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The Boring Company posts impressive LVCC Loop stats from CES 2023

Credit: Tesla Asia/Twitter

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The Boring Company has released the stats of its Loop system at the Las Vegas Convention Center following CES 2023, which ran from January 5 to January 8, 2023. Based on the numbers released by the tunneling startup and social media posts from CES attendees, the LVCC Loop is hitting its rhythm. 

In a Twitter post, The Boring Company noted that it was grateful for the opportunity to provide transportation for Las Vegas Convention Center visitors during the high-profile event. The tunneling startup included a number of key stats about the system in its post, both during the event and during the fourth quarter of 2022. 

As per The Boring Company, the average ride time in the LVCC Loop was less than two minutes seconds, the average wait time for passengers was less than 10 seconds, and the Loop was able to accommodate over 94,000 total passengers, including over 10,000 who traveled to and from Resorts World. Overall, the Boring Company noted that the LVCC Loop’s Q4 Customer Experience Score has been over 4.9/5.0, an impressive feat considering the overall age of the system

“Was our privilege to provide transportation for @LVCVA at an amazing @CES convention. Fun Loop stats: average ride time < 2 min, average wait time < 10 sec, 94k+ total passengers, 10k+ passengers to/from Resorts World, and average Q4 LVCC Customer Experience Score > 4.9/5.0!” the Boring Company wrote. 

While there will always be critics of The Boring Company, the LVCC Loop has attracted a lot of positive attention from attendees of the event. Social media posts about rides in the LVCC Loop are abounding, with a good number of users sharing their appreciation for the project. Author Marsha Collier, who attended CES, described the system as “super fast” and “efficient.” She also noted that the LVCC Loop had great employees. 

Other users highlighted that the LVCC Loop does save a lot of time since without it, going around the area typically results in a 20-minute walk or so. Another CES attendee, @rockynashlive, noted that she appreciated the fact that she was able to network longer than usual with other attendees because the LVCC Loop saves time. 

Videos of the tunnels from the LVCC Loop to the Resorts World station have also been shared online, and they hint that the first stages of the Vegas Loop are at least working well. Overall, it does appear that during CES, at least, The Boring Company’s Loop system does provide a time-efficient, comfortable way to optimize the transportation of commuters in the Las Vegas Convention Center complex.

The Teslarati team would appreciate hearing from you. If you have any tips, contact me at maria@teslarati.com or via Twitter @Writer_01001101.

Maria--aka "M"-- is an experienced writer and book editor. She's written about several topics including health, tech, and politics. As a book editor, she's worked with authors who write Sci-Fi, Romance, and Dark Fantasy. M loves hearing from TESLARATI readers. If you have any tips or article ideas, contact her at maria@teslarati.com or via X, @Writer_01001101.

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Tesla Semi factory is getting a celebration nobody expected

Tesla will inaugurate its Nevada Semi factory September 24, five months after production quietly began ramping.

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Tesla says it will officially inaugurate its new Semi factory in Nevada next month. The Tesla Semi account posted the announcement on X, sharing a graphic titled “Semi Rollout” with a date of September 24. No further details were given about the format of the event or who would attend.

While Tesla’s dedicated Semi plant in Sparks, adjacent to Gigafactory Nevada, opened back in April, with the first trucks rolling off the high volume line on April 29, the timing for the factory inauguration comes at a surprise. The ribbon cutting event five months into production is a break from how Tesla has usually handled its other factories, where the first truck or car off the line typically served as the milestone moment.

The 1.7 million square foot factory was built as part of a $3.6 billion expansion Tesla announced in early 2023, and it shares a site with the battery cell lines that feed the Semi’s structural pack, a decision meant to remove the supply bottleneck that delayed the truck for years. The plant is designed for 50,000 trucks a year at full ramp. Semi program director Dan Priestley has said production “is now ramping” rather than claiming it has reached scale.

Nine years passed between the Semi’s 2017 unveiling and this stage of production, with the truck slipping from an original 2019 target through hand built pilot units for PepsiCo and a slow build out of the Nevada plant. An inauguration event now gives Tesla a stage to talk up that ramp and reset expectations for how many trucks it can begin delivering at scale.

The September date also lines up with the Semi’s next milestone. Tesla confirmed the truck is heading to Europe with a full unveiling at the IAA Transportation trade show in Hannover, Germany, running September 15 through 20. Between the Nevada event and the Hannover reveal, Tesla has roughly a week and a half in September to make the case that the Semi is now a truck being built and sold on two continents rather than tested in a handful of fleets.

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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.

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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.


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.

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Tesla will launch Cybercab on September 3

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Credit: TechOperator | X

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.

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.

Tesla Cybercab launch preparations have begun

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.

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.

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