Honda's Playing with Robots and Reusable Rockets—Look Out, Tesla and SpaceX?
Not content with going fast on Earth's surface with its turbocharged Civic Type R—not to mention its Formula 1 and IndyCar racing engines—Honda is continuing to work on its aeronautical dreams, following up its Honda Jet with... space travel. This isn't a joke. The automaker (or, at least, an arm of the automaker, Honda R&D Co. Limited) is working on rockets, and just successfully launched its first experimental reusable rocket from the Hokkaido Prefecture in Japan. No word if the rocket engine uses VTEC to increase its power; most likely it uses literal rocket fuel.
Honda is developing reusable rockets, launching its first test flight in Japan. While not aiming for commercial space launches yet, Honda plans a suborbital launch by 2029, expanding its tech focus beyond cars and planes to space technology, paralleling efforts by SpaceX and Tesla.
This summary was generated by AI using content from this MotorTrend article Read Next
The 20.67-foot tall, 33.47-inch diameter rocket was launched by Honda R&D at 4:15 pm local time and hit an altitude of 890.42 feet. It launched with a fully fueled weight of 2,892.47 pounds and was in the air for a total of 56.6 seconds before landing just 14.57 inches from its designated touchdown point.
While not an orbital flight, this adventure was a test to see if Honda's rocket has the ability and stability for flight, descent, and landing capability and survivability. These are all critical data points for a reusable rocket, something that is still a struggle for even a seasoned company like SpaceX—the rocket and space communication company owned by Tesla owner, Elon Musk, that famously lands its booster stages on land and even barges at sea for later reuse, greatly reducing the costs of space launches.
Why is Honda launching a rocket today? It's part of their initiative to expand beyond just airplanes and automobiles and to venture into space technology. The rocket venture was first announced in 2021 and will include research into renewable energy system, space robotics, and reusable rockets beyond this experimental one.
As of right now, Honda isn't immediately trying to become a commercial space launch company—to the potential relief of Musk, given Honda's reliability record—but Honda does have a plan in place to take a rocket suborbital by 2029. Meaning they want to send a rocket into space, but it won't circle the Earth just yet.
While the launch is an exciting development for Honda, and there are amusing parallels between its work on rockets, humanoid robots, and other advanced tech and what Tesla (lately on a humanoid robot kick) and SpaceX (longtime private space company) are up to—even if each company's efforts aren't chronologically simpatico. (Honda's Asimo robot is decades old, while its rockets are new—Tesla and SpaceX are the opposite.)
So far, there isn't word that there will be an Acura-badged version of the rocket with Super-Handling All-Weather Descent mode (an obvious riff off Super-Handling All-Wheel Drive...) or whether the eventual rocket will get red-colored Type R badges. What? We ran out of VTEC jokes two paragraphs ago, and like Honda, we're just trying to stick the landing here.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Yahoo
27 minutes ago
- Yahoo
The Tesla Brain Drain
The Atlantic Daily, a newsletter that guides you through the biggest stories of the day, helps you discover new ideas, and recommends the best in culture. Sign up for it here. This article was featured in the One Story to Read Today newsletter. Sign up for it here. Before DOGE, there was Twitter. In 2023, Elon Musk seemed too distracted by his latest venture to run the world's most valuable car company. Tesla was faltering as he focused on remaking (and renaming) the social-media network. So at Tesla's investor-day event in Austin that March, Musk responded with a rare show of force. He was joined onstage by a cadre of more than a dozen of the company's top executives, all to signal that even if he was extremely busy, Tesla was run by a world-class team: 'We've obviously got significant bench strength here,' Musk said. Sure enough, Tesla closed out 2023 with the best sales it's ever had. Musk is in bad need of a similar comeback right now as he returns from Washington to focus on his struggling car company. In recent months, Tesla sales have plummeted as the chain-saw-wielding, far-right centibillionaire has turned off traditionally liberal electric-car buyers. The MAGA faithful never stepped up to take their place, and they're less likely to do so now that the Trump-Musk bromance is over. Musk has other problems: Tesla created the modern electric car as we know it, but now the automaker is falling behind the competition while Musk is more focused on AI and robots than selling cars. And on top of everything else, the One Big Beautiful Bill Act working its way through Congress could cost Tesla billions each year. This time around, however, Musk can't lean on that aforementioned bench even if he wants to. Something similar to DOGE's steep staffing cuts has been playing out at Tesla. About a third of the executives who stood onstage with him two years ago have left Tesla or been ousted. Many other high-profile company leaders have resigned. Just since April, Tesla has lost its head of software engineering, head of battery technology, and head of humanoid robotics. Tens of thousands of rank-and-file employees left last year amid waves of mass layoffs. At the end of the day, Tesla is the Musk show: The company is the biggest source of his wealth, and is core to his reputation as a tech genius. Now, after all of the pivots and attrition, the future of Tesla rests singularly on Musk more than it ever has. [Read: The Tesla revolt] To longtime Tesla chroniclers such as myself, the chaotic, rapid-fire cuts that defined Musk's tenure at DOGE felt familiar from the very beginning. The playbook was pioneered at Tesla. When Musk took over as CEO in 2008, Tesla was a start-up struggling to build its first car. His early infusions of personal cash, ruthless approach to cost cutting, and, in his words, 'hardcore' work environment are widely credited with getting the automaker up and running. He has a famous approach to any type of problem: Get rid of preconceived notions, tear everything down, and rebuild from there. If things break, so be it. They can probably be repaired later on. At one point, the company got rid of the traditional turn-signal switch on some cars before later putting them back. (Tesla and Musk did not respond to my requests for comment.) For a long time, the strategy worked. In the span of a decade, Tesla rose from a start-up to an auto giant worth more than Ford, Toyota, and GM combined—despite selling just a fraction of the cars its rivals did. That's why investors still back Musk today. He's made them a lot of money before, so if things get bad, he's the man to figure it out, right? Musk himself has helped promulgate the idea that he has all the answers. At one point, he said he would personally start approving some of his employees' expenses amid a 'hardcore' round of cost cutting. 'He has always been the kind of person who says, 'I am the only one who can do this,'' Sam Abuelsamid, an auto-industry analyst at the research firm Telemetry, told me. In 2018, when I was the editor in chief of the auto publication Jalopnik, Tesla's now-defunct communications team frantically admonished us for reporting that Doug Field, the company's top engineer, had left the company. He was merely the top vehicle engineer, a spokesperson said. Musk—despite not being trained as an engineer—was the top engineer. [Read: Elon and the genius trap] In 2019, an analysis from the financial firm Bernstein put Tesla's executive-turnover rate at nearly double the average of comparable Silicon Valley companies; the number was 'dramatically higher' among Musk's direct reports as well. Layoffs and firings have sometimes felt more mercurial than anything else. Consider the team behind Tesla's charging network. In June 2023, I wrote that Tesla's fast and reliable 'Superchargers' were its secret weapon; other automakers had begun building cars using Tesla's proprietary charging port to give their customers Supercharger access. About a year later, Tesla laid off the entire 500-person team. Many of the staffers were later rehired and returned, but not all: Rebecca Tinucci, Tesla's head of charging, left for good. The Supercharger network has grown since then, though not without a period of chaos for the automaker and the entire car industry that bet on it. The cuts to Tesla's charging workforce were part of a bigger reduction in headcount last year: Within the first six months of 2024, Tesla had shed nearly 20,000 employees, according to internal data viewed by CNBC. And Tesla's latest quarterly SEC filing, released in April, boasts of 'a $52 million decrease in employee and labor costs' compared with last year. (In reporting this story, I reached out to roughly a dozen current and former Tesla staffers. None would talk with me on the record.) Last year's layoffs, Musk said, were designed to position the company for its 'next phase of growth.' Based on everything he's said so far, that means AI. He has promised that robots and driverless cars will eventually deliver 'a trillion dollars of profit a year.' Several top executives and engineers have resigned after they reportedly clashed with Musk on his pivot. This month, Tesla is tentatively set to launch its long-awaited robotaxi service in Austin, starting with what Musk has said will be '10 to 12' self-driving Teslas that can also be remotely operated by humans if needed. In other words, the company has a long way to go before it's anywhere close to something like a driverless Uber. For now, the company still makes its money from selling cars, and Tesla has lost many of the smart people who helped create what was once an innovative automotive juggernaut. Musk still does have several long-standing deputies at the company, including Tom Zhu, a senior vice president who previously led Tesla's operations in China, and Lars Moravy, who leads vehicle engineering. But the departures put more pressure on Musk: He doesn't have the workforce he once did to build to make groundbreaking electric vehicles. The silver lining for the future of electric vehicles is that these former Tesla staffers are fanning out to the rest of the car industry. Take Field, the former head Tesla engineer (or 'head vehicle engineer,' in Tesla's telling). He now leads advanced vehicle software at Ford, as well as a program tasked with making an affordable EV. Tinucci, the former head of Tesla's charging team, is now overseeing Uber's shift to electric vehicles. 'I think we'll see kind of a Tesla diaspora,' Kristin Hull, the founder of Nia Impact Capital, an investment firm with a stake in Tesla, told me. 'The rest of the world is catching up. And I think that's also playing a part in why the talent is moving on.' (Field and Tinucci didn't respond to requests for comment.) Musk's detractors might easily fall into schadenfreude. His actions might finally be catching up with him. But if Tesla continues to slide, there will be ramifications beyond Musk and his investors simply losing money. Tesla remains one of the very few companies outside of China that is making money by selling electric cars, which makes it uniquely capable of making a super-affordable EV. Every day that goes by without cheaper options, Americans who might be inclined to go electric are instead buying gas-burning cars that could be on the road for a decade or more. Meanwhile, other carmakers have spent years racing to build cleaner cars in large part to keep up with Tesla. Without the company's continued dominance, it's easy to see a heavily polluting industry fall back on old habits. The risk is particularly high right now as the Trump administration is betting big on fossil fuels. Whether Tesla can rebound will test something truly scarce—not Musk's wealth but the faith that others have in him. Musk has already alienated people on the left and right, but many people still fiercely believe in his ability to make them rich. At some point, even they might start to vanish. Article originally published at The Atlantic
Yahoo
an hour ago
- Yahoo
Trending tickers: Tesla, CoreWeave, CrowdStrike, Airbus and AO World
Shares in Tesla fell nearly 4% on Tuesday, after Wells Fargo warned of weak second quarter deliveries and concerns about a threat to its free cash flow. Wells Fargo is expecting Tesla's Q2 deliveries to be down 21% versus a year ago, with the bank's 343,000 estimate around 17% below the consensus. In a note to clients, Wells Fargo's Colin Langan wrote: "New Model Y appears weak given inventory building & promotions. There is also no update on the affordable model, the only driver of 2H [second half of the year] volumes." Read more: FTSE 100 LIVE: Stocks rise as UK inflation slows ahead of Bank of England decision "Order px [pricing] is stable, though financing promos & inventory discounts continue. We expect lower margin q/q due to px." Langan's analysis showed that Tesla's free cash flow was at risk of going into the red in 2025 due to different factors, including lower deliveries, as well as pricing and tariffs. 'We now forecast FCF [free cash flow] burn of $1.9bn (£1.4bn), the first FCF FY since 2018," the note said. Tesla shares were back up nearly 1% in pre-market trading on Wednesday morning, though the stock is still down nearly 10% over the past month. Shares in Nvidia (NVDA)-backed artificial intelligence cloud computing company CoreWeave (CRWV) surged 8.5% on Tuesday and were up another 2% in pre-market trading on Wednesday. The stock's rise came after Bank of America analyst Brad Sills on Monday downgraded CoreWeave but set his price target on shares to a new Wall Street high. Read more: Oil prices ease but remain at four-month high amid Iran-Israel conflict Sills lowered his rating on CoreWeave to "neutral" from "buy", citing a high valuation and pointed out that it was trading on 27 times its projected 2027 earnings but highlighted its significant debt. However, Sills still lifted his price outlook on the stock to $185 from $76, which is the highest among Wall Street analysts tracked by Bloomberg. "[W]e see solid sustained demand in CoreWeave's AI infrastructure market," Sills wrote. Cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike (CRWD) hit at a fresh all-time high on Tuesday, with a closing share price of $492.03, with the stock hovering just above the flatline in pre-market trading on Wednesday. CrowdStrike announced on Monday that it had joined forces with Amazon (AMZN) Web Services (AWS) to provide a program for security incident response. Read more: Stocks that are trending today The company said that its new program offered "AI-powered incident response to help organisations respond to incidents faster, reduce risk, and strengthen their cloud security posture, while providing joint customers significant cost savings and a seamlessly integrated security workflow." Shares rebounded from a fall earlier in June on the back of CrowdStrike's first quarter results. The company posted adjusted earnings per share of $0.73 for the quarter, compared to a Bloomberg consensus estimate of $0.66, while revenue of $1.1bn was in line with expectations. On the Paris bourse, shares in Airbus ( were up 2.6% on Wednesday morning, after the aeronautics and space company reaffirmed its 2025 guidance. Airbus said in a statement on Wednesday, it extended the upper range of its dividend payout ratio to 30% to 50% from the current ratio of 30% to 40%. Stocks: Create your watchlist and portfolio The company also said it would keep its 2025 guidance unchanged. In its first quarter results, published at the end of April, Airbus said it was targeting adjusted earnings before interest and tax of around €7bn (£5.98bn). Shares rose after the release of its first quarter results, though the stock is up just 6.5% year-to-date. On the London market, shares in AO World (AO.L) were down nearly 3%, after the online electronics retailer flagged higher inflation costs. AO said that the largest increase in operational costs had been from those relating to employment and warned that this would only rise further in the 2026 fiscal year because of the changes to the minimum wage and employer national insurance contributions, which were announced in the autumn budget. "We anticipate that this is likely to continue for the next few years, and so we will increasingly look to mitigate these costs through automation, outsourcing and offshoring," AO said. However, in its full-year results, released on Wednesday, AO said revenue rose 9% to £1.14bn ($1.53bn), while adjusted profit before tax came was up 27% to £44m. Read more: UK inflation slows to 3.4% in May as transport costs ease Russ Mould, investment director at AJ Bell, said: "AO has rediscovered its spark, hoovering up a significant number of new customers and growing profits fast. More than 650,000 people bought from the electricals retailer for the first time over the past year, while repeat customers accounted for over 60% of orders. That suggests AO is doing something right with both marketing and service. "At face value, everything looks good until you dig into the numbers. The mobile arm continues to be problematic and that's acting as an anchor on the business." Mould added: "Costs are another headwind for AO and they're only going to get worse. Furthermore, potential legislative changes could create more problems if retailers are forced to take back a customer's old electrical product for free when they deliver a new one." Read more: Why the UK's AIM is struggling 30 years on What you need to know about UK's private stock market Pisces This under-claimed benefit could help boost your pensionError in retrieving data Sign in to access your portfolio Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data
New York Times
an hour ago
- New York Times
SpaceX Starship Rocket Explodes Before Test
A SpaceX Starship rocket exploded in a huge fireball on a test stand late Wednesday during preparations for its next launch at the Elon Musk-led company's base in South Texas. Starship experienced a 'major anomaly' before starting a test at around 11 p.m. local time, SpaceX said on social media. All personnel were safe and there were no hazards to the residents of nearby communities, SpaceX, a commercial space launch company, said. It warned people to not approach the area while it was conducting safety operations in conjunction with local officials at the test site and the surrounding area. The Federal Aviation Administration, which issues commercial space licenses, did not immediately respond to a request for comment made outside business hours. The largest and most powerful rocket ever built, Starship is central to Mr. Musk's dream of one day sending humans to Mars. It has had a mixed record so far, however, with multiple setbacks. Some test flights have ended in dramatic explosions. The last Starship mission in May sent the rocket to space but ended in an explosion caused by a propellant leak, which made the upper-stage vehicle spin out of control and break up, leaving debris falling into the Indian Ocean. Starship's seventh and eighth tests had also ended with the rockets exploding. The rockets are launched from SpaceX's complex in the recently incorporated town of Starbase in Cameron County, Texas. The Cameron County Precinct 1 Constable's Office said on social media that the rocket had exploded during a routine static fire test, and that no injuries were reported. It said that an investigation into the explosion was underway. A live video feed of the test by NASASpaceflight, an independent space media company that has cameras trained the SpaceX complex, showed an explosion so bright that it momentarily filled the entire screen in white. After that, a large fire was seen at the site. The feed showed a smaller fire burning into the early hours of Thursday.
