Tesla has been telling its own staff that the Cybercab is nearly ready to start carrying people in public, and the timeline is a lot tighter than most people were expecting.
The Information reported Monday, citing people with knowledge of the plans, that the company is gearing up for a public launch in Austin, Texas as soon as this month, with the end of August as the internal target.
The rollout won’t begin with paying riders, since Tesla plans to start by offering Cybercab rides to its own employees on public roads before folding the vehicles into the existing Austin robotaxi service a few days later.
Tesla’s Austin robotaxi service has never used a Cybercab, running instead on Model Y vehicles fitted with Full Self-Driving software, so this would be the first time the car built for the job actually does it.
The Cybercab is a two-seater built without a steering wheel or a brake pedal, making it the first Tesla a person physically cannot drive from the inside, and Musk has long framed it as the company’s main future source of revenue.
Tesla has been testing Cybercabs on public roads since June while keeping the rides internal, and in July it began giving employees rides on private roads around its Austin campus, roughly the sequence it followed before opening its first robotaxi hub there last year. Emergency training with Austin first responders wrapped up last week.
Musk explained the caution on the July earnings call, saying the new platform meant Tesla had to “accumulate driving data that is specific to the Cybercab” before deploying large numbers. Tesla’s regulatory status for commercial service remains unclear, and Uber and Lyft shares both fell on the news.
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