It's nice that it has this capability, but it's still not an ideal Mars lander, and I think the economics work out that it's cheaper to design a new ship than to send a non-ideal ship all the way to Mars.
For instance, the Dragon's heat shield is (I assume) far heavier than it needs to be for a Mars entry. A purpose-built Mars lander could be made significantly lighter than a purpose-built Earth lander, and sending unneccessary weight to Mars winds up expensive.
Besides, there's going to be a lot of custom hardware needed for a manned Mars mission anyway. At a minimum you'll need a large "Command Module" for the astronauts to travel in (sitting in a Dragon ain't gonna cut it for a one-year voyage) and a custom-built Mars takeoff craft.
I went and carefully read the statement. It says the capsule can carry crew, and that the capsule can land on Mars. It did not say that the capsule can carry crew to Mars, which is a wildly different thing. I think the Register added that accidentally.
I don't think that's possible, because solving the equations to carry enough supplies to get the crew to Mars alive while still being able to stop when you get there almost certainly has no solution with any capsule primarily designed to get to Earth orbit. On the other hand, merely getting hardware to Mars if you don't care how long it takes can be relatively low energy [1], which would also be an orbit not requiring a lot of propellant to enter Mars orbit.
For instance, the Dragon's heat shield is (I assume) far heavier than it needs to be for a Mars entry. A purpose-built Mars lander could be made significantly lighter than a purpose-built Earth lander, and sending unneccessary weight to Mars winds up expensive.
Besides, there's going to be a lot of custom hardware needed for a manned Mars mission anyway. At a minimum you'll need a large "Command Module" for the astronauts to travel in (sitting in a Dragon ain't gonna cut it for a one-year voyage) and a custom-built Mars takeoff craft.