GoKawiilis transportation editor with 10+ years of experience who covers EVs, public transportation, and aviation. His work has appeared in The New York Daily News and City & State.
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Believe it or not, the Tesla Cybercab is coming.
Nearly two years after Elon Musk first unveiled the gold-tinted, gull-wing door sporting, steering wheel-free two-seaters as the future of Tesla’s autonomy efforts, the company is finally putting them into operation as part of its robotaxi service in Austin, Texas. Public rides are here, and as Musk fans will assert, the era of Tesla’s robotaxi dominance will begin.
Or will it? Musk has bet his company — and his trillion-dollar pay package — on a stripped down, barebones autonomous driving system that eschews multiple sensors used by all of his rivals in favor of a camera-only approach. The Cybercab, as a purpose-built autonomous vehicle without traditional controls, embodies this bet. Musk believes he can forge his own path to robotaxi success — and the Cybercab is his gilded vehicle of choice. We’ll soon know if he’s in for a crash.
The Cybercab will be using a modified version of Tesla’s Full Self-Driving (FSD). For the company’s millions of vehicle owners, FSD remains a Level 2 driver assist feature that requires human supervision. In the Cybercab, it will be monitored by remote operators who theoretically can step in if there’s a problem.
FSD and Autopilot have been linked to dozens of fatalities and thousands of crashes. Using only cameras and an AI-powered neural net, the Cybercab will need to navigate a complex, unpredictable environment. Without conventional controls, there will be no human fallback in case the autonomous system fails. And after years of blaming crashes on their drivers, Tesla will now bear full legal responsibility if something goes awry.
For years, Musk has coasted on brash promises for an autonomous future. With tomorrow’s Cybercab launch, those promises are going to face harsh scrutiny that’s not easily overshadowed by rows of gleaming robot cars hitting the road.
Waymo’s new Ojai robotaxis (left) versus Tesla’s Cybercab (right). Gado via Getty Images
For over seven years, Musk has thumbed his nose at the conventional wisdom around self-driving cars — specifically that more sensors equals more safety. At Tesla’s inaugural “Autonomy Day” event for investors in 2019, he laid out his vision for a sleek, simplified autonomous driving system that avoided the protruding sensors of the Waymo cars of the time. The top target for his ire: lidar.
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