The new Tesla Robotaxi will be called CyberCab, cost less than $30,000 and is scheduled to go into production in 2026. Tesla CEO Elon Musk presented this new autonomous vehicle this evening at the We, Robot event in California on the grounds of Warner Brothers. It comes without pedals or a steering wheel, offers space for two people, has gullwing doors and no longer has a charging port, but is charged inductively.
CyberCab
At the event, 20 CyberCabs were ready and waiting for Elon Musk to take to the stage and invite guests to go for a spin. There were also several dozen Model Ys with the Full Self Driving software installed, which also drove autonomously around the movie city.
Musk sees the potential of using a CyberCab in its much better utilization. On average, a vehicle today drives 10 out of 148 hours per week, a utilization rate of not even 7 percent. As autonomous vehicles, they can be used five or ten times as much. Not only do they give you back time that you don’t have to spend driving in traffic, they are also much safer. Musk estimates that they are ten times safer.
You will be able to buy a CyberCab and operate them yourself as a fleet.
From next year, Tesla FSD will also be available “unsupervised” in Texas and California. Until now, Tesla FSD has only been available “supervised”, i.e. under the responsibility of the driver. This should be possible for the Tesla Model 3, Y and Cybertruck.
The vehicles are trained using data collected by the 7-8 million Teslas on the roads today, and the FSD is operated purely with AI and cameras. No expensive sensors like lidar, which will affect the price. So Musk wants to offer the CyberCab for under $30,000.
RoboVan
But that wasn’t all. As a surprise an autonomous shuttle with space for 20 people also rolled onto the stage. It is the RoboVan, although Musk emphasized the word differently: “Roboven”. This is also set to go into series production.
The future should look like the future
The design language of the Tesla RoboVan is strikingly similar to that of the Mercury Streamliner, which was in operation in the USA between 1936 and 1959.
Tesla Optimus
That was by no means all. Several Tesla Optimus Bots, i.e. two-legged and two-handed humanoid robots, mingled with the crowd, danced and handed out drinks. These run on the same software as the CyberCab and RoboVan, the Tesla FSD, and they are also set to go into production. An Optimus is expected to cost between $20,000 to $30,000 and become the best-selling Tesla product.
Impact
With these three robots, Musk predicts that the cost of products and services will fall dramatically and humanity will enter an age of abundance. The video accompanying Optimus showed it shopping, serving drinks and carrying out other household tasks, as well as working in factories.
Cities, which today have to allocate a lot of space for parking, can use it for other purposes thanks to autonomous cars. He would take the “ing lot” out of the “parking lot” and these would now become parks.
He also addressed people’s fears, but the opposite is true. The danger comes less from robots and more from people. No wonder Elon Musk asked the guests to “be nice to the robots”.
Here is the video with the complete event (starts about 60 minutes later):
This article was also published in German.
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