12 hours by end of year.” As is usually the case, that progress took far longer to realize. But in October 2022, a senior NASA Artemis Program official revealed that SpaceX recently achieved sustained production of one Raptor 2 engine per day for a full week.
Such a high rate – likely making Raptor one of the fastest-produced orbital-class rocket engines in history – is required because SpaceX’s next-generation Starship rocket needs a huge amount of engines. The Starship upper stage currently requires three sea-level-optimized Raptors and three vacuum-optimized Raptors, and SpaceX has plans to increase that to nine engines total. Starship’s Super Heavy booster is powered by 33 sea-level Raptors.
Orbital-class versions of Starship and Super Heavy have never flown, let alone demonstrated successful recovery or reuse, so SpaceX has to operate under the assumption that every orbital test flight will consume 39 Raptors. Even after the reuse of Super Heavy boosters or Starships becomes viable, taking significant strain off of Raptor demand, SpaceX wants to manufacture a fleet of hundreds or even thousands of Starships and a similarly massive number of boosters. To outfit that massive fleet, SpaceX would have to mass-produce orbital-class Raptor engines at a scale that’s never been attempted.
But it will likely be years – if not a decade or longer – before SpaceX is in a position to attempt to create that mega-fleet. If the Raptor 2 engines SpaceX is already building are modestly reliable and reusable, and it doesn’t take more than 5-10 orbital test flights to begin reusing Starships and Super Heavy boosters, a production rate of one engine per day is arguably good enough to support the next few years of realistic engine demand.
SpaceX’s first orbital Starship launch attempt could occur as early as December 2022, although Q1 2023 is more likely. SpaceX currently has permission for up to five orbital Starship launches per year out of its Starbase, Texas facilities and will likely try to take full advantage of that with several back-to-back test flights in a period of 6-12 months.
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Tesla Sweden uses Megapack battery to bypass unions’ Supercharger blockade
Just before Christmas, Tesla went live with a new charging station in Arlandastad, outside Stockholm, by powering it with a Tesla Megapack battery.
Tesla Sweden has successfully launched a new Supercharger station despite an ongoing blockade by Swedish unions, using on-site Megapack batteries instead of traditional grid connections. The workaround has allowed the Supercharger to operate without direct access to Sweden’s electricity network, which has been effectively frozen by labor action.
Tesla has experienced notable challenges connecting its new charging stations to Sweden’s power grid due to industrial action led by Seko, a major Swedish trade union, which has blocked all new electrical connections for new Superchargers. On paper, this made the opening of new Supercharger sites almost impossible.
Despite the blockade, Tesla has continued to bring stations online. In Malmö and Södertälje, new Supercharger locations opened after grid operators E.ON and Telge Nät activated the sites. The operators later stated that the connections had been made in error.
More recently, however, Tesla adopted a different strategy altogether. Just before Christmas, Tesla went live with a new charging station in Arlandastad, outside Stockholm, by powering it with a Tesla Megapack battery, as noted in a Dagens Arbete (DA) report.
Because the Supercharger station does not rely on a permanent grid connection, Tesla was able to bypass the blocked application process, as noted by Swedish car journalist and YouTuber Peter Esse. He noted that the Arlandastad Supercharger is likely dependent on nearby companies to recharge the batteries, likely through private arrangements.
Eight new charging stalls have been launched in the Arlandastad site so far, which is a fraction of the originally planned 40 chargers for the location. Still, the fact that Tesla Sweden was able to work around the unions’ efforts once more is impressive, especially since Superchargers are used even by non-Tesla EVs.
Esse noted that Tesla’s Megapack workaround is not as easily replicated in other locations. Arlandastad is unique because neighboring operators already have access to grid power, making it possible for Tesla to source electricity indirectly. Still, Esse noted that the unions’ blockades have not affected sales as much.
“Many want Tesla to lose sales due to the union blockades. But you have to remember that sales are falling from 2024, when Tesla sold a record number of cars in Sweden. That year, the unions also had blockades against Tesla. So for Tesla as a charging operator, it is devastating. But for Tesla as a car company, it does not matter in terms of sales volumes. People charge their cars where there is an opportunity, usually at home,” Esse noted.
Elon Musk
Elon Musk’s X goes down as users report major outage Friday morning
Error messages and stalled loading screens quickly spread across the service, while outage trackers recorded a sharp spike in user reports.
Elon Musk’s X experienced an outage Friday morning, leaving large numbers of users unable to access the social media platform.
Error messages and stalled loading screens quickly spread across the service, while outage trackers recorded a sharp spike in user reports.
Downdetector reports
Users attempting to open X were met with messages such as “Something went wrong. Try reloading,” often followed by an endless spinning icon that prevented access, according to a report from Variety. Downdetector data showed that reports of problems surged rapidly throughout the morning.
As of 10:52 a.m. ET, more than 100,000 users had reported issues with X. The data indicated that 56% of complaints were tied to the mobile app, while 33% were related to the website and roughly 10% cited server connection problems. The disruption appeared to begin around 10:10 a.m. ET, briefly eased around 10:35 a.m., and then returned minutes later.
Previous disruptions
Friday’s outage was not an isolated incident. X has experienced multiple high-profile service interruptions over the past two years. In November, tens of thousands of users reported widespread errors, including “Internal server error / Error code 500” messages. Cloudflare-related error messages were also reported.
In March 2025, the platform endured several brief outages spanning roughly 45 minutes, with more than 21,000 reports in the U.S. and 10,800 in the U.K., according to Downdetector. Earlier disruptions included an outage in August 2024 and impairments to key platform features in July 2023.
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Tesla wins top loyalty and conquest honors in S&P Global Mobility 2025 awards
The electric vehicle maker secured this year’s “Overall Loyalty to Make,” “Highest Conquest Percentage,” and “Ethnic Loyalty to Make” awards.
Tesla emerged as one of the standout winners in the 2025 S&P Global Mobility Automotive Loyalty Awards, capturing top honors for customer retention and market conquest.
The electric vehicle maker secured this year’s “Overall Loyalty to Make,” “Highest Conquest Percentage,” and “Ethnic Loyalty to Make” awards.
Tesla claims loyalty crown
According to S&P Global Mobility, Tesla secured its 2025 “Overall Loyalty to Make” award following a late-year shift in consumer buying patterns. This marked the fourth consecutive year Tesla has received the honor. S&P Global Mobility’s annual analysis reviewed 13.6 million new retail vehicle registrations in the U.S. from October 2024 through September 2025, as noted in a press release.
In addition to overall loyalty, Tesla also earned the “Highest Conquest Percentage” award for the sixth consecutive year, highlighting the company’s continued ability to attract customers away from competing brands. This achievement is particularly notable given Tesla’s relatively small vehicle lineup, which is largely dominated by just two models: the Model 3 and Model Y.
Ethnic market strength and conquest
Tesla also captured top honors for “Ethnic Market Loyalty to Make,” a category that highlighted especially strong retention among Asian and Hispanic households. According to the analysis, Tesla achieved loyalty rates of 63.6% among Asian households and 61.9% among Hispanic households. These figures exceeded national averages.
S&P Global Mobility executives noted that loyalty margins across categories were exceptionally narrow in 2025, underscoring the significance of Tesla’s wins in an increasingly competitive market. Joe LaFeir, President of Mobility Business Solutions at S&P Global Mobility, shared his perspective on this year’s results.
“For 30 years, this analysis has provided a fact-based measure of brand health, and this year’s results are particularly telling. The data shows the market is not rewarding just one type of strategy. Instead, we see sustained, high-level performance from manufacturers with broad portfolios. In the current market, retaining customers remains a critical performance indicator for the industry,” LaFeir said.
Tesla Sweden uses Megapack battery to bypass unions’ Supercharger blockade
Elon Musk’s X goes down as users report major outage Friday morning
