Tesla Teases Cybercab Details Ahead of Austin Event
Ahead of a Thursday demonstration in Austin, Tesla posted "no steering wheel, no pedals" as videos showed Cybercabs on public streets.
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Austin Event and the Teasers
Tesla's Robotaxi business posted "no steering wheel, no pedals" on the social platform X on Wednesday, a reference to the Cybercab driverless vehicle the company plans to detail at an event in Austin, Texas, on Thursday. Another post from the account invited riders to "try it out" in Austin. Chief executive Elon Musk added a pinned post reading "A storm of Cybercabs."
CNBC reported that the comments came ahead of the planned Austin event, where Tesla is expected to share more Cybercab details. The company first showed the vehicle's design almost two years ago. Investor's Business Daily reported that Thursday's product demonstration is likely to mark the Cybercab's official introduction.
The Vehicle Itself
Tesla designed the Cybercab as a driverless two-seater that it says will have no steering wheel and no pedals. CNBC described the vehicle as having butterfly doors, while Investor's Business Daily described matte gold Cybercabs with scissor doors and multicolor lights. The company has been testing a version of the purpose-built robotaxi with human drivers and traditional controls in several U.S. markets.
New Street Research analyst Pierre Ferragu and Tesla fans posted video clips on X on Wednesday showing Cybercab vehicles circulating on public streets in Austin, with no steering wheel and no driver on board.
Fleet Size and the Waymo Comparison
The cars Tesla sells today use a system called FSD, short for Full Self-Driving (Supervised), which requires a human driver to stay at the wheel, ready to steer or brake at any time. One Tesla Robotaxi tracker cited by CNBC estimates the company had just over 200 vehicles in its U.S. fleet registered as "unsupervised," meaning able to operate without a human on board, at least within geofenced areas of certain cities. Those vehicles have logged trips in Austin, Dallas, Houston, Miami, Orlando and Tampa, Florida, according to the tracker.
Tesla also runs a chartered car service in the San Francisco area called the FSD (Supervised) Rideshare service, using newer Model Y cars driven by Tesla employees. Passengers hail them through the Tesla Robotaxi-branded app. Google's Waymo, by comparison, runs a commercial robotaxi service in 14 U.S. cities with a fleet of about 4,000 driverless vehicles on U.S. roads, and is testing in more markets.
Open Questions
Since at least 2016, Musk has told fans and investors that a Tesla able to drive itself across the country without human intervention was near. CNBC notes that this still has not happened. Bullish investors are betting the company will soon put large numbers of robotaxis on the road in several U.S. cities as it tries to cut into Waymo's early lead.
The available sources do not say when Cybercab production will begin, what the vehicle will cost, or how many Tesla intends to build. CNBC's reference to a Morgan Stanley note written ahead of the event is cut off in the text available, so the bank's position is not known.
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