News
SpaceX rolls out Starship tank prototype to test upgraded domes
Several months after the first prototype was spotted floating around Starbase, SpaceX has finished assembling a tank designed to put upgraded Starship domes to the test.
Known only as “EDOME” per a tracking label taped to its side, the prototype looks fairly ordinary from the outside and could easily be mistaken for just the latest in a long line of nine ‘test tanks’ SpaceX has already built, tested, and sometimes destroyed. However, under its ordinary exterior of nine-meter (30 ft) wide steel rings and stringers, there are two tank domes that represent a significant design departure from the dozens of domes SpaceX has built and tested over the last two years. Much like a new nosecone design that SpaceX only began testing for the first time a matter of days ago, a large part of the dome redesign was focused on making them much easier to build.
Work on the first upgraded Starship nose prototypes began in earnest around the turn of the new year. Starship’s upgraded domes took a bit longer, with a completed prototype appearing for the first time in mid-March. To an extent, the new dome went even further than SpaceX’s slightly more modest nose redesign, drastically simplifying the structure into just one main component. Whereas the nose redesign simplified nose assembly from five to three different stacked sets of welded ‘gores,’ or tapering slices of metal, SpaceX’s dome redesign appears to have more or less reduced the number of stacked sections from three to one.
The new dome design should only require 18 ‘gores’ and one small cap, compared to the roughly 40 different pieces and three ‘stacks’ needed for each older dome. Thanks to the new dome’s more hemispherical shape, SpaceX has also managed to improve the efficiency of the design while still making it far easier to assemble. Despite being significantly more compact than the old design, the new dome should still be able to hold roughly the same amount of propellant as the old dome.
SpaceX finished assembling the first “EDOME” test tank sometime in late May or early June. The tank is comprised of two upgraded domes and five steel rings and measures nine meters (~30 ft) wide and tall. Both domes have been fitted with a single pipe: one for a set of vent valves and the other for filling or draining the tank of liquid nitrogen (LN2).
Following the tank’s June 8th arrival at SpaceX’s Starbase launch and test facilities, it likely won’t be long before the tank kicks off its first (and probably only) test campaign. Like past test tanks, SpaceX may start with a pneumatic or water test to check for leaks and ensure basic structural integrity, or it will move directly into cryogenic pressure/stress testing with liquid nitrogen. While the main goal of any test tank is to learn about new hardware, the best-case outcome would either be the total survival of the tank (i.e. too sturdy to be destroyed with the available test equipment) or its destruction well past the maximum pressure it was designed to survive. As of 2020, Starship tanks were expected to operate around 6.5 bar (~95 psi) and designed to survive up to 8-8.5 bar (~115-125 psi).
Starship S24 is expected to return to Starbase’s build site for final assembly on Thursday, June 9th, freeing up SpaceX to test the EDOME tank during one or more 12-hour test windows it has requested on June 13th, 14th, and 15th.
Tesla has expanded its Robotaxi program in Florida to include two new cities: Tampa and Orlando.
This marks the second and third cities to be added to the company’s available locations for autonomous ride-hailing in the Sunshine State, joining Miami, which was the first Florida city to offer Robotaxi rides.
Tesla announced the addition of Orlando and Tampa to the Robotaxi program on Tuesday morning. The cities now join Austin, Dallas, Houston, Miami, and the San Francisco Bay Area as locations where Tesla can operate its Robotaxi platform:
Robotaxi now in Tampa & Orlando! pic.twitter.com/fYtmXgJq3O
— Tesla Robotaxi (@robotaxi) July 21, 2026
These rides are unsupervised, as AI Head Ashok Elluswamy confirmed the suite in Florida is operating without safety drivers or anyone within the cabin to assist with operation.
Orlando Tesla Robotaxi Operation
The geofence in Orlando covers a prominent irregular shaded zone on the map, roughly 4-6 miles across in key dimensions, so it likely measures somewhere between 25 and 45 square miles, which is comparable to other early Tesla launches in other cities.
It encompasses central and southern areas bounded by major highways including SR-417 and SR-528, including parts of the Orlando metro core, tourism-adjacent zones, and residential/commercial districts. This represents an initial targeted rollout in a tourist-heavy region, positioned for quick expansion via Tesla’s software updates.
Tampa Tesla Robotaxi Operation
In Tampa, the shape of the geofence is a shaded polygon covering key neighborhoods, explicitly including West Tampa, Tampa Heights, Hyde Park, and downtown Tampa proper, with boundaries along major roads and the Hillsborough River area.
This focuses on high-demand central zones and will offer tourists and citygoers rides without drivers.
Robotaxi Progress
Tesla has been operating Robotaxi since last June, when it launched in Austin. The geofences in most regions have already expanded several times since their launch last year, but the bigger complaint is vehicle availability. Tesla has been working to add more Robotaxi-enabled vehicles to its fleet.
The company still plans to utilize its Cybercab, a new vehicle that is being produced at Gigafactory Texas, for the Robotaxi suite alongside the Model Y, which has been the vehicle of choice for Tesla with early operations.
News
Tesla’s AI Chief just hinted at something big for FSD v14 lite owners
Tesla’s AI chief suggests the newest FSD v14 Lite build may finally go wide release.
Tesla’s head of AI, Ashok Elluswamy, noted on Sunday that the newest FSD v14 Lite build rolling out to Hardware 3 cars is likely the version that goes to wide release, the strongest signal yet that Tesla is near to closing out an early access phase that Hardware 3 owners have waited more than a year for.
Elluswamy made the comment in response to an extensive review from Tesla owner Zack, known on X as @BLKMDL3, who tested software version 2026.20.6.10 and detailed the changes in a lengthy post. “FSD v14 Lite (for Tesla AI3 hardware vehicles) review.
The update restarts a rollout that had stalled after its initial release. Tesla began pushing FSD v14 Lite to Hardware 3 early access drivers on June 29, bringing driving behavior learned on the newer Hardware 4 computer down to the more limited chip that has powered Tesla vehicles built between 2019 and early 2023. That release, as we covered in detail, gave roughly 4 million HW3 vehicles their first meaningful update since being frozen on version 12.6 in early 2025.
Tesla Full Self-Driving v14 ‘Lite’ Release Notes: new capabilities and features
The latest build adds features that bring Hardware 3 closer in line with what Hardware 4 owners already have. FSD can now start directly from park without a brake pedal confirmation, a change Zack called a small but meaningful quality of life improvement. The interface also picks up the blue “P” park icon, approaching destination alerts, and a dedicated Self-Driving app with streak tracking, all details previously exclusive to the AI4 branch of v14, as outlined in Tesla’s original release notes.
The stakes around Hardware 3 go beyond software polish. Tesla sold the Full Self-Driving package for years on the promise that every vehicle equipped with it had the hardware needed to eventually drive itself without supervision. That promise broke down during Tesla’s Q1 2026 earnings call, when Musk acknowledged HW3 cars could not run unsupervised FSD, prompting Tesla to offer trade-in discounts and hardware retrofits alongside the Lite software track.
Tesla confirmed HW3 can’t do Unsupervised FSD but there’s more to the story
Tesla has continued to frame v14 Lite as the primary path forward for the HW3 fleet, telling owners in April that international markets would follow the U.S. rollout once regulatory approvals came through. For now, HW3 owners in the early access group are the only ones running the new build. A broader rollout would mark the second major software delivery to the legacy fleet since Tesla first released FSD v14 to Hardware 4 vehicles, and the first sign since June that the Lite program is still moving rather than stuck in early access limbo.
In a pointed message on X, Elon Musk warned that firms maintaining significant short positions in SpaceX over time face “very low” survival probability.
The statement comes amid post-IPO volatility for the rocket company, now trading under the ticker $SPCX.
The survival probability of firms who maintain a significant short position in SpaceX over time is very low
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) July 17, 2026
Five weeks after what was described as the largest IPO in history, the stock had fallen roughly 30% from its peak above $2.6 trillion, briefly surpassing Microsoft and Amazon in market value. Short sellers celebrated gains of about $8.7 billion, but Musk’s reply underscores his long-term conviction.
The warning directly echoes a detailed bullish analysis arguing that Starship’s cost reductions could unlock a multi-trillion-dollar space economy. Projects ranging from solar power beamed from orbit and asteroid mining to orbital data centers and Mars terraforming were projected to create over $100 trillion in new market capitalization.
In this vision, SpaceX acts as the essential infrastructure provider, akin to AWS for cloud computing, capturing monopoly-like revenues from launches, crew transport, and data traffic across a rapidly expanding frontier.
This is far from the first time Musk has targeted short sellers. With Tesla, he has repeatedly framed persistent bears as destined for major losses. In July 2024, Musk declared that once Tesla achieves full autonomy and volume production of Optimus robots, “anyone still holding a short position will be obliterated. Even Gates,” referencing Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates’ reported short bets.
Elon Musk reveals what Tesla stock surge could do to Bill Gates
Earlier, in 2018, he taunted shorts that they had “about three weeks before their short position explodes,” a remark followed by sharp stock gains. Musk has also called short selling “value destroying” and once suggested it “should be illegal,” viewing it as betting against innovation and progress.
Critics often dismiss Musk’s optimism as hype, especially when near-term metrics like quarterly deliveries or stock fluctuations disappoint.
Yet his pattern remains consistent: framing short positions against his companies as fundamentally misjudging exponential technological leaps. For SpaceX shorts, the message is clear: betting against multi-planetary ambitions and the infrastructure monopoly they enable carries existential risk for the firms involved.
As Musk and supporters see it, the space economy’s upside dwarfs Earth-bound valuation models, making today’s dips temporary in a decades-long ascent.
Tesla Robotaxi program expands in Florida to two new cities
Tesla’s AI Chief just hinted at something big for FSD v14 lite owners
