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SpaceX’s first crewed NASA launches remain on schedule for 2018
Plenty of work lies ahead of both companies, but progress abounds
Amidst a seemingly relaxed July for SpaceX, the company has been working intently with NASA to prepare for its first Commercial Crew mission in as few as seven months. NASA’s combination of strict technical requirements and partial flexibility with the famously fast-moving aerospace company have resulted in a collaborative environment that Elon Musk recently deemed beneficial to the company.
As NASA works with the company to ensure that Dragon 2 is as safe as realistically possible, SpaceX has begun several rounds of advanced testing and training. NASA astronauts are in the process of learning how to operate Dragon 2, and a near-production version of the vehicle’s control software and hardware has been integrated to allow for accurate simulations as practice. Meanwhile, Department of Defense personnel that will be tasked with recovering Dragons and crew from the ocean have begun developing those procedures with a mockup capsule.
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- DoD personnel began initial recovery procedure development in July. (SpaceX)
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- NASA astronauts utilizing the Dragon 2 simulator as they practice for the first crewed launch in June 2018. (SpaceX)
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- A look inside Crew Dragon’s bare crew compartment. (SpaceX)
At SpaceX’s Hawthorne manufacturing facilities, four separate Crew Dragons are in different states of assembly. While one of those vehicles is intended solely for qualification testing, the three remaining Dragons will respectively launch into low Earth orbit throughout the course of 2018, assuming schedules remain firm. Structural testing and verification of the qualification Dragon was completed as of July 24th, and the first flightworthy Dragon has undergone testing of its pressure vessel to ensure that there are no leaks.
Looking forward to launching @NASA astronauts to the International Space Station next year!https://t.co/qoLtTEP4L8
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) August 3, 2017
Deemed Demo-1 in relation to the first flight of Dragon being Demonstration Flight 1, SpaceX workers are almost ready to integrate the service section and pressure vessel compartments. The pressure vessel is better known as the crew compartment, while the service section is where all the necessary flight and life support systems are contained. Dragon’s “claw” – used to grab hold of the ISS upon docking – and engines have also passed qualification tests.
Different parts of the Demo-1 Dragon in Hawthorne. The crew compartment or pressure vessel can be seen on the left, while the heat shield is front and center. A second and possibly third Crew Dragon pressure vessel can be seen in the background. (SpaceX)
Possibly the most exciting of all, SpaceX has conducted the first pressurized tests of its in-house space suits with NASA crew members. While non-insiders have yet to catch a glimpse of the company’s suits, those lucky enough to have stolen a glance have indicated that they look awesome. As the company progresses to actual vacuum testing of the suits, fans can likely look forward to a reveal. While we don’t yet have a view of SpaceX suits, the July 24th Commercial Crew update did provide the first public photos of SpaceX’s crew access arm, set to be installed at the LC-39A launch pad later this year.
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- NASA astronauts check out SpaceX’s recently-completed crew access arm. (SpaceX)
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- Whether or not you can parse NASA’s infamous acronym and jargon-heavy language, it’s clear that SpaceX has a considerable amount of work ahead to make their February 2018 deadline. (NASA)
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- For those with extreme willpower, a close study of this graphic provides a good idea of where both SpaceX and Boeing are as they head to first CCP launches. (NASA)
Aside from an array of milestones ahead for the company, the only major tasks yet to be finished are design finalization for Crew Dragon’s seat mechanisms and control displays. SpaceX’s Demonstration 1 and 2 launch dates of February and June 2018 respectively remain steady as of this late-July update. Delays are always possible and even likely, but chances are good that SpaceX will be ready to conduct the first launch of crew to the ISS before the end of next year.
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Tesla pulls back the curtain on Cybercab mass production
Tesla’s Cybercab drives itself off the Gigafactory Texas line in a striking new production video.
Tesla has provided a first look from inside a production Cybercab as it drove itself off the assembly line at Gigafactory Texas. The video footage, posted on X, opens on the factory floor with robotic arms and assembly equipment visible through the Cybercab windshield, and follows the car through a branded tunnel marked “Cybercab”, before autonomously navigating itself to a holding lot.
The first Cybercab rolled off the Giga Texas production line on February 17, 2026, with Musk writing on X, “Congratulations to the Tesla team on making the first production Cybercab.” April marked the official shift to volume production. The Giga Texas line is being prepared to produce hundreds of units per week, with 60 units already spotted on the Gigafactory campus earlier this month.
Purpose-built for autonomy
Cybercab in production now at Giga Texas pic.twitter.com/Y9qG3KyWBa
— Tesla (@Tesla) April 23, 2026
The Cybercab was first revealed publicly at Tesla’s “We, Robot” event in October 2024 at Warner Bros. Studios in Burbank, California, where 20 pre-production units gave attendees rides around the studio lot. Musk said he believed the average operating cost would be around $0.20 per mile, and that buyers would be able to purchase one for under $30,000. The two-seat design is deliberate. Musk noted that 90 percent of miles driven involve one or two people, making a compact two-passenger vehicle the most efficient configuration for a fleet-scale robotaxi. Eliminating rear seats also removes complexity and cost, supporting that sub-$30,000 target.
Tesla’s annual production goal is 2 million Cybercabs per year once several factories reach full design capacity. The Cybercab has no steering wheel, no pedals, and relies entirely on Tesla’s vision-based FSD system. What the video shows is the first evidence of that system working not as a demo, but as a production reality, driving itself off the line and into the world.
🚗 Our first ride in Tesla Cybercab last October: pic.twitter.com/kGqIqgJPRn https://t.co/BITCXFhbVd
— TESLARATI (@Teslarati) April 22, 2025
Elon Musk
Elon Musk’s last manually driven Tesla will do something no other production car will do
Elon Musk confirmed the Roadster as Tesla’s last manually driven car, with a debut coming soon.
During Tesla’s Q1 2026 earnings call on April 22, Elon Musk made a brief but notable comment about the long-awaited next generation Roadster while describing Tesla’s future vehicle lineup. “Long term, the only manually driven car will be the new Tesla Roadster,” he said. “Speaking of which, we may be able to debut that in a month or so. It requires a lot of testing and validation before we can actually have a demo and not have something go wrong with the demo.”
That single statement is the entire Roadster update from yesterday’s call, and while it represents another timeline shift, it comes as no surprise with Tesla heads-down-at-work on the mass rollout of its Robotaxi service across US cities, and the industrial scale production of the humanoid Optimus.
The fact that Musk specifically framed the Roadster as the last manually driven Tesla is significant on its own. As the rest of the lineup moves toward full autonomy, the Roadster becomes something rare in the Tesla-sphere by keeping the driver in control. Driving enthusiasts who buy a $200,000 supercar are not doing so to be passengers. They want the physical connection to the road, the feel of acceleration under their own input, and the experience of controlling something with that level of performance. FSD, however capable it becomes, removes that entirely. The Roadster signals that Tesla understands this distinction and is building a car specifically for the people who consider driving itself the point.
Tesla isn’t joking about building Optimus at an industrial scale: Here we go
The specs for the Roadster Musk has teased over the years are genuinely unlike anything in production. The base model targets 0 to 60 mph in 1.9 seconds, a top speed above 250 mph, and up to 620 miles of range from a 200 kWh battery. The optional SpaceX package takes it further, rumored to add roughly ten cold gas thrusters operating at 10,000 psi, borrowed directly from Falcon 9 rocket technology. With thrusters, Musk has claimed 0 to 60 mph in as little as 1.1 seconds. In a 2021 Joe Rogan interview he went further, stating “I want it to hover. We got to figure out how to make it hover without killing people.” Tesla filed a patent for ground effect technology in August 2025, suggesting the hover concept has not been abandoned. The starting price remains $200,000, with the Founders Series requiring a $250,000 full deposit. Some reservation holders placed those deposits in 2017 and are approaching a full decade of waiting.
With production now targeted for 2027 or 2028 at the earliest, the Roadster remains Tesla’s most audacious promise and its longest-running delay. But if what Musk is testing lives up to even half of what he has described, the demo alone should be worth waiting for.
Elon Musk says the Tesla Roadster unveiling could be done “maybe in a month or so.”
He said it should be an extraordinary unveiling event. pic.twitter.com/6V9P7zmvEm
— TESLARATI (@Teslarati) April 22, 2026
Elon Musk
Tesla confirmed HW3 can’t do Unsupervised FSD but there’s more to the story
Tesla confirmed HW3 vehicles cannot run unsupervised FSD, replacing its free upgrade promise with a discounted trade-in.
Tesla has officially confirmed that early vehicles with its Autopilot Hardware 3 (HW3) will not be capable of unsupervised Full Self-Driving, while extending a path forward for legacy owners through a discounted trade-in program. The announcement came by way of Elon Musk in today’s Tesla Q1 2026 earnings call.
🚨 Our LIVE updates on the Tesla Earnings Call will take place here in a thread 🧵
Follow along below: pic.twitter.com/hzJeBitzJU
— TESLARATI (@Teslarati) April 22, 2026
The history here matters. HW3 launched in April 2019, and Tesla sold Full Self-Driving packages to owners on the understanding that the hardware was sufficient for full autonomy. Some owners paid between $8,000 and $15,000 for FSD during that period. For years, as FSD’s AI models grew more demanding, HW3 vehicles fell progressively further behind, eventually landing on FSD v12.6 in January 2025 while AI4 vehicles moved to v13 and then v14. When Musk acknowledged in January 2025 that HW3 simply could not reach unsupervised operation, and alluded to a difficult hardware retrofit.
The near-term offering is more concrete. Tesla’s head of Autopilot Ashok Elluswamy confirmed on today’s call that a V14-lite will be coming to HW3 vehicles in late June, bringing all the V14 features currently running on AI4 hardware. That is a meaningful software update for owners who have been frozen at v12.6 for over a year, and it represents genuine effort to keep older hardware relevant. Unsupervised FSD for vehicles is now targeted for Q4 2026 at the earliest, with Musk describing it as a gradual, geography-limited rollout.
For HW3 owners, the over-the-air V14-lite update is welcomed, and the discounted trade-in path at least acknowledges an old obligation. What happens next with the trade-in pricing will define how this chapter ultimately gets written. If Tesla prices the hardware path fairly, acknowledges what early adopters are owed, and delivers V14-lite on the June timeline it committed to today, it has a real opportunity to convert one of the longest-running sore subjects among early adopters into a loyalty story.
Tesla pulls back the curtain on Cybercab mass production
Elon Musk’s last manually driven Tesla will do something no other production car will do
