Tesla / Cybercab guide
Per NHTSA, Tesla’s purpose-built robotaxi lacks a permanently attached steering wheel and pedals. By Tesla’s own deck it started carrying Austin riders on 3 September 2026. This guide separates what Tesla has disclosed from what has only been reported and what is still a target.
01
Six numbers that matter, each with its label, date and source.
Cybercab rides in Austin
3 Sep 2026start date
Tesla's Q3 deck: "We started providing Robotaxi rides using Cybercabs on September 3 in Austin." Public booking opened the next day, per Not a Tesla App.
Disclosed As of 21 Oct 2026 Tesla, 21 Oct 2026 → · Not a Tesla App, 4 Sep 2026 →
Installed capacity, Giga Texas
>125,000vehicles a year
Tesla's own footnote: "Installed capacity ≠ current production rate." Tesla has not published how many Cybercabs it has built.
Disclosed As of 21 Oct 2026 Tesla, 21 Oct 2026 →
Cybercabs serving Austin
300+company claim
Tesla's Robotaxi account posted "300+ Cybercabs serving Austin – an 8x increase in 30 days". It is a count of vehicles in service, not of deliveries, and Tesla gave no breakdown.
Disclosed As of 10 Oct 2026 Tesla Robotaxi on X, 10 Oct 2026 →
NHTSA audit of the certification
AQ26002open since 3 Sep
NHTSA opened an audit query into the process Tesla relied on to certify a car that lacks permanently attached manual controls. Not a Tesla App reports 21 requests, due 30 Oct after a 30-day extension.
Disclosed As of 8 Oct 2026 NHTSA, 3 Sep 2026 → · Not a Tesla App, 8 Oct 2026 →
Cybercabs for customers
By end of 2026stated aim
On the Q3 call Lars Moravy said: "we're trying to get Cybercabs to customers by the end of this year, 2026". Today every Cybercab built goes to Tesla's own fleet, and Musk said most will stay Tesla-owned.
Target As of 21 Oct 2026 The Motley Fool, 22 Oct 2026 →
Cost target
<$30,000set in Oct 2024
At the 2024 reveal Musk said he "expects the cost to be below $30,000", per The Drive. Tesla has published no price since.
Target As of 10 Oct 2024 The Drive, 11 Oct 2024 →
02
Only features whose position is public are drawn. Everything else is listed below the picture.
The Drive described a two-door coupe with butterfly doors at the 2024 reveal. The door outline is schematic.
Car and Driver calls it a two-seat coupe; Not a Tesla App calls it a two-seater. Seat positions are not published, so none are drawn.
Car and Driver, 15 Jun 2026 → · Not a Tesla App, 4 Sep 2026 →
NHTSA: the vehicles lack permanently attached, conventional manual controls such as a brake pedal, gas pedal, steering wheel and mirrors.
Not a Tesla App: the app update added a pickup experience in which the car's front light bar glows a colour to show which Cybercab is yours.
Car and Driver: documents Tesla submitted to the EPA list a front-mounted electric motor of 219 hp.
A hidden NACS port for DC fast charging, per Not a Tesla App. Its location is not published, so it is not drawn.
Roughly 50 kWh per Car and Driver. Where the pack sits is not published, so it is not drawn.
03
The 2024 reveal against the car in Austin today, with a blank column for the version customers might get.
| Feature | 2024 reveal10 Oct 2024 | Production car2026, in Austin service | Customer versionNot shown |
|---|---|---|---|
| Body and seats | Two-door coupe with butterfly doors | Two seats | Not published |
| Driver controls | No steering wheel or pedals | No permanently attached brake pedal, gas pedal, steering wheel or mirrors | Not published |
| Charging | The Drive: "apparently" wireless (inductive), no traditional charge port | DC fast charging through a hidden NACS port; no onboard AC charger | Not published |
| Battery | Not published | Roughly 50 kWh, a very rough figure per the outlet | Not published |
| Range | Not published | Just under 280 miles, from lab figures in an EPA filing; not a measured real-world range | Not published |
| Motor and weight | Not published | 219 hp from a front-mounted motor, per Car and Driver (the filing also lists an all-wheel-drive test mode); 3,113 lb curb weight | Not published |
| Cost | Purchase below $30,000 (Musk: "cost"); about 20¢ a mile to run at scale | Not published | Not published |
| Ride fare | Not published | One community member's (@DavidMoss) same-route quote on 4 Sep: $7.77 Cybercab against $12.10 Model Y. A single trip, not a price list | Not published |
| Factory capacity | Not published | More than 125,000 a year installed at Giga Texas | Not published |
| Where it stands | Shown at the We Robot event | In Tesla's own Robotaxi fleet in Austin | Stated aim: customers by end of 2026 |
“Not published” means we found no figure from Tesla or a credible report, not that none exists. Tesla has not released a Cybercab spec sheet.
04
Installed capacity is not output. This table is arithmetic you can move, not a forecast.
More than 125,000 a year is what Tesla says Giga Texas is set up to build Disclosed Tesla, 21 Oct 2026 →. Tesla says that is not the current production rate, and has published no Cybercab-specific output. The 300+ cars serving Austin are a fleet count Disclosed Tesla Robotaxi on X, 10 Oct 2026 →, not output.
| If Tesla built | That is per year | Share of 125,000 | Weeks to 10,000 cars |
|---|---|---|---|
| 100 a week | 5,200 | 4% | 100 |
| 250 a week | 13,000 | 10% | 40 |
| 500 a week | 26,000 | 21% | 20 |
| 1,000 a week | 52,000 | 42% | 10 |
| 2,400 a week | 124,800 | 100% | 5 |
An illustration of arithmetic, not a forecast: no one outside Tesla knows its weekly output. 125,000 a year is about 2,404 a week, and Tesla’s figure is a floor. Shares are measured against exactly 125,000, so they run high if Tesla's real capacity is above it. The 10,000-car target is a round number we chose, not a Tesla target.
05
From the reveal to the open regulator question, newest last.
Milestone
Tesla shows a coupe robotaxi with no steering wheel or pedals, per The Drive. Musk says he expects the cost to be below $30,000 and production "before 2027".
Target
On the Q4 2025 call Musk says: "We expect to start production in April."
Tesla filing
Tesla's Q1 deck lists Cybercab at "Pilot Production" in its capacity table, says it prepared lines for the start of Cybercab production, and says Cybercab is "on schedule for volume production starting in 2026".
Report
Car and Driver reports a 219 hp front motor, 3,113 lb curb weight and a battery of roughly 50 kWh, from documents Tesla submitted to the EPA.
Tesla filing
Tesla says it started production of Cybercab, began engineering test drives of production cars on public roads, and began employee rides on its Giga Texas campus in July.
Milestone
Tesla's Q3 deck gives 3 September as the day it started providing Robotaxi rides in Cybercabs in Austin.
Regulator
NHTSA opens Audit Query AQ26002. It notes Tesla certified the Cybercab as compliant with all applicable federal standards, and that the vehicles lack permanently attached, conventional manual controls.
Milestone
Not a Tesla App reports Tesla opened Cybercab bookings to the general public in Austin at 5 p.m. local time.
Report
Not a Tesla App quotes Out of Spec Reviews' Kyle Conner after hands-on time in Austin: "It does not support AC charging." The Drive had reported the 2024 car appeared to use wireless charging; Not a Tesla App says Tesla still intends to introduce wireless charging for the Robotaxi fleet.
Regulator
Not a Tesla App reports Tesla asked for eight more weeks to answer 21 requests; NHTSA granted 30 days, moving the deadline from 30 September to 30 October.
Milestone
Tesla's Robotaxi account says the fleet is "300+", up eightfold in 30 days.
Tesla filing
Tesla lists Cybercab installed capacity above 125,000 a year at Giga Texas, with the footnote that installed capacity is not the current production rate.
Target
Lars Moravy says Tesla is trying to get Cybercabs to customers by the end of 2026. Asked how the Cybercab fleet scales past Austin, Ashok Elluswamy says "next month, we'll be launching in Dallas", and CFO Vaibhav Taneja says Tesla plans to bring Cybercab to other cities before the end of the year. No dates beyond that were given. Speakers per The Motley Fool's machine-assisted transcript.
Report
Munro Live posts a video in which Tesla's Lars Moravy and @EricETesla walk through the Cybercab's engineering, design and technology.
Target
The extended deadline, per Not a Tesla App, for Tesla's answers to the special order. NHTSA's findings, if any, will be added here.
06
What Tesla and Musk said about robotaxis and the Cybercab, and what happened.
Said by Elon Musk. Due .
“we expect to be in production with the Cybercab in probably—well, I tend to be a little optimistic with the timeframes—in 2026. So, yeah. Before 2027”
Met inside the year; how many cars exist is still unpublished.
Latest evidence: Tesla says more than 300 Cybercabs are serving Austin. Teslarati, 11 Oct 2026 →
Said at: The Drive → Ledger last verified 15 Oct 2026
Said by Elon Musk. Due .
“We expect to start production in April.”
The ledger counts CNET's 24 April report that production began.
Latest evidence: CNET reported Cybercab production had begun, at a "very slow" initial rate. CNET, 24 Apr 2026 →
Said at: The Motley Fool → Ledger last verified 15 Oct 2026
Said by Elon Musk. Due .
“I think can be very powerful product where we aspire to reach volume production in 2024”
The earlier dedicated-robotaxi deadline that passed without a car.
Latest evidence: Cybercab production began in April 2026; Musk said early production would be "very slow". CNET, 24 Apr 2026 →
Said at: TechCrunch → Ledger last verified 15 Oct 2026
Said by Elon Musk. Due .
“next year for sure, we'll have over a million robotaxis on the road”
The oldest robotaxi promise on the ledger.
Latest evidence: Tesla's official Robotaxi page lists rides in six US metro areas (Austin, Dallas, Houston, Miami, Orlando and Tampa), far from a million vehicles. Tesla, 15 Oct 2026 →
Said at: TechCrunch → Ledger last verified 15 Oct 2026
Said by Elon Musk. Due .
“we do expect to be operating robotaxi in, I think, about 8 to 10 metro areas by the end of the year”
Context for how fast the service has really spread.
Latest evidence: Tesla's Robotaxi page lists six metro areas. Tesla, 15 Oct 2026 →
Said at: Signals.ai → Ledger last verified 15 Oct 2026
Said by Elon Musk. Due .
“The safety driver is just there for the first few months to be extra safe. Should be no safety driver by end of year.”
Context for unsupervised service.
Latest evidence: Tesla lists autonomous rides in Austin, Dallas, Houston, Miami, Orlando and Tampa. Tesla, 15 Oct 2026 →
Said at: Teslarati → Ledger last verified 15 Oct 2026
Said by Elon Musk. Due .
“We expect to have fully autonomous vehicles in probably somewhere between a quarter and half of the United States by the end of the year, pending regulatory approval.”
Still open, due 31 Dec 2026.
Latest evidence: Tesla lists robotaxi rides in six US metro areas: Austin, Dallas, Houston, Miami, Orlando and Tampa. Tesla, 15 Oct 2026 →
Said at: The Motley Fool → Ledger last verified 15 Oct 2026
Wording, status and evidence come from our promise tracker, so a correction there appears here.
07
Tesla, Waymo and Zoox in their own published figures.
| Measure | Tesla | Waymo | Zoox |
|---|---|---|---|
| Driverless miles | Nearly 2 million cumulative unsupervised Robotaxi miles, end of Q3 2026 | Over 270 million miles of fully autonomous operation, through the end of June 2026 | Not covered in this table |
| Where | Cybercab deployed in Austin | Service in its fifteenth U.S. city as of September; scaling in five cities from 27 Oct | Its site lists Las Vegas, San Francisco, Austin, Miami, Atlanta and Los Angeles under Where to Ride (a listing, not a service status) |
| Stated plans | Other cities for Cybercab before the end of 2026 | Not covered in this table | Not covered in this table |
| Vehicle | Purpose-built Cybercab with no permanently attached manual controls (NHTSA), alongside Model Y Robotaxis (Q3 call) | Not covered in this table | Purpose-built, no manual controls; it petitioned NHTSA for an exemption, which Tesla did not |
Company-published figures, except cells marked Reported. Baidu Apollo Go is left out because we could not open a figure from Baidu itself. “Unsupervised” (Tesla) and “fully autonomous” (Waymo) are each company’s own wording; the miles are not like for like.
08
Primary material and walkthroughs, shown as text first. The video loads only when you ask.
Munro Live's post says the full video is live on YouTube and thanks Lars Moravy, @EricETesla and the Tesla team "for taking the time to walk us through the Cybercab and share the engineering, design, and technology behind it." We have not summarised the video here: read the post and watch it for the details.
The full video is now live on @YouTube!
— Munro Live (@live_munro) October 26, 2026
A big thank you to @larsmoravy, @EricETesla, and the rest of the Tesla team for taking the time to walk us through the Cybercab and share the engineering, design, and technology behind it.
09
Buying, price, range, charging and legality, answered from the sources.
Not yet. On the Q3 call Lars Moravy said Tesla is trying to get Cybercabs to customers by the end of 2026, and that today all of them go to Tesla's own Robotaxi fleet. Elon Musk added that "the vast majority of the Cybercab stuff will be essentially Tesla-owned and transport as a service." Tesla has published no order page, price or delivery terms.
Tesla has not published a price. At the 2024 reveal Musk said he expected the cost to be below $30,000. That is a target from two years ago, not a quote.
NHTSA's audit notes the vehicles lack permanently attached, conventional manual controls such as a brake pedal, gas pedal, steering wheel and mirrors. NHTSA is examining how Tesla certified a car like that.
Tesla's Q3 deck says it started providing Robotaxi rides using Cybercabs on 3 September 2026 in Austin. Not a Tesla App reports public booking opened the next day.
Tesla says 300+ serve Austin (10 October). It has not published a production total. The >125,000 a year figure is installed capacity, which Tesla itself says is not the current production rate. For registrations and live counts use the live tracker.
Tesla has not published either. Car and Driver reports a battery of roughly 50 kWh and just under 280 miles from lab figures in an EPA filing, and calls them very rough estimates.
The Drive reported after the 2024 reveal that the car appeared to feature wireless (inductive) charging and no traditional charge port. Not a Tesla App reports that the cars in Austin use a hidden NACS port for DC fast charging, and quotes reviewer Kyle Conner that the car "does not support AC charging". It adds that Tesla still intends to introduce wireless charging for the fleet. Tesla has not published a charging spec.
Tesla told NHTSA it certified the cars as compliant with all applicable federal safety standards. NHTSA opened an audit query on 3 September to examine that certification, including where Tesla decided a standard did not apply. Not a Tesla App reports Tesla's answers to 21 requests are due 30 October. An audit query is a fact-finding step, not a finding of non-compliance.
Austin, per Tesla. On the Q3 call Ashok Elluswamy, asked how the Cybercab fleet scales past Austin, said "next month, we'll be launching in Dallas", and Vaibhav Taneja said Tesla plans to bring Cybercab to other cities before the end of the year. Tesla's Robotaxi service already runs elsewhere with Model Y cars; see the live tracker for cities.
Tesla has published no Cybercab spec sheet. Anything that comes from a news report, a filing read by a journalist or a reviewer's remark is marked Reported, never Disclosed.
10
Corrections are shown here, never silently rewritten.
11
Everything cited above, with the date we opened it.