News
SpaceX’s first two Super Heavy boosters making good progress towards test debuts
SpaceX is making good progress on Starship’s first two Super Heavy boosters, both of which could potentially be ready for their first major test campaigns before the end of the year.
On November 19th, some ten weeks after the process began, SpaceX craned Super Heavy B5’s methane (LCH4) tank on top of its oxygen (LOx) tank, marking the end of major structural assembly for the 69m (~225′) tall booster. A team of welders has since been working around the clock to weld the two tanks together and complete a transfer tube that routes methane propellant down through B5’s oxygen tank.
Two days prior, CEO Elon Musk shared a photo of SpaceX’s other Super Heavy booster (B4) which has been slowly progressing towards test readiness for more than three months. It’s unclear why SpaceX has been so sluggish to prepare Super Heavy B4 for testing but with B5 finally approaching the finish line, the company will soon find itself in a position where it will need to decide which booster to proceed with towards the program’s near-term end goal: the first orbital Starship test flight.
Once Booster 5’s two halves are welded together, only a few things will set it and Booster 4 apart. In recent weeks, SpaceX’s slow progress on Super Heavy B4 relented a bit as technicians began closing out the booster’s raceway (a conduit for plumbing, wiring, and avionics) with basic covers. More importantly, SpaceX also began reinstalling Raptor engines and installing heat shielding around those engines for the first time. In the photo Musk published on November 17th, that heat shield is easily visible and there are signs that it will ultimately enclose the entire outer ring of 20 Raptor Boost engines above their nozzles.
Once complete, that shield will theoretically protect each engine’s nest of sensitive plumbing and wiring during static fires; ascent, boostback, and landing burns; and – most importantly – reentry. Unlike Falcon boosters, which always perform a ~30-second, three-engine ‘reentry burn’ to slow down and cushion the blow of reentry heating, SpaceX plans to recover steel Super Heavy boosters without reentry burns. In theory, that should making booster recovery more efficient, allowing another dozen or so tons of propellant to go towards sending Starship to orbit instead of landing.
As of November 17th, SpaceX has reinstalled all 29 Raptor engines on Booster 4, partially finished the outer ring of Raptor heat shields, and set the stage for more heat shielding around its 9 center engines and the gap between those inner and outer Raptors. Shielding the Raptor Center engines in a way that still seals off Super Heavy’s aft will be even more challenging given that all nine need to be able to freely gimbal to vector their thrust, while the outer ring of 20 Raptor Boost (RB) engines are fixed in place. At pace of work established over the last few months, it will likely take SpaceX several more weeks to finish that heat shield and install seven ‘aerocovers’ over racks of sensitive equipment installed around Booster 4’s base.
Super Heavy Booster 5, on the other hand, has taken a slightly different path through assembly. Unlike Booster 4, which first rolled out as little more than a giant steel tank with Raptors half-installed, SpaceX appears to have installed most of Booster 5’s external plumbing, wiring, equipment racks, and maybe even the start of its Raptor heat shield during assembly instead of after. Perhaps as a result, SpaceX has taken more than ten weeks to stack Booster 5 versus 2.5 weeks for Booster 4. But given that Booster 4 still doesn’t appear to be complete some 18 weeks after its assembly began, there’s a chance that Booster 5 will ultimately take 4-6 weeks less to reach initial test readiness.
If SpaceX does complete Super Heavy B5 well ahead of B4’s schedule, it will soon find itself with two test-ready Starship boosters but only one orbital-class stand with which to test them, potentially forcing the company to make some interesting decisions.
Lifestyle
California hits Tesla Cybercab and Robotaxi driverless cars with new law
California just gave police power to ticket driverless cars, including Tesla’s Cybercab fleet.
California DMV formally adopted new rules on April 29, 2026 that allow law enforcement to issue “notices of noncompliance”, or in other words, ticket autonomous vehicle companies when their cars commit moving violations. The rules take effect July 1, 2026, officially closes a regulatory gap that previously let driverless cars operate on public roads with nearly no traffic enforcement consequences.
Until now, state traffic law only applied to human “drivers,” which meant that when no person was behind the wheel, police had no mechanism to issue a ticket. Officers were limited to citing driverless vehicles for parking violations only. A well-known example came in September 2025, when a San Bruno officer watched a Waymo robotaxi execute an illegal U-turn and could do nothing but notify the company.
Under the new framework, when an officer observes a violation, the autonomous vehicle company is effectively treated as the driver. Companies must report each incident to the DMV within 72 hours, or 24 hours if a collision is involved. Repeated violations can result in fleet size restrictions, operational suspensions, or full permit revocation. Local officials also gained new authority to geofence driverless vehicles out of active emergency zones within two minutes and require a live emergency response line answered within 30 seconds.
Tesla Cybercab ramps Robotaxi public street testing as vehicle enters mass production queue
California’s new enforcement rules arrive at a pivotal moment for Tesla. The company is ramping Cybercab production at Giga Texas toward hundreds of units per week, targeting at least 2 million units annually at full capacity, while simultaneously pushing to expand its Robotaxi service to dozens of U.S. cities by end of 2026. Unsupervised FSD for consumer vehicles is currently targeted for Q4 2026, and when it arrives, Tesla’s fleet may not have a human to absorb legal accountability, under the July 1 rules.
Tesla has confirmed plans to expand its Robotaxi service to seven new cities in the first half of 2026, including Dallas, Houston, Phoenix, Miami, Orlando, Tampa, and Las Vegas, with the service already running without safety drivers in Austin. Musk has said he expects robotaxis to cover between a quarter and half of the United States by end of year.
News
Tesla Model X shocks everyone by crushing every other used car in America
The Model X is one of Tesla’s flagship models, the other being the Model S. Earlier this year, Tesla confirmed it would discontinue production of both the Model S and Model X to make way for Optimus robot production at the Fremont Factory in Northern California.
The Tesla Model X was the fastest-selling used vehicle in the United States in the first quarter of the year, crushing every other used car in America.
iSeeCars data for the first quarter shows that the Model X was the fastest-selling used car, lasting just 25.6 days on the market on average, two days better than that of the second-place Lexus RX 350h. The Cybertruck, Model Y, and Model S, in seventh, ninth, and thirteenth place, respectively, also made the list.
The Model X is one of Tesla’s flagship models, the other being the Model S. Earlier this year, Tesla confirmed it would discontinue production of both the Model S and Model X to make way for Optimus robot production at the Fremont Factory in Northern California.
Tesla brings closure to flagship ‘sentimental’ models, Musk confirms
Bringing closure to these two vehicles signaled the end of the road for the cars that have effectively built Tesla’s reputation for luxury and high-end passenger vehicles.
Relying on the sales of its mass market Model Y and Model 3, as well as leaning on the success of future products like the Cybercab, is the angle Tesla has chosen to take.
Teslas are also performing extremely well as a whole on the resale market. iSeeCars data shows that, “while the average price of a 1- to 5-year-old non-Tesla EV fell 10.3% in Q1 2026 year-over-year, the average price of a used Tesla was essentially flat at 0.1% lower across the same period. Traditional gas car prices dropped 2.8% during this same period.”
Additionally, market share for gas cars has dropped nearly 3 percent since the same quarter last year. Tesla has remained level, while the non-Tesla EV market share has increased 30 percent, mostly due to more models available.
Nevertheless, those non-Tesla EVs have seen their value drop by over 10 percent, while Tesla’s values have remained level.
Executive Analyst Karl Brauer said:
“Used electric vehicles without a Tesla badge have lost more than 10% of their value in the past year. This compares to stable values for Teslas and hybrids, and a modest 2.8% drop for traditional gasoline vehicles.”
Teslas, as well as non-luxury hybrids, are displaying the strongest resistance in the face of faltering demand, the publication says. But the more impressive performance is that of the Model X alone.
Tesla’s decision to stop production of the Model X may have played some part in the vehicle’s pristine performance in Q1. With the car already placed at a premium price point, used models are already more appealing to consumers. Perhaps second-hand versions were more than enough for those who wanted a Model X, and only a Model X.
Cybertruck
Tesla Cybertruck’s head-scratching trim sold terribly, recall documents reveal
The head-scratching offering was only available for a few months, and evidently, it did not sell very well, which we all suspected. New recall documents on the vehicle from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) now reveal just how poorly it sold.
After Tesla decided to build a Rear-Wheel-Drive Cybertruck trim back in 2025, which was void of many features and only featured a small discount.
The head-scratching offering was only available for a few months, and evidently, it did not sell very well, which we all suspected. New recall documents on the vehicle from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) now reveal just how poorly it sold.
The recall deals with a potentially separating wheel stud and potentially impacts 173 Cybertruck units with the 18-inch steel wheels. The Cybertruck RWD was the only trim level to feature these, and the 173 potentially impacted units represent a portion of the population of pickups. Therefore, it’s not the entire number of RWD Cybertruck sold, but it could show how little interest it gathered.
The NHTSA document states:
“On affected vehicles, higher severity road perturbations and cornering may strain the stud hole in the wheel rotor, causing cracks to form. If cracking propagates with continued use and strain, the wheel stud could eventually separate from the wheel hub.”
Only 5 percent are expected to be impacted, meaning less than 10 units will have the issue if the NHTSA and Tesla estimates are correct. Nevertheless, the true story here is how terribly the RWD Cybertruck sold.
Tesla ended production and stopped offering the RWD Cybertruck to customers last September. For just $10,000 less than the All-Wheel-Drive trim, Tesla offered the RWD Cybertruck with just one motor, textile seats instead of leather, only 7 speakers instead of 15, no Rear Touchscreen, no Powered Tonneau Cover for the truck bed, and no 120v/240v outlets.
For just $10,000 more, at $79,990, owners could have received all of those premium features, as well as a more capable All-Wheel-Drive powertrain that featured Adaptive Air Suspension. The discount simply was not worth the sacrifices.
Orders were few and far between, and sources told us that when it was offered, sales were extremely tempered because customers could not see the value in this trim level.
Even Tesla’s most loyal supporters thought the offering was kind of a joke, and the $10,000 extra was simply worth it.
California hits Tesla Cybercab and Robotaxi driverless cars with new law
Tesla Model X shocks everyone by crushing every other used car in America
