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Tesla Cybercab starts production April 2026 · Elon Musk Podcast

• 0:00
  You know, when we started Tesla, the, the, the goal was to
• 0:03
  accelerate the advent of sustainable energy.
• 0:06
  And that is that's what we've done.
• 0:08
  I mean, Tesla has really led the way in with, with electric
• 0:12
  vehicles, with battery packs, with a lot of solar and many
• 0:17
  other companies have have then followed our lead and done that.
• 0:20
  And electric cars, which used to be non existent, are now
• 0:24
  prevalent and, and the and the model Y, for example, is the
• 0:30
  number one selling car of any kind on earth.
• 0:42
  But obviously now with with AI and robotics, we need to update
• 0:48
  our mission and our mission. I think it's good.
• 0:52
  It's, it's, it's the, it's a great mission, which is to
• 0:55
  achieve sustainable abundance, which is, it's like, because I
• 1:00
  often ask people like, what is the future that you want?
• 1:03
  What's the best future you can imagine?
• 1:06
  You know, because we want to try to make that future, like make
• 1:10
  the best future you can imagine. And, and I guess probably the
• 1:14
  best future is if people, you know, can have whatever they
• 1:19
  want from a goods and services standpoint or medical
• 1:22
  standpoint. And, but at the same time, we,
• 1:27
  we don't destroy nature and we, we keep the rainforests and the,
• 1:30
  the beautiful national parks and, and all the, all that
• 1:32
  stuff. And so that's, that's what I
• 1:34
  mean by sustainable abundance, is that people, you know, can
• 1:39
  have whatever they want, have all the needs met, but we still
• 1:42
  keep all of the natural beauty that we want.
• 1:53
  I mean, if somebody can think of a better future, I'm all ears.
• 1:57
  But I think that's that's probably the best, the best way
• 1:59
  to go. So, yeah.
• 2:04
  See. So, yeah, as you know, every
• 2:10
  test is designed to be autonomous.
• 2:12
  So the it's so nice. Difficult to explain to people
• 2:16
  if they've not. In fact, I'm sure you've all
• 2:18
  encountered this where you try to tell people that the Tesla
• 2:21
  can drive itself and they they think you're crazy or something.
• 2:27
  I mean, especially like apart from the cyber truck, our cars
• 2:30
  look pretty normal. I mean, they're good looking
• 2:33
  cars, but they don't look super then they look normal.
• 2:39
  But I guess it's kind of like having a cat or like, and, and
• 2:45
  the cats just sitting. Let's say you've got a cat and
• 2:47
  it's like just sitting there on the couch and you try to tell
• 2:50
  people that the cat can actually, it's actually Puss in
• 2:54
  Boots and, and it, and it can actually put on boots and a hat
• 2:57
  and, and swashbuckle and sing and dance and feel like no way,
• 3:01
  man, that's a cat until the cat does all those things and you're
• 3:07
  like, damn, what the. So we've got, you know, millions
• 3:14
  of Tesla cars out there that are the kind of like person boots
• 3:20
  that they're intelligent, but people don't know that they're
• 3:23
  intelligent. They look like normal cars, but
• 3:26
  actually they're super smart and can drive themselves.
• 3:29
  So as I think that's probably the single biggest thing we need
• 3:33
  to do is to educate potential customers that you can either
• 3:38
  have a car, you can either have a cat that's like normal cat, or
• 3:40
  you can have person boots and person boots is very cool.
• 3:45
  So that's, so we've these days when people come to our stores
• 3:52
  and, or even people that have the car haven't turned it on, we
• 3:55
  find, and sometimes people have paid for FSD and haven't turned
• 3:59
  it on. We're like what you should at
• 4:00
  least try it once. And so now we like the sales
• 4:06
  team, the service team will actually sit with customers and
• 4:09
  say, look, let us show you how it works and how easy it is.
• 4:13
  And then once they've tried it for even just a few days, they,
• 4:17
  they can't live without it. And, and, and now with version
• 4:22
  14, we're actually getting to the point where we almost feel
• 4:28
  comfortable allowing people to text and drive, which is kind of
• 4:32
  the killer app because that, that's really what people want
• 4:35
  to do and, and do do. And actually right now the, you
• 4:43
  know, the versions, you know, the car's a little strict about
• 4:49
  keeping your eyes on the road. And but I'm confident that in
• 4:55
  the next month or two, we should, we're going to look
• 4:59
  closely at the safety statistics, but we will allow
• 5:03
  you to text and drive essentially.
• 5:17
  Yeah, that's that's, it's certainly about the current
• 5:25
  situation, which often people will actually turn off FSD to
• 5:28
  text then turn it back on, which is less safe.
• 5:33
  So, so yeah, that's probably the single biggest thing is, is just
• 5:36
  get people aware of of FSD and then obviously we need to get it
• 5:41
  approved in in Europe. So we certainly appreciate the
• 5:43
  support of our customers in Europe pushing the regulators to
• 5:47
  approve FSD because you can't even get a super, even just
• 5:50
  normal supervised FSD is not allowed in Europe currently,
• 5:54
  which doesn't make any sense. And I've had these like crazy
• 5:56
  conversations with the regulators that seem like a
• 5:59
  Franz Kafka novel where where I'm like, well, look, we have,
• 6:03
  you know, billions of kilometers of data that shows that FSD
• 6:08
  increases safety. And they're like, well, we have
• 6:11
  to have all these committee meetings.
• 6:12
  I'm like, yeah, but people's lives are at stake here.
• 6:15
  So definitely a pressure from our customers in Europe to to
• 6:19
  push the regulators to approve would be appreciated.
• 6:23
  And then we have partial approval in China.
• 6:25
  And we hopeful, hopefully will have full approval in China
• 6:29
  around February or March or so. That's what that's what they've
• 6:31
  told us. Yeah, but yeah, the, the, the
• 6:45
  fact that every Tesla car is capable of full self driving,
• 6:48
  every car we build and have built for the last several years
• 6:51
  is capable of full self driving is, is pretty wild.
• 6:54
  And most people don't don't know that.
• 6:56
  So, and then we've got the the first car that is specifically
• 7:02
  built for unsupervised full self driving to be to be a robotaxi.
• 7:10
  It's called a cyber cab. It doesn't even have pedals or
• 7:13
  steering wheel. Yeah.
• 7:20
  So notice there's no side view MERS, there's no yeah.
• 7:24
  So it's, it's and it's very much optimized to minute for the
• 7:27
  lowest cost per mile in our in our autonomous mode.
• 7:32
  And that production is happening right here in this factory and
• 7:36
  we'll be starting production in April next year.
• 7:47
  So the, the way that Cyber Cab is designed is it's, it's, it's
• 7:53
  designed obviously for a purely autonomous world, but also the
• 7:59
  manufacturing system is unlike any other car.
• 8:05
  If the manufacturing system of the Cyber cab, it's, it's sort
• 8:09
  of it's closer to a high volume consumer electronics device than
• 8:14
  it is a car manufacturing line. So the net result is that I
• 8:20
  think we should be able to achieve, I think ultimately less
• 8:24
  than a 10 second cycle time basically unit every 10 seconds,
• 8:30
  maybe ultimately take a few years to get there, but it's
• 8:34
  theoretically possible to get to a 5 second production time.
• 8:41
  And so, So what that would mean is you could get on on on a line
• 8:48
  that would normally produce say 500,000 cars a year at a one
• 8:53
  minute cycle time like Model Y. The this, this would be maybe as
• 9:03
  much as, you know, two or three million maybe ultimately you
• 9:08
  know, it's theoretically possible to achieve a 5 million
• 9:11
  unit production line if you if you can get to the 5 second
• 9:15
  cycle time, so.