Support CleanTechnica's work througha Substack subscription,on Patreon, oron Stripe. Help us produce all of thehigh-quality, original content we publish week after weekdespite the challenges of content-scraping AI, antisocial media, inflation, and other hurdles.Tesla is planning to genuinely launch its Cybercab in coming weeks, or days. It is going to be launched on September 3 in Austin, Texas. Invitations for the event have started getting sent out to specific fans, investors, influencers, etc.
Note that while Cybercabs have been spotted in testing with steering wheels, the car is supposed to have no steering wheel and no pedals when it launches. Of course, that means that Tesla’s autonomous driving software needs to be fully ready for these cars when they hit the road. As we know, Tesla has a very limited deployment of robotaxis in a few cities, but given that the company has started producing Cybercabs, the implication is that it’s going to ramp up that fleet rapidly — so the software HAS to be ready.
Does Elon Musk think that the time is now to exponentially ramp up robotaxi deployment, or has he just forced himself into a corner and needs to launch the Cybercab one way or another? Remember that the company was supposed to have robotaxis covering more than 50% of the US population by the end of 2025. But missing that target didn’t necessarily matter in a practical sense since Tesla wasn’t producing vehicles that couldn’t be driven by humans.
With the launch on September 3, is Tesla going to just trickle out some Cybercabs as another high-hype, low-real-world-output event? Or is the company going to actually just start rollout out Cybercabs in the thousands and hope for the best? Well, we should find out soon.
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