Elon Musk introduced the Starlink Mini on X recently, and showed off a few of its unique new features.
We’ve updated this article with additional Starlink information such as pricing and mobile data plan.
SpaceX has now officially begun sales of the Starlink Mini to select early customers.
Specs
The Starlink Mini is about the size of a 14” laptop or Macbook, which means it is ultra-portable and can fit inside a backpack for easy carry. While it doesn’t appear to support power over USB-C, it does come with a 12V barrel jack and RJ45 Ethernet jack, as well as built-in Wi-Fi support. As for the Wi-Fi support, expect Wi-Fi 6 with 802.11ax and 3x3 MiMO support on 2.4Ghz and 5Ghz bands. It has also been confirmed to have mesh support, which means you can link multiple Starlink Minis or Starlinks together to create a mesh Wi-Fi network.
The Starlink Mini will be 63% lighter than the standard Starlink dish, and about the size of a piece standard-sized paper.
Price
The most interesting part of this is the fact that it is expected to cost half of what current Starlink dishes cost – so within the $250 to $300 USD price range. Elon Musk, while unclear, also implied that the subscription price would also be lower for the Starlink Mini, enabling more affordable internet access.
For now, the United States limited offering places the price at $599.
SpaceX’s goal is to reduce the forward-looking price of the Mini, especially for regions around the world where connectivity is unaffordable or unavailable. However, in regions with high Starlink saturation - like North America, Starlink Mini places additional demand on the satellite network.
Roam Data Service
The Starlink Mini features a “Mini Roam” service, which is an additional $30/mo for 50GB of Mobile data that can be used anywhere in the United States, and is $1/GB for additional data. The Mini Roam service requires you to continue your regular Residential Starlink Service, even while roaming.
Speed
Of course, with a loss in size also comes a loss in speed – even if it’s still blazing fast. The Starlink Mini seemed to cap out at around 100 Mbps at a latency of 23ms, which is about half as fast as the top speeds for a regular Starlink dish, but with similar latency.
Even with the loss of speed, this is still more than fast enough to play video games and stream 4K video. Perhaps not at the same time, but the Mini is clearly designed for a single user.
Update: The Starlink Mini is indeed capped to 100Mbps max download speeds.
Starlink for Tesla?
The Mini is a good first step for possibly bringing Starlink capabilities to Tesla cars, which Elon Musk confirmed in 2022. Some enterprising users have either suction-cupped or mounted their starlinks to their glass Tesla roofs, or with special mounts for the Cybertruck already. The Mini will be a key item for going camping in your Tesla in the future - perhaps with the new Model Y Air Mattress!
Tesla could one day offer Starlink connectivity in Teslas, either as a backup to cellular connectivity or as a main source. However, Starlink connectivity requires line-of-sight, which likely means that Tesla would still require a cellular connection in their vehicles for times when vehicles don’t have a clear view of the sky. Using Starlink could help lower Tesla’s bandwidth costs and improve connectivity in remote areas.
Interestingly enough, some Superchargers already have Starlink functionality, with a transparent experience of vehicles automatically connecting to Supercharger Wi-Fi for data, including for Software Updates!
Release Dates
Musk mentioned that while the Starlink Mini isn’t available just yet, it will be rolling out to select areas in the next few months. Nothing further has emerged on where these areas are, but we could expect them to be in North America, where Starlink has done most of the new dish testing, such as with the more recent Starlink Flat High-Performance dishes.
Update: Starlink Mini has begun rolling out to early Starlink customers in the United States. No word yet on other regions.
Tesla recently showed off a demo of Optimus, its humanoid robot, walking around in moderately challenging terrain—not on a flat surface but on dirt and slopes. These things can be difficult for a humanoid robot, especially during the training cycle.
Most interestingly, Milan Kovac, VP of Engineering for Optimus, clarified what it takes to get Optimus to this stage. Let’s break down what he said.
Optimus is Blind
Optimus is getting seriously good at walking now - it can keep its balance over uneven ground - even while walking blind. Tesla is currently using just the sensors, all powered by a neural net running on the embedded computer.
Essentially, Tesla is building Optimus from the ground up, relying on as much additional data as possible while it trains vision. This is similar to how they train FSD on vehicles, using LiDAR rigs to validate the vision system’s accuracy. While Optimus doesn’t have LiDAR, it relies on all those other sensors on board, many of which will likely become simplified as vision takes over as the primary sensor.
Today, Optimus is walking blind, but it’s able to react almost instantly to changes in the terrain underneath it, even if it falls or slips.
What’s Next?
Next up, Tesla AI will be adding vision to Optimus - helping complete the neural net. Remember, Optimus runs on the same overall AI stack as FSD - in fact, Optimus uses an FSD computer and an offshoot of the FSD stack for vision-based tasks.
Milan mentions they’re planning on adding vision to help the robot plan ahead and improve its walking gait. While the zombie shuffle is iconic and a little bit amusing, getting humanoid robots to walk like humans is actually difficult.
There’s plenty more, too - including better responsiveness to velocity and direction commands and learning to fall and stand back up. Falling while protecting yourself to minimize damage is something natural to humans - but not exactly natural to something like a robot. Training it to do so is essential in keeping the robot, the environment around it, and the people it is interacting with safe.
We’re excited to see what’s coming with Optimus next because it is already getting started in some fashion in Tesla’s factories.
In a relatively surprising move, GM announced that it is realigning its autonomy strategy and prioritizing advanced driver assistance systems (ADAS) over fully autonomous vehicles.
GM is effectively closing Cruise (autonomous) and focusing on its Super Cruise (ADAS) feature. The engineering teams at Cruise will join the GM teams working on Super Cruise, effectively shuttering the fully autonomous vehicle business.
End of Cruise
GM cites that “an increasingly competitive robotaxi market” and “considerable time and resources” are required for scaling the business to a profitable level. Essentially - they’re unable to keep up with competitors at current funding and research levels, putting them further and further behind.
Cruise has been offering driverless rides in several cities, using HD mapping of cities alongside vehicles equipped with a dazzling array of over 40 sensors. That means that each cruise vehicle is essentially a massive investment and does not turn a profit while collecting data to work towards Autonomy.
Cruise has definitely been on the back burner for a while, and a quick glance at their website - since it's still up for now - shows the last time they officially released any sort of major news packet was back in 2019.
Competition is Killer
Their current direct competitor - Waymo, is funded by Google, which maintains a direct interest in ensuring they have a play in the AI and autonomy space.
Interestingly, this news comes just a month after Tesla’s We, Robot event, where they showed off the Cybercab and the Robotaxi network, as well as plans to begin deployment of the network and Unsupervised FSD sometime in 2025. Tesla is already in talks with some cities in California and Texas to launch Robotaxi in 2025.
GM Admits Tesla Has the Right Strategy
As part of the business call following the announcement, GM admitted that Tesla’s end-to-end and Vision-based approach towards autonomy is the right strategy. While they say Cruise started down that path, they’re putting aside their goals towards fully autonomous vehicles for now and focusing on introducing that tech in Super Cruise instead.
NEWS: GM just admitted that @Tesla’s end-to-end approach to autonomy is the right strategy.
“That’s where the industry is pivoting. Cruise had already started making headway down that path. We are moving to a foundation model and end-to-end approach going forward.” pic.twitter.com/ACs5SFKUc3
With GM now focusing on Super Cruise, they’ll put aside autonomy and instead focus solely on ADAS features to relieve driver stress and improve safety. While those are positive goals that will benefit all road users, full autonomy is really the key to removing the massive impact that vehicle accidents have on society today.
In addition, Super Cruise is extremely limited, cannot brake for traffic controls, and doesn’t work in adverse conditions - even rain. It can only function when lane markings are clear, there are no construction zones, and there is a functional web connection.
The final key to the picture is that the vehicle has to be on an HD-mapped and compatible highway - essentially locking Super Cruise to wherever GM has time to spend mapping, rather than being functional anywhere in a general sense, like FSD or Autopilot.
Others Impressed - Licensing FSD
Interestingly, some other manufacturers have also weighed into the demise of Cruise. BMW, in a now-deleted post, said that a demo of Tesla’s FSD is “very impressive.” There’s a distinct chance that BMW and other manufacturers are looking to see what Tesla does next.
BMW chimes in on a now-deleted post. The Internet is forever, BMW!
Not a Tesla App
It seems that FSD has caught their eyes after We, Robot - and that the demonstrations of FSD V13.2 online seem to be the pivot point. At the 2024 Shareholder Meeting earlier in the year, Elon shared the fact that several manufacturers had reached out, looking to understand what was required to license FSD from Tesla.
There is a good chance 2025 will be the year we’ll see announcements of the adoption of FSD by legacy manufacturers - similar to how we saw the surprise announcements of the adoption of the NACS charging standard.
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