They're never reaching orbital velocity on purpose. The reason is that they're still proving that they can fire rockets and deorbit under control; until they do that, any problem automatically puts the ship in the ocean no matter what while if they go to orbit and can't control the deorbit they end up possibly causing a disaster.

Now, they are getting it to pretty damn close to orbital velocity... which is why saying they still haven't reached orbit is a bit silly. They're clearly technically able to reach orbit if they really want to... that they haven't proved they can safely leave orbit is the problem.