Two-seater with no steering wheel takes on Waymo and Uber as public rides begin Friday
AUSTIN: Electric vehicle maker Tesla launched its self-driving robotaxi, the “Cybercab”, on Thursday in Austin, Texas, in a bid to compete with rivals including Uber and Waymo. Public rides in the two-seater, which has no pedals or steering wheel, are due to begin Friday.
First unveiled in October 2024, the gold-colored vehicle was specifically designed to provide driverless taxi services. CEO Elon Musk posted an image on X of a Cybercab looming over the Texas capital, where Tesla is headquartered, with a cloud of dust behind it, and forecast a “storm of Cybercabs” in the city.
Tesla held an invite-only launch event at an entertainment venue in Austin that was not open to the media. According to the Austin American-Statesman news outlet, attendees were the first to get rides in driverless Cybercabs. Posts on social media showed fans arriving for the event, some dressed in gold to match the vehicle. Cybercabs had been seen on the streets of Austin in the run-up, and passengers can now select the new vehicle in Tesla’s updated dedicated app.
The company’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”.
“This is humanity changing,” said Graham Sprigg, a tourist from Australia. “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.”
Tesla debuted self-driving cars in Austin last year using its Model Y sport utility vehicles, with the “Robotaxi” service gradually expanding to several other cities in Texas, Florida and California. State laws, however, 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, which draws on figures from the Texas Department of Motor Vehicles. Itay Michaeli, an analyst at TD Securities, said he expected a “slow launch” of the Cybercab similar to that of the Robotaxi, with Tesla likely to take account of feedback from early users before expanding the service.
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, adding that it remained to be seen which company in the crowded field had the best business model. “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 was not known when the companies might break even. — AFP