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SpaceX to fly reused rockets on half of all 2018 launches as competition lags far behind
Speaking at SATELLITE 2018, SpaceX President Gwynne Shotwell reiterated the company’s commitment to and their customers’ acceptance of reusable rockets at the 2018, stating that SpaceX intends to fly reused boosters on at least half of their 2018 launch manifest.
Barring unforeseen circumstances, SpaceX is effectively on track to complete 30 separate missions this year with more than half flying flight-proven Falcon 9 (and Heavy) boosters. Thus far, the company has completed five launches – three flight-proven – in two months, perfectly extrapolating out to ~18 flight-proven missions and 30 total launches in 2018. While the middle weeks of March will not see any SpaceX launches, the company is on track to reach 11 flights total in late April/early March, six with reused boosters.
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- SpaceX intends to launch three Falcon 9s from all three of its pads in just seven days. Pictured here their VAFB pad in California. (Pauline Acalin)
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- LC-40, located in Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, is SpaceX’s second pad. (Tom Cross)
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- Falcon Heavy roars off of LC-39A, SpaceX’s third operational pad. A fourth launch facility is under development in Texas. (Tom Cross)
Ignoring the tidal wave of reusable rockets
Ultimately, SpaceX’s scheduled launch cadence lends a huge amount of credence to Shotwell’s historically pragmatic claim. Assuming a successful introduction of Falcon 9 Block 5 sometime in April (currently April 5), SpaceX may even be able to get closer to flying reused boosters on two thirds of their 2018 launches, a truly jaw-dropping achievement for a year-old technology in an industry that previously saw minimal technological progress in rocketry for the better part of two decades, if not three or even four.
In almost every conceivable manner, SpaceX has taken a complacent industry by surprise, to such an extent that other major rocket builders have barely begun to develop their competitive responses to successful reuse. SpaceX’s main domestic and global competitors – ULA, Arianespace, and ILS – are at best five years away from more than dabbling in operationally reusable rocketry. ULA is in the best shape here, and their strategy of recovering just the engine segment of their future Vulcan rocket is unlikely to fly – let alone conduct the first real reuse of engines – before 2023 or 2024 at the absolute earliest, and reuse is by no means a public priority for the company.
SpaceX’s main competitors are at best five years away from more than dabbling in operationally reusable rocketry
At this point in time, Arianespace has been halfhearted for years in their attempts to seriously consider reusable rocketry. As of 2018, the closest they have gotten is a noncommittal study that would see the French and German space agencies field a Falcon 1-sized (tiny) vehicle to study the SpaceX approach to landing rockets. In the case of Arianespace, ULA, and ILS, their Ariane 6, Vulcan, and Proton Medium rockets currently under development for inaugural launches no earlier than 2020 have indeed all been explicitly designed to compete with SpaceX’s highly-competitive Falcon 9. Sounds promising, right? The reality, however, is that each distinct company has more or less designed their modernized rockets to compete with Falcon 9’s pre-reusability pricing. Even before SpaceX begins to seriously lower the cost of reused Falcon 9s at the customer level, their competitors are already incapable of beating the price of Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy, at least without accepting net losses or leaning on government subsidies.
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- Arianespace’s next-generation Ariane 6. (Arianespace)
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- ULA’s upcoming Vulcan rocket. (ULA)
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- ILS is developing a marginally different version of its Proton rocket, called Proton Medium. (ILS)
Arianespace’s Ariane 5 and ULA’s Atlas 5 and Delta 4 rockets do have impeccable and undeniably superior records of reliability, but SpaceX is making rapid progress towards enhanced reliability and unprecedented launch cadences. Falcon 9 Block 5 – SpaceX’s hard-won solution to rapid and cheaply reusable rocket boosters – is weeks away from its first launch, with something like six or more additional Block 5 boosters in the late stages of construction and assembly at SpaceX’s Hawthorne factory. The first prototype of BFR, a rocket designed with a fully-reusable booster and upper stage, has already begun to be assembled, with spaceship test hops scheduled to begin in 2019 and full-up orbital tests hoped to begin as early as 2020. Even with a pessimistic outlook on SpaceX’s BFR development prospects, the likelihood of orbital tests/operational launches beginning before the mid-2020s is incredibly high, barring insurmountable technological hurdles.
Whether or not SpaceX actually manages to begin its first flights to Mars in 2022 (even 2024-2026), BFR and its highly reusable orbital upper stage will swallow the launch industry whole if it manages to be even a tenth as affordable as its engineers intend it to be, and it will likely be in the late stages of hardware development and test launches before ULA, Arianespace, or ILS have even begun to operationally fly their tepid responses to reusability.
SpaceX’s BFR is being designed to launch crew, cargo, and fuel for unprecedentedly low prices. (SpaceX)
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The Tesla Semi is entering a new Pilot Program with Paper Transport, LLC (PTI), a Wisconsin-based transportation provider. The company will test the Semi’s Long Range configuration through “dedicated operations within the Chicago market.”
Chicago presents an interesting challenge for the Semi, as it will be a colder-weather climate that will test the Semi’s ability to operate in lower temperatures and in potentially large accumulations of snow. This is something Tesla has been testing with the Semi in Alaska and even in Northern California during the colder months, but Chicago will present a truly tough midwestern winter.
Tesla Semi spotted on journey home after winter performance testing
PTI says it is using the Semi to evaluate its strategy of reducing transportation emissions while maintaining performance, reliability, and cost efficiency. These are major arguments for the Semi being introduced into new fleets.
CEO of PTI Tyler Ellison said:
“PTI has been a leader in sustainable transportation solutions for over 15 years. We take a consultative approach to helping customers identify and implement the right transportation solution for their network. Our partnership with Tesla expands our portfolio alongside renewable natural gas and intermodal, giving customers more ways to reduce Scope 3 emissions without compromising service or economics.”
PTI is far from the first company to adopt the Semi within a fleet, as Tesla entered strategic agreements with PepsiCo. and its subsidiary Frito-Lay for a Pilot Program that extended throughout the California region.
Tesla has let companies like those utilize the Semi to determine whether it would be suitable for their operations. Additionally, Tesla gets valuable information regarding the Semi’s performance, knowing what to improve and what is ideal for companies that will utilize the all-electric truck for regional and nationwide logistics.
PTI plans to utilize the Long Range configuration, which is priced at $290,000 and features a range of approximately 500 miles, a three-motor powertrain, up to 800 kW of drive power, and consumption of just 1.7 kWh per mile.
Tesla Semi pricing revealed after company uncovers trim levels
VP of Maintenance at PTI, Bryan Ellen, added:
“We are excited to partner with Tesla, leveraging their ever-evolving technology. We are bullish in our estimation of the parallels available between our dedicated model and the efficiency of their fully electric Class 8 tractor. We anticipate a growing synergy between our businesses as we work to facilitate this sustainable solution for our customers.”
PTI has logged more than 87 million miles using sources like compressed and renewable gas, but now is looking to take it a step further with fully electric operations.
Tesla revealed on Monday that it is building a new autonomous vehicle at Gigafactory Texas, its plant just outside of the City of Austin. This particular vehicle will be geared toward those who are in need of a wheelchair-accessible car that would require no human driver for operation.
According to a new report from Wired, Tesla’s Senior Policy Advisor, India Herdman, told members of the Washington D.C. City Council on Monday:
“We are in development for a purpose-built, wheelchair-accessible autonomous vehicle. We know that paratransit can be very difficult, and people who are confined to wheelchairs permanently should still be able to move around freely, so that is an active product being built by Tesla in Texas.”
This builds upon what CEO Elon Musk said last year on X, which confirmed the company was working on accessible rides within its Robotaxi platform, which currently is confined to the Model Y.
Absolutely
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) September 19, 2025
Tesla is also developing the Cybercab, which started employee rides last week. However, this vehicle is not necessarily geared toward wheelchair accessibility.
That leaves a major gap in the autonomous ride-sharing program that Tesla is attempting to build; the company has been pretty clear that it does not want to complicate its manufacturing lines by bringing in a wide array of body styles.
However, it seems necessary to have something larger that could help transport people to appointments when they cannot drive. For wheelchair accessibility, the Robovan, which was unveiled at the “We, Robot” event in October 2024, seems to be the most ideal solution:
Herdman did not indicate whether she was referring to the Robovan or if Tesla is building yet another body style that is geared toward full autonomy but also caters to the handicapped.
Tesla might need to develop something specifically for the handicapped in order to align with the Americans with Disabilities Act, which prevents discrimination against people with disabilities in transportation services. Uber was hit with a lawsuit late last year for “refusing to reasonably modify its policies, practices, or procedures where necessary to avoid discriminating against riders with disabilities.”
Tesla would obviously like to avoid this.
It will be interesting to see what Tesla will do with this project, and whether it will introduce something new to the market or just continue with the Robovan.
Tesla weirdly confirmed that its steering wheel-less and pedal-less Cybercab vehicle is now in the process of giving employees rides, a huge milestone for the vehicle program.
But the entire thing was super strange. On Friday, Tesla released a video stating that there was “Cool news from Giga Texas” and that employees were now taking rides in Cybercabs that have no manual controls. The units seen on public roads are engineering vehicles that have manual controls inside, a necessity as Tesla moved through the testing phase.
However, Tesla removed the video and reposted it shortly after with a more vague title. It seems like the employee rides are still going, but the video was adjusted slightly. The initial upload showed employees doing things like watching movies and adjusting the climate, but these snippets were removed in the second upload.
Cool news from Giga Texas pic.twitter.com/gvbG456Tzw
— Tesla Robotaxi (@robotaxi) July 11, 2026
Both images below were uploaded with the first video, but were removed after Tesla re-uploaded the announcement. These are not available in the second upload
Credit: Tesla
Credit: Tesla
Nevertheless, the announcement from Tesla is that the Cybercab is operating with employees inside who can control the vehicle’s audio, video, climate, and destination settings through their smartphone app.
Tesla has already been testing Cybercab engineering units, but last month, it was able to self-certify for SAE Level 4, which would enable unsupervised self-driving in Texas. The company is moving toward that, and the plans have always been to launch Cybercab rides this year.
The Cybercab is potentially looked at as the next generation of Tesla’s mobility leg. For the past 15 years, the company has been known as somewhat of an automaker, among many other things. However, these passenger vehicles that Tesla has manufactured are now moving into a new realm, as they will eventually drive themselves with no supervision thanks to the Full Self-Driving suite.
The Cybercab is just the next step of that: a true vehicle developed for the sole purpose of ride-hailing. It has no human controls, it has only two seats, and it will get passengers from Point A to Point B with no awkward driver, no need for manual inputs, and with no stress.
Tesla is moving forward with other developments related to the Cybercab project as well. However, the big announcement will come when Tesla finally announces that it is launching Cybercab rides to the general public, something that it plans to launch either late this year or early 2027.
Tesla Semi enters new Pilot Program with interesting challenge
Tesla is building a wheelchair-accessible Robotaxi
