Tesla’s long-promised and long-awaited robotaxi finally has a shape and a shipping date. Elon Musk unveiled the two-seater autonomous Cybercab during a special event at Warner Bros’s studios in Hollywood. The location was perfect for unveiling a car with no steering wheel that resembles a sci-fi cinema prop vehicle. 

Musk said the Cybercab will start production in 2026, will cost around $30.000, will charge with an inductive system, and will begin to operate in California with an expected long-term operational cost of about 20 cents a mile. 
The event used many more future-tense sentences than investors would have been comfortable with, especially considering that key details about the vehicle are still missing. 

Instead, Musk doubled down on unsubstantiated promises, unveiling just another prototype of a bus-like autonomous pod called Cybervan, supposedly capable of transporting twenty people simultaneously. Apart from some more fancy renderings, that’s all that Tesla had to share about it, which is less than what you’d get from an average 3D-modeling student thesis project.

Back in 2019, Elon Musk promised that Tesla robotaxis would be roaming the streets at the latest by 2020. Now the deadline has shifted to 2026/2027. Still, the absolute lack of details on Tesla’s roadmap classifies this as another attempt at moving the goalpost once again to avoid public scrutiny and the investors’ ire.

In the meantime, just a few miles south of where Musk’s glitzy Los Angeles event was held, Waymo’s autonomous robotaxis are already operating successfully, proving that what Tesla needs right now is more focus and effective engineering rather than just another party full of California celebrities and empty promises.