San Francisco Frontiers - Tesla launches self-driving 'Cybercab' in Texas

First unveiled in October 2024, the gold-colored vehicle has no pedals or steering wheel. With a capacity to carry two passengers, it was specifically designed to provide driverless taxi services.

CEO Elon Musk on Thursday posted an image on X of a Cybercab looming over the Texas capital city Austin, where Tesla is headquartered, a cloud of dust behind it.

Cybercabs have been seen in the streets of Austin leading up to the event, with passengers now seeing the option to choose the new vehicle in Tesla's updated dedicated app.

This is "humanity changing," Graham Sprigg, a tourist from Australia, told AFP.

"It'll change transportation from owning your own car to actually just getting transportation as a service, which is fantastic for disabled people and old people like I'm becoming," Sprigg added.

Musk forecast a "storm of Cybercabs" in Austin, where Tesla held an invite-only event at an entertainment venue, and which was not open to the media.

According to the Austin American-Statesman news outlet, event attendees were the first to get rides in driverless Cybercabs, which will become available to the public starting Friday.

Posts on social media showed fans arriving for the event, some dressed in gold to match the vehicle.

Tesla's posts touted what it called the vehicle's safety and ease of use for disabled people, and said the Cybercab was "democratizing clean transportation for all."

Last year Tesla debuted its self-driving cars in Austin using its Model Y SUV vehicles, with the "Robotaxi" service gradually expanding to several other cities in Texas, Florida and California.

However, state laws require many of the vehicles to have a human supervisor or driver ready to take over control if necessary.

Waymo, the self-driving vehicle subsidiary of Google parent company Alphabet, offers its services in 11 US cities.

Tesla had registered 314 robotaxis in Texas as of Wednesday, including 45 Cybercabs, according to FSD Database, based on data from the Texas Department of Motor Vehicles.

Itay Michaeli, an analyst at TD Securities, told AFP he expects a "slow launch" of the Cybercab similar to that of the Robotaxi. Tesla will likely take into account feedback from early users before expanding the service, he said.

Texas has regulations favorable to autonomous vehicles, making it one of the preferred testing grounds for many such services already in operation, such as Waymo and Zoox, or in trials, such as Motional.

"Tesla is really just getting started," said Anthony Townsend, a senior research associate at Cornell Tech, a policy research organization in New York.

It remains to be seen which company in the crowded field has the best business model, he said.

"It's always been the promise that AV taxi companies will become cheaper than human-driven rides, but it's not clear that's even within sight," Townsend said in a note, adding that it's not known either when the companies could break even.

S.Hall--SFF