DOGE leader Elon Musk opens up about his work in space on'Kudlow.' Elon Musk has confirmed that SpaceX's Starship will head to Mars at the end of 2026. The ship will be carrying Optimus, Tesla's humanoid robot. The tech billionaire said that if all goes well, humans could be on the red planet by 2029, although he admitted that 2031 is more likely. NASA's Perseverance Mars rover used its dual-camera Mastcam-Z imager to capture this image of "Santa Cruz," a hill within Jezero Crater, on April 29, 2021, the 68th Martian day, or sol, of the mission. The X account for Optimus replied to Musk's announcement with just two words: "Hold on."

Elon Musk confirmed on Monday that Tesla's robotaxi event scheduled for August has been delayed to October. The CEO replied on X (the former Twitter, which he owns) to a user's post that he "requested what I think is an important design change to the front, and extra time allows us to show off a few other things." Musk's X post appears to echo what Bloomberg reported last week. The publication claimed on July 11 that delaying the event would give Tesla more time to build additional prototypes. It added that the company had communicated the delay internally and that the design team was told to "rework certain elements of the car," which sounds like Musk's order to change the front design.

Tesla CEO Elon Musk announced via Twitter on Monday that the company's autopilot self-driving mode would be made available in a small beta test starting next week. The closed beta-test system, which will be limited to a small pool of "expert and careful drivers," will roll out next week, Car And Driver reported. The Full Self-Driving (FSD) feature has undergone a complete reboot and is expected to carry a lot of new functionality. The rewrite also updated the autopilot's labeling software to enable it to interpret the environment in 4D instead of 2D. Based on Musk's recent descriptions, the updated software will build on its current "traffic light and stop sign control" feature and will likely add turns in intersections and integrate it fully on autopilot.