Elon Musk’s vision of a future where people let their cars do all the driving has taken a giant leap forward as Tesla launches its new car. bizarre rudderless Cybercab on the streets of Austin, Texas.
The sleek, gold-colored two-seater looks more like a futuristic concept car than a vehicle you’d hail for a ride.
And there is one particularly striking difference: the vehicle has no steering wheel, no pedals and no side or rear-view mirrors.
Tesla began offering Cybercab rides in limited areas of Austin on September 3, allowing members of the public to book the futuristic vehicles through the Robotaxi app.
This move marks an important milestone for Musk, who has promised for years that Tesla would become a powerhouse in the field of autonomous driving.
But it also shows how far the company still has to go before its vision of millions of self-driving cars becomes a reality.
The intention is for the Cybercab to eventually become the centerpiece of Tesla’s robotaxi network. Unlike the company’s existing Robotaxi service, which uses modified Model Y vehicles and sometimes includes a human safety monitor, the purpose-built Cybercab is designed from the start for autonomous driving.
Tesla says the cars navigate using cameras and neural networks rather than technologies such as lidar, which uses lasers to build three-dimensional maps of the environment.
The Cybercab was first unveiled by Musk at a glitzy event in California in October 2024
Tesla on Thursday began offering Cybercab rides in limited areas of Austin, allowing members of the public to book the futuristic vehicles through the Robotaxi app
The company has promoted this approach as a way to keep costs down.
The Cybercab was first unveiled by Musk at a glitzy event in California in October 2024, when he envisioned a future where autonomous Teslas could function as self-driving taxis while their owners weren’t using them.
At the time, Musk said the vehicle would cost less than $30,000 when it eventually goes on sale. That day has not yet arrived.
Production of the Cybercab began in April, but Musk has warned that initial production would be “very slow.” Tesla has installed production capacity for more than 125,000 Cybercabs per year, but only a small portion of that number is currently underway.
Texas data showed Tesla had registered 45 Cybercabs for autonomous driving on Thursday, part of a broader autonomous fleet of 420 vehicles in Texas.
By comparison, Waymo, widely considered the U.S. leader in self-driving cars, had 988 autonomous vehicles registered in Texas.
The gap is significant because Musk has previously made some extremely ambitious predictions about the technology.
He had said Tesla would have autonomous taxi services available to half of the US by the end of 2025 and projected millions of robotaxis would be operational by the end of 2026. Those objectives have not been achieved.
There were plenty of Tesla enthusiasts and investors in Austin eager to document the arrival by posting photos and videos of themselves driving the new vehicles
Production of the Cybercab began in April, but Musk has warned that initial production would be “very slow.”
Tesla launched its Austin robotaxi pilot in June 2025 and has since expanded the service to a handful of other cities in Texas and Florida.
Real-world experiences have also revealed some growing pains.
There were reports of long wait times when testing Tesla’s service in Dallas and Houston, with some trips ending about a 15-minute walk from the requested destination despite being within the advertised service area.
The latest Cybercab rollout could therefore be an important test of whether Tesla can turn its ambitious promises into a reliable service that ordinary consumers will actually want to use.
There’s another hurdle: regulations. Federal safety rules generally require conventional human controls, meaning vehicles without steering wheels and pedals face restrictions on how they can be deployed and sold.
The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration said it was in contact with Tesla and was evaluating the Cybercab rollout.
California poses an even bigger obstacle for Tesla. The company currently does not have permits to operate a robotaxi service there or test self-driving vehicles without a safety driver who can take over.
Tesla, meanwhile, hasn’t said exactly when Austin passengers will start paying fares for Cybercab rides. Executives have indicated that dynamic pricing is planned, meaning prices could increase when demand is high.
Regulations are another hurdle to the Cybercab rollout. Federal safety rules generally require conventional human controls, meaning vehicles without steering wheels and pedals face restrictions on how they can be deployed and sold
However, for some Austin residents who saw the futuristic cars appear on their streets, the response was considerably less enthusiastic.
One commenter in Reddit’s Austin community summed up their feelings bluntly: “I’d rather walk.”
Another simply wrote: ‘Hard pass.’
Others took aim at the Cybercab’s unusual styling, with one describing it as one of the ugliest vehicles they had ever seen and comparing its appearance to a cheap concept car from the late 1990s.
But there were also plenty of Tesla enthusiasts and investors in Austin eager to document the arrival by posting photos and videos of themselves driving the new vehicles.
For Musk, the stakes are enormous.
Tesla’s electric vehicle business faces increasing competition, especially from Chinese manufacturers, as investors increasingly see artificial intelligence and autonomous driving as crucial to the company’s future.
The Cybercab is therefore more than a special new taxi.
It’s Musk’s latest attempt to convince consumers – and investors – that Tesla’s greatest future may not involve selling cars that people can drive.
