Gold Without a Wheel, Tesla’s Cybercab Takes Austin

Gold two-seaters with butterfly doors rolled through downtown Austin on Thursday, September 3, and none of them had a steering wheel. Tesla used an invite-only gathering at ACL Live to put its purpose-built Cybercab into the same Robotaxi app that has already been carrying paying riders in Model Y SUVs since June 2025. Guests got the first spins Thursday evening. Broader public hails in a limited Austin zone were set to open Friday.

Musk spent the day publishing some pretty wild stuff about a “storm of Cybercabs” and a big gold automobile hanging out in the skyline. Meanwhile, Tesla’s own promotional materials described the vehicle as “the first car developed from the ground up to be utilized for fully unsupervised self-driving.” Staff were unloading items from a truck onto the pavement outside ACL Live, while police were verifying people’s IDs.

For those who didn’t see them, it’s essentially a two-person lounge on wheels with a large 22-inch screen for watching videos, listening to music, or playing games. Musk describes it as “a super comfortable lounge on wheels with a great TV and epic sound.” Plus, with Starlink v5 gear installed, the robotaxi will be able to stream 4K even when your phone signal is down. Oh, and there are no pedals, so if something goes wrong, you won’t be able to grab the steering wheel either because there isn’t one.

Tesla was given some information regarding the hardware specifications a few months ago when they filed some papers with the EPA. That explains why they went this method rather than simply installing autonomy software on a Model Y. So here are the hard numbers: 3,113 pounds (which isn’t bad for something this huge) and a single front motor producing 219 horsepower that drives only the front wheels. The battery is only 48 kilowatt-hours, which isn’t a bad thing because the lab range of 418 miles before the normal shutdown translates to approximately 290 to 300 miles in the real world. What about the efficiency? A really mediocre 165 watt-hours per mile, which is the lowest they’ve ever achieved on a production EV. This is not always a negative thing, because a taxi car that runs for 20 hours a day must be inexpensive to operate.

There are now 45 Cybercabs registered with the state of Texas, which will join the statewide pool of about 420 Tesla robotaxis, the majority of which are Model Ys. Waymo continues to operate a much, much larger unattended fleet in a variety of locales, and Tesla claims nearly 380,000 miles of unsupervised mileage this year alone. Their competitors are still talking about hundreds of millions. Scale was the main topic of discussion in Austin on Thursday.

Now that the app has been upgraded, service rules have become much tighter. Riders can now hail a Cybercab or a Tesla Model Y, but children must be 13 or older to enter one of the two-seaters. Coverage for the new Cybercabs is limited to areas of Austin, as the Model Ys have been running in other Texas and Florida towns for some time, but the Cybercabs have yet to arrive. When it comes to future rates, Tesla has talked about an operating cost of around 20 cents per mile and a rider price of 30 to 40 cents per mile until things really take off, which is still a long way off. The bottom line is that no one is there yet.

Production of the Cybercab began in February at Gigafactory Texas, although the complete line was not operational until April. Then, in June, they began doing engineering tests on the streets of Austin, frequently with a monitor in the passenger seat to keep an eye on things. Unsupervised sightings began in late August, and Musk believes private buyers would be able to purchase a Cybercab for less than $30,000 by the end of 2026.
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