Tesla is preparing to launch its Cybercab in Austin, Texas, as soon as this month, according to a report from The Information. The gold-tinted, driverless vehicle is central to CEO Elon Musk’s plans for a robotaxi network, but the company is launching it amid ongoing questions about the readiness of its Full Self-Driving software. Tesla has been testing the vehicle on private roads since July and recently completed a training session with Austin first responders on how to move the cars in an emergency, city spokesperson Brad Cesak confirmed. The company’s Robotaxi account on X has also teased an imminent launch event, offering tickets to users who ride in its Model Y robotaxis.
The Cybercab relies on Tesla’s Full Self-Driving (Supervised) software, which the company claims is safer than human driving. Independent safety experts and federal regulators have disputed that claim, noting that the system requires constant driver supervision and remains under investigation by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration for traffic compliance failures. Tesla’s existing Robotaxi service has used human safety monitors in some markets for over a year, but the Cybercab is designed to operate without any human intervention. The company says it employs remote operators who can take over in an emergency, though experts question whether signal strength and latency could hurt response times; Tesla has begun adding Starlink to the vehicles to address connectivity concerns.
Data is another potential weakness. Musk said during an earnings call in July that the Cybercab’s unique platform requires its own specialized driving data before the company can deploy many of them on public roads. Ashok Elluswamy, Tesla’s head of AI, said on that same call that Tesla’s unsupervised robotaxis have driven 380,000 miles across six cities in two states. By comparison, Waymo, which has run a commercial robotaxi service since 2020, has logged over 220 million fully driverless miles on public roads - roughly 579 times more than Tesla. The crowdsourced Robotaxi Tracker shows Tesla operating 16 unsupervised vehicles in Austin, four in Dallas, and one in Houston.
Tesla has not submitted its safety claims for independent review, instead publishing its own statistics while working to block public scrutiny of data it provides to federal regulators. Waymo, in contrast, has published studies in peer-reviewed journals, and the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety recently found that Waymo’s crash rates over its first 50 million fully autonomous miles were significantly lower than those of human drivers. The Cybercab launch also comes at an unusual time for Tesla because the vehicle is the company’s lightest and most efficient EV, but it is geared toward commercial service rather than personal ownership, unlike the Model Y or Cybertruck. Musk has said buyers will eventually be able to purchase one, but the car lacks traditional controls like pedals and side mirrors, which federal safety rules require for public sale unless Tesla receives an exemption.
It is unknown whether Tesla is seeking such an exemption, though Amazon’s Zoox recently received permission to charge for rides in its purpose-built robotaxi. What is clear is that Tesla intends to roll out the Cybercab later this month, despite lingering safety questions and the limited scope of its current Robotaxi service. The launch will test whether the company’s technology is truly ready for commercial, driverless operation on public roads.
