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What Tesla has in store for 2017: Model 3, Model Y, Solar Roof and more
Tesla CEO Elon Musk revealed his vision of the future through the company’s Master Plan Part Deux on July 20, 2016. Filled with predictions about his complex and detailed plan to marry self-driving electric vehicles covering all segments, with solar rooftops and integrated battery storage units, 2017 should be the year when many of them begin to come into focus in a way the public can visualize.
Tesla Model 3 Deliveries
Arguably the most anticipated product on Tesla’s roadmap is its affordable mass market Model 3 mid-size sedan which will see first deliveries take place at the end of 2017. The car has been in “pencils down mode” since summer, meaning the final design has been locked in and the process of getting it ready for production has begun. Elon has hinted that plans call for a volume production date that would begin sometime near the summer of 2017.
Silver Model 3 seen at Tesla’s employee-only Q3 celebration party in San Jose, CA
Goals should always exceed one’s grasp and Musk recognizes that starting volume production on Model 3 by the end of July is going to be next to impossible. He was chastened a bit by the roll out of the Model X, which began in September, 2015. A number of production glitches delayed full production of that car until well into the second quarter of 2016.
That experience tempered Elon’s irrepressible optimism with a dose of real world experience. Even assuming production did begin next summer, it would result in relatively few cars being produced. Those would get into the hands of customers living near the factory in Fremont, California so that any post-production issues can be addressed quickly and efficiently. The lessons learned would then be used to improve the quality of the cars to come.
Machines That Builds Machines, Come to Life
A main area of focus for Musk and Tesla’s production arm is devising ways to reap significant benefits from a total rethinking of the manufacturing process by “building the machine that builds the machine”. Having recently acquired a leading engineering firm in Germany focused on building advanced automation tools, Tesla believes that a properly designed factory could operate at 5 to 10 times the speed of today’s production facilities.
Drone video of Tesla’s Gigafactory shows the battery factory more than doubling in size
“Tesla engineering has transitioned to focus heavily on designing the machine that makes the machine — turning the factory itself into a product. A first principles physics analysis of automotive production suggests that somewhere between a 5 to 10 fold improvement is achievable by version 3 on a roughly 2 year iteration cycle.”, said Musk at the Tesla Gigafactory Grand Opening celebration.
Plans to nearly double the size of Tesla’s Fremont, Calif. factory were recently approved by the city. Tesla plans to build as many as 500,000 cars a year, most of them Model 3s, by the end of 2018.
Tesla Model Y Compact SUV and Tesla Pickup Truck Unveiling
An electric compact SUV based on the Model 3 chassis, dubbed Model Y, will round out Tesla’s S-E-X-Y range of vehicles. That, along with a Tesla pickup and a Tesla ‘minibus’, will fulfill the major automotive segments the Silicon Valley automaker and energy company aims to cover with its upcoming fleet of electric cars. Expect prototypes to be unveiled sometime in 2017
“In addition to consumer vehicles, there are two other types of electric vehicle needed: heavy-duty trucks and high passenger-density urban transport. Both are in the early stages of development at Tesla and should be ready for unveiling next year.”, reads Tesla’s blog post.
Tesla Model Y Compact SUV rendering [Source: RM Car Design]
Model Y (compact SUV) off Model 3 chassis. Tesla Bus/Minibus/Spacebus off Model X.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) July 31, 2016
In addition, Tesla is thinking about creating a self driving minibus that could transport up to 10 passengers, according to Musk’s Master Plan Part Deux. It would be based on the Model X chassis. Passengers could summon the bus to their location and it would deliver them to their destination with little or no walking required — something traditional public transportation vehicles cannot do.
Tesla job openings reveal that developments for future vehicles are already being planned for.
Roll Out of Autopilot 2.0 and Self-Driving Features
2017 is also the year when Tesla’s Enhanced Autopilot should become fully operational. All cars produced after October 19 are equipped with the hardware 2 package of cameras, radar, and advanced ultrasound sensors that will allow them to operate without human input. All that remains to be done is accumulate enough human logged driving miles to flush out the confidence level for the company’s self-driving algorithms.
Tesla has already accumulated more than 1.2 billion miles of driving history and is adding 3 million more miles every day. Elon believes it will require a total of 6 billion miles of driving experience before autonomous driving is reliable enough to convince regulators to allow self-driving cars to be allowed on public roads. He is also aware that approval will vary widely from jurisdiction to jurisdiction, both within the United States and in other countries.
Tesla demonstrates the capabilities of a Full Self-Driving Model X
Musk plans to showcase a fully autonomous trip from Los Angeles to New York by the end of 2017. According to Musk, the cross country journey in a Full Self-Driving Tesla would take place “without the need for a single touch” from a human driver, including recharging the car’s battery.
“Our goal is, we’ll to be able to do a demonstration drive of full autonomy all the way from LA to New York,” According to Musk, the trip would be “from home in LA, to dropping you off in Times Square, and then the car will go park itself.”
Tesla Will Begin Solar Roof Sales
Now that SolarCity has officially become part of Tesla Motors, the Solar Roof products introduced in October will become available next year to customers throughout the US. Tesla is revamping its retail stores to include information about its solar products and the Powerwall 2, its latest residential energy storage product. Musk envisions a seamless, pain-free process that will allow solar customers to order a Solar Roof and all the details are handled completely by Tesla.
Combining energy production with local energy storage will permit more homeowners to reduce their reliance on the local utility company, which will insulate them against future rate hikes. It will also mean fewer carbon emissions from generating electricity, reinforcing Musk’s goal of a sustainable future.
The Solar Roof will be offered in four styles and the anticipated to go on sale during the summer of 2017, starting with the most popular style first. Other styles will become available at the rate of one additional style every three months.
Elon Musk
Elon Musk just set a condition that could end Falcon 9 as we know it
Elon Musk says SpaceX will finally retire Falcon 9 once Starship flies reliably every week.
Elon Musk gave the clearest timeline yet for retiring Falcon 9, SpaceX’s workhorse rocket.
The comment came in a reply on X, where Musk wrote that “once Starship is flying reliably several times per week, it makes sense to shift super scarce SpaceX engineering and production resources to Starship to get launch rate to several times per day, which means winding down Falcon.” He was responding to physicist Casey Handmer, who noted that NASA is reportedly uneasy about SpaceX phasing out Falcon after building what Handmer called the most successful launcher ever, with the fleet nearing 1,000 total launches.
Now @SciGuySpace reports NASA is in a tizzy because after running the most successful launcher ever for more than a decade and nearing 1000 launches, @SpaceX is planning to retire Falcon in favor of Starship in a few years.
Sorry, NASA, you’ve had 15 years to burn down the… https://t.co/uCNoMwK0v9
— Casey Handmer (@CJHandmer) August 22, 2026
Falcon 9 is still SpaceX’s busiest vehicle by far. The company is on pace for roughly 140 to 145 Falcon flights this year, following 165 in 2025, president Gwynne Shotwell told Time earlier in 2026. She has already said Falcon flights would “tail off” as Starship comes online, while reports indicate that SpaceX has stopped booking new Falcon 9 launches past 2028 and halted production of some expendable Falcon hardware, according to Bloomberg.
It’s worth noting that Musk’s post is a condition, and not a countdown on when Falcon will retire. Starship has not yet flown weekly, let alone daily. Its most recent flight in July ended with a soft splashdown in the Indian Ocean, a milestone Musk pointed to earlier this month when he said the vehicle’s heat shield problem was effectively solved. SpaceX towed that ship to Christmas Island for inspection, and the next flight, Flight 14, is aimed at putting Starship into orbit for the first time. A tower catch attempt for the upper stage has been pushed back to what Musk has called “a few months” away.
SpaceX and a new Trump order that could rewrite the next decade of launches
The gap between Falcon’s role today and Starship’s promised role tomorrow matters most to NASA. Falcon and its Dragon capsule remain the only way the agency rotates astronauts to and from the International Space Station, and Starship is not certified to carry NASA crews. Musk’s post did not address how that handoff would work if Falcon winds down before a crew-rated Starship variant exists. The timing lines up with Musk’s other recent Starship comments. Two days before the Falcon post, he told a different X user that SpaceX is aiming for more than 30 Starship launches a day by 2030, or roughly 10,000 a year, a figure tied to the Trump administration’s new push for higher national launch cadence. Falcon, which took over a decade to reach its first 100 launches, was never built to approach that kind of volume.
For now, Falcon 9 keeps flying at a near-record pace while Starship works to prove it can do the job Musk has already picked out for it.
Tesla Cybercab is set to launch in Austin, Texas, on September 3, as the company has officially started sending out invitations to a dedicated event it will hold in the city where its headquarters is located.
The Cybercab is Tesla’s dedicated ride-sharing vehicle: it features just two seats and has no steering wheel or pedals. It is aimed at fully autonomous passenger transport, and will operate in the Robotaxi fleet alongside the Tesla Model Y, which has been performing driverless rides for real-world passengers for more than a year.
Thank you so much @Tesla for inviting us to the Cybercab launch in Austin! 🤠 pic.twitter.com/F1rAR8zd5O
— TESLARATI (@Teslarati) August 22, 2026
The launch of the Cybercab marks the next chapter in Tesla’s autonomy story. The company has been developing autonomous transport for years with its Full Self-Driving (Supervised) platform, which is available in any vehicle the company has built with the proper hardware and software capabilities.
Its capabilities vary by hardware and software version, but Tesla says its latest hardware version, known as AI4, can deliver full autonomy. However, future vehicles will operate with even more robust hardware packages, as Tesla will develop AI4.5 and AI5 for even more capability in its vehicles.
Following a report from The Information that surfaced earlier this week, the writing was on the wall that Tesla was set to launch Cybercab in the near term. The report stated Tesla could launch Cybercab as soon as the end of August. Tesla came close and has booked it for September 3.
The big thing with this event being scheduled is not necessarily that Tesla is launching a new vehicle, but instead that it is launching a vehicle that has no steering wheel or pedals and will operate exclusively on a self-driving program that is evidently nearing full autonomy. If the event allows vehicles to take passengers on public roads and drop them off wherever they please within the City of Austin, it will be a drastic advancement in the company’s self-driving story.
People have ridden in Cybercab previously: Tesla had the “We, Robot” event in October 2024, which allowed people to experience fully autonomous rides in a closed circuit at Warner Bros. Studios in Burbank.
🚨 Ride in a Tesla Cybercab with us
— TESLARATI (@Teslarati) May 11, 2025
Additionally, Tesla launched employee rides in Cybercab in July.
It’s a drastic step forward for Tesla, whose CEO, Elon Musk, has promised for years that the company would release a fully autonomous vehicle and platform capable of allowing drivers to relinquish any responsibility behind the wheel.
Elon Musk put a number on where he thinks SpaceX’s Starship program is headed by 2030, replying on X a day after President Trump signed a memo pushing the country toward 1,000 space launches and reentries a year.
The exchange started when Aaron Burnett, co-founder of propulsion startup Mach 33, posted that “1,000 launches/reentries is the goal,” quoting White House science adviser Michael Kratsios on the newly signed National Space Transportation Policy. Burnett noted that the FAA’s own bull-case forecast reached only 385 annual launches by 2030, while his firm’s conservative model already put SpaceX alone near 940. Musk responded, “We’re aiming to reach 30+ Starship launches/day in 2030, which is ~10k annualized. Still tiny numbers compared to airplane flights!”
We’re aiming to reach 30+ Starship launches/day in 2030, which is ~10k annualized.
Still tiny numbers compared to airplane flights!
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) August 21, 2026
That figure is specific to Starship, the rocket SpaceX is still developing for orbital and lunar missions, not the Falcon 9 fleet that carries most of the company’s current launch volume. Starship has flown twice this year, a slower pace than the four and five flights SpaceX managed in 2024 and 2025. Getting from two flights a year to 30 a day is the scale of jump the new federal policy is meant to clear regulatory room for.
Trump’s memo, signed Thursday, directs agencies to identify new launch and reentry sites on federal land, including a new reentry site within 90 days, and to speed up the permitting and environmental reviews that have long slowed cadence growth. It also sets a goal of returning American astronauts to the moon by 2028 and placing initial lunar base elements by 2030, tying the launch buildout directly to NASA’s Artemis program.
SpaceX has already been pushing the FAA toward higher numbers on its own. The agency approved up to 44 annual Starship launches from Kennedy Space Center in February, on top of a 2024 review that raised the cap at Starbase in Texas to 25 a year. Those approvals cover a fraction of the 10,000 annual flights Musk is now describing, which shows how far current permitting still sits from the administration’s stated target.
The near-term test of all this is more modest. SpaceX cleared a full-duration, six-engine static fire on its next Starship vehicle this week, the last major hardware checkpoint before Flight 14, which is targeting no earlier than August 28 and is expected to attempt the vehicle’s first full orbital mission. Musk said last week that a tower catch of the upper stage is still probably months away, a reminder that the immediate roadmap remains far more incremental than the daily launch numbers he just posted.
Elon Musk just set a condition that could end Falcon 9 as we know it
Tesla will launch Cybercab on September 3
