The unusually muted Tesla Cybercab launch

At a private, closed-door event in Austin, Texas today, Tesla officially launched its gilded car of the future. It’s a huge milestone for Elon Musk, who has been hyping the imminent arrival of driverless cars for years and has bet the future of his company on AI, autonomous vehicles, and humanoid robots.

It was an unusually muted event: with no livestream, pro-Tesla accounts on X.com were left streaming the webpage that tracks the number of Tesla robotaxis in Texas. Like last year’s robotaxi launch, the invite list was mostly pro-Tesla influencers, so as to blunt any possible criticism of its new products. Invitee Chuck Cook said the company had him sign an NDA and agreed to an embargo requiring to wait to post content until after the event was over. On X, pro-Tesla accounts who weren’t invited grumbled aboutthe decision; Not a Tesla App accused the company of “dropping the ball.”

As of this week, Tesla has 45 Cybercab vehicles registered with the Texas Department of Motor Vehicles — though its not clear how many will be put into commercial service right away. Several vehicles were made available to Tesla influencers in Austin for content creation; the company has been testing them in various cities for months now. Tesla also launched a new website for its Robotaxi service, which includes the rules for riding in the new vehicle. For example, children under the age of 13 are currently banned from riding in the Cybercab. Several videos were posted, highlighting the interior, crash test worthiness, and accessibility. (The accessibility video was especially befuddling, showing a wheelchair user getting up to fold and stow his own wheelchair.)

With the new Cybercabs, Tesla now has 256 unsupervised autonomous vehicles in operation across six cities, according to Robotaxi Tracker. By comparison, Alphabet’s Waymo is currently operating approximately 4,000 vehicles across 14 cities.

But there were still many lingering questions about the Cybercab. Two years ago, Musk said the two-seater would be available for purchase, perhaps for a price as low as $30,000. But the company still has yet say when the Cybercab would go on sale. There is a new online form for those interested in “future Robotaxi opportunities,” such as purchasing a fleet of Cybercabs or building “mobility hubs and infrastructure.”

For the past year, Tesla has been operating a robotaxi service in Texas and Florida using several dozen modified Model Y vehicles, some of which are supervised by human safety drivers and some of which are not. With the introduction of the Cybercab, the company is embarking on a risky new phase that will pit Musk’s stripped-down, less costly approach to autonomy against more established players like Waymo.

The Cybercab, which was first introduced in 2024, is a two-seat sedan with gullwing-style doors and eight cameras that it uses to navigate the world without a driver. The vehicle lacks traditional controls, like steering wheel, pedals, and mirrors — as well as sensors commonly found on other robotaxis, like radar and lidar.

The Cybercab is also the lightest, most range-efficient vehicle Tesla has ever produced. According to documents filed with the Environmental Protection Agency, the Cybercab runs on a single front-mounted 219 horsepower permanent magnet motor with front-wheel drive, a compact 48kWh battery pack running at 326 volts, and a curb weight of just 3,113 pounds — making it roughly 700 pounds lighter than the lightest Model 3 on the market. That’s roughly the same as a gas-powered compact car, despite the fact that it’s still carrying a relatively heavy lithium-ion battery.

For years, Musk has been promising the imminent arrival of Tesla’s driverless cars, only time and time again to fall short of those predictions. He claimed that 50 percent of the US population would have access to Tesla’s robotaxis by the end of 2025. Today, the vehicles are only available in six cities in Texas and Florida. (Tesla is running a human-driven ridehail service in the San Francisco Bay Area, but has yet to apply for a driverless testing permit from California.)

For Tesla’s vehicle owners, there’s been a string of broken promises. In 2016, Musk promised that every vehicle Tesla produced from then on would have all the technology necessary for self-driving. Years later, he was forced to retract that claim, acknowledging that the hardware in some older vehicles was insufficient to support autonomous capabilities. Musk promised to retrofit those customers’ vehicles, but has yet to offer any details as to how that would work. Tesla is currently facing multiple lawsuits from customers and regulators claiming it has misled the public about its self-driving capabilities.

Today, the company’s $99-a-month Full Self-Driving feature is still just a Level 2 driver-assist system that requires constant human supervision. During Tesla’s first quarter earnings call this year, Musk promised that “unsupervised” FSD would be available to customer vehicles by the end of 2026 “at the earliest,” admitting that complex intersections, bad road markings, and weather were likely to slow the rollout.

Tesla’s fans will likely point to today’s Cybercab launch as a moment of enormous significance for the company. Investors already seem to agree, with Tesla’s stock price trading up nearly six points over the past five days. Analysts view robotaxis as one of the primary justifications for Tesla’s $1.18 trillion valuation, and the key that will unlock the company’s future. Tesla’s EV sales have slowed down in the face of rising competition, especially from China. And Musk has made massive investments in AI and robotics, with some speculating he could try to merge Tesla with the recently public SpaceXAI.

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