Tesla will begin production of its CyberCab, a self-driving electric car without pedals or steering wheel, at its Austin, Texas, factory in April, CEO Elon Musk said at a shareholder meeting on Thursday.
His comments on CyberCab came just days after shareholders overwhelmingly approved a compensation package for Musk that could be worth $1 trillion in company stock, the largest in company history.
“The first vehicle specifically built for fully autonomous driving without supervision is a robotaxi called CyberCab. It has no pedals and no steering wheel,” Musk said, adding that there will also be no side mirrors. “It has been optimized for the lowest cost per mile in self-driving mode, and production is taking place at this factory, with production scheduled to begin in April next year.”
Despite years of promises, Tesla has yet to demonstrate that its cars can drive themselves at scale without safety monitors.
Musk’s comments appear to contradict Tesla Chairman Robin Denholm, who recently told Bloomberg that the CyberCab would include a steering wheel and pedals as a backup plan. Tesla once planned to build a version of its CyberCab with wheels and pedals, but Musk scrapped that idea and instead opted to build a very stripped-down version of its cheapest car.
Musk also touted the method of manufacturing the CyberCab, claiming that the production line’s cycle time would be 10 seconds. This is a significant increase from the one-minute assembly cycle time for the Model Y. Musk said this could result in production of 2 million to 3 million CyberCabs per year.
“So in the future you’re going to see these everywhere,” he said.
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Tesla first unveiled the CyberCab in October 2024 at a glitzy We Robot event at Warner Bros. Discovery Studios in California, promising to eventually sell it for personal use.
Since then, Tesla has launched a very bare-bones robotaxi service, but the proposed CyberCab was not. The service, which launched in June in some parts of Austin, uses Model Y SUVs equipped with what Musk describes as a new “unsupervised” version of Tesla’s fully self-driving software. In these self-driving cars, a Tesla employee will sit in the passenger seat.
Approval from federal regulators is required before the CyberCab or any other vehicle can be put on the road without standard equipment such as a steering wheel. Earlier this year, Amazon-backed Zoox managed to secure an exemption, but that only allowed it to demonstrate its custom-made robotaxis on public roads. Zoox continues to seek an exemption that would allow it to operate a commercial robotaxi service.
The regulatory process for these exemptions is long and onerous. General Motors, for example, unsuccessfully tried to get approval for a custom Cruise Origin vehicle. Waymo, the leading robotaxis service provider in the United States, is sticking to its modified Jaguar I-Pace vehicles with traditional controls. Waymo is also working with Zeekr to develop the vehicle.
Musk didn’t seem fazed by the possibility of regulators blocking his plans, thanking Waymo for “paving the way.”
“I think we can deploy every CyberCab that we make,” he said in response to a shareholder question at the company’s annual general meeting. “Once it becomes commonplace in cities, there will be less and less reason for regulators to say no.”
