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Tesla's Cybercab Deadline and the Steering Wheel Question · Elon Musk Podcast

• 0:00
  Tesla just confirmed the Cyber Cab production will begin in
• 0:03
  April of 2026, and Elon Musk says the vehicle will have no
• 0:06
  steering wheel and no pedals. Manufacturing will look more
• 0:09
  like a high volume consumer electronics line like Apple and
• 0:13
  iPhone than a car factory. And the goal is to produce 1
• 0:16
  unit every 10 seconds. But right now, the Cyber Cab
• 0:19
  prototypes spotted testing on public roads in Austin over the
• 0:22
  past few weeks all have steering wheels.
• 0:24
  Human drivers are sitting behind the wheel with our hands on it.
• 0:27
  This is normal for engineering validation and you need manual
• 0:30
  controls for safety during this testing phase.
• 0:33
  Now the question is what happens after the testing ends?
• 0:36
  Test bedding its future on a vehicle?
• 0:38
  It cannot legally deploy a scale unless regulators approve
• 0:41
  steering wheel less cars, and Tesla has not demonstrated the
• 0:45
  unsupervised autonomous driving capability that would justify
• 0:48
  that approval. So is the cyber cab going to
• 0:50
  launch as promised or is Tesla building a backup plan?
• 0:54
  We're going to walk through the production timeline, the
• 0:56
  regulatory constraints, the state of Tesla's Full Self
• 0:59
  Driving software, and what these prototype sightings actually
• 1:03
  tell us about where the Cyber Cab program is headed.
• 1:06
  But first, let me take care of one quick thing now.
• 1:08
  Elon Musk dropped the April 2026 timeline at Tesla's shareholder
• 1:12
  meeting in November 2025. He described a manufacturing
• 1:15
  process unlike any car production line Tesla has built
• 1:18
  before. The Cyber Cab will use Tesla's
• 1:20
  unboxed process, which assembles the vehicle in large modules and
• 1:24
  brings them together Near the end of the line.
• 1:26
  Giant aluminum front and rear and giga casters replace many
• 1:30
  smaller stamp parts and the initial target is a 10 second
• 1:33
  cycle time with a longer term goal of five seconds per
• 1:37
  vehicle. And at those speeds, Tesla
• 1:39
  projects production capacity of at least 2 million cyber cabs
• 1:43
  per year once the line matures. That would make it the highest
• 1:47
  volume single model in Tesla's history.
• 1:49
  And the starting price is expected to be around $30,000,
• 1:52
  which would also make it the cheapest Tesla.
• 1:54
  Now the vehicle is A2 seater with butterfly doors, no rear
• 1:58
  windows, no mirror, no steering wheel, no pedals and a 20.5 inch
• 2:03
  center display. The passengers sit back and let
• 2:06
  the car drive itself. And that's the vision.
• 2:08
  But reality right now looks a little bit different.
• 2:10
  In the last week of 2025, multiple cyber cab prototypes
• 2:13
  were spotted driving in downtown Austin.
• 2:16
  The two prototypes were traveling in tandem on South
• 2:18
  Lamar. Another cyber cab approach and
• 2:21
  intersection on Congress Ave. And every sighting of the cyber
• 2:24
  cab, you can see a steering wheel through the side window.
• 2:27
  A human driver has their hands on it.
• 2:29
  The prototypes are marked with engineering decals that read
• 2:31
  Cyber cab Tesla Engineering Prototype V-001 Now this is
• 2:36
  standard for development vehicles.
• 2:38
  Regulations require manual controls when testing autonomous
• 2:41
  vehicles on public roads. A safety driver must be able to
• 2:44
  take over if the system fails. And seeing steering wheels in
• 2:47
  prototypes is totally expected. What matters is whether the
• 2:50
  production vehicle will still have them.
• 2:52
  And. I've been digging through our
• 2:53
  analytics of the show recently and noticed that around 37% of
• 2:56
  you are following this channel. And I appreciate you.
• 2:59
  For you, I am forever grateful. And the other 63% haven't hit
• 3:03
  the follower subscribe button. And I've been an independent
• 3:05
  journalist covering Elon Musk, SpaceX, Tesla, all of his
• 3:08
  companies and surrounding technology for the last six
• 3:12
  years. And I'll continue for the next
• 3:13
  10. And all I ask from you is one
• 3:16
  second of your time to hit the follower subscribe button on the
• 3:18
  platform you're watching or listening on right now.
• 3:20
  I'm extremely for you and blessed to have you in this
• 3:21
  community. So thank you.
• 3:23
  Now, let's get back into it. Let's talk about Tesla's
• 3:25
  chairwoman, Robin Denno. They admitted in late October
• 3:29
  2025 the Cyber Cab might get a steering wheel if needed.
• 3:33
  It was a rare break from Musk's rhetoric.
• 3:35
  At the WE Robot unveiling in October 2024, Musk was explicit,
• 3:39
  he said. No mirrors, no pedals, no
• 3:42
  steering wheel. But Denholm's comment
• 3:44
  acknowledged the regulatory and technical hurdles.
• 3:47
  Federal rules kept the number of vehicles without traditional
• 3:49
  controls at 2500 units per manufacturer per year.
• 3:53
  That limit exists because regulators have not certified
• 3:56
  that any company can safely operate steering wheel less
• 3:59
  vehicles at scale. Now Tesla would need an
• 4:01
  exemption to sell millions of cyber cams without manual
• 4:04
  controls. The exemption depends on
• 4:06
  demonstrating that the autonomous system is reliable
• 4:08
  enough that manual controls are necessary, and Tesla has not
• 4:12
  demonstrated that yet. The current version of full self
• 4:15
  driving in consumer vehicles is called supervised FSD.
• 4:18
  It requires constant driver attention.
• 4:20
  Drivers must keep their hands on the wheel and be ready to
• 4:22
  intervene, and it is not a technicality or regulatory
• 4:25
  formality. Tesla uses this language because
• 4:28
  the system is not reliable enough to operate without
• 4:30
  supervision. It makes mistakes.
• 4:32
  Sometimes those mistakes are dangerous.
• 4:34
  The system struggles with construction zones, unusual Rd.
• 4:37
  markings, and edge cases the human drivers can handle
• 4:41
  intuitively. In the Model Y Robotaxi is
• 4:43
  operating in Austin since June of 2025 have logged over 250,000
• 4:47
  miles in the city across 1,000,000 miles in the Bay Area
• 4:49
  with a safety driver present. Now the service has reported 4
• 4:53
  incidents to NHTSA. That works out to roughly one
• 4:56
  crash every 312,000 miles. Now that that's not bad for an
• 5:00
  early stage autonomous service, but is not good enough to remove
• 5:04
  the person in the car, the human backup.
• 5:06
  Now the standard for unsupervised operation is not
• 5:08
  just being better than average human drivers.
• 5:10
  Standard is being reliable enough that removing the
• 5:13
  steering wheel does not create an unacceptable risk.
• 5:17
  Now Tesla is preparing to expand its robo taxi service beyond
• 5:21
  Austin too. Musk announced that Miami,
• 5:23
  Dallas, Phoenix and Las Vegas are next.
• 5:25
  These cities have different traffic patterns, weather
• 5:27
  conditions, and road infrastructure than Austin.
• 5:29
  Each expansion test the limits of a system trained primarily in
• 5:33
  one environment in Austin. And if the Model Y robotaxi
• 5:35
  still need safety drivers in Austin after six months of
• 5:38
  operation, it's unclear how the Cyber Cab will operate without
• 5:41
  any driver at all in cities where the system has even less
• 5:45
  experience now. Tesla delayed its next
• 5:47
  generation AI5 chip to mid 2027. That means the Cyber Cab will
• 5:51
  launch on the current AI 4 hardware.
• 5:53
  And if AI4 has not achieved unsupervised autonomy in the
• 5:57
  millions of Model Threes, and Model Y is already on the road,
• 5:59
  it's hard to argue it will magically do so in the cyber
• 6:02
  camp by April of 2026. Whusk acknowledged during the
• 6:05
  shareholder meeting that regulatory approval and
• 6:07
  production rate will need to match that.
• 6:09
  He said the rate at which Tesla receives regulatory approval
• 6:12
  will roughly match the rate of cyber camp production.
• 6:15
  He described it as maybe a little tight, and that's an
• 6:17
  understatement. Tesla is betting that by the
• 6:19
  time the production line is run, regulators will have approved
• 6:22
  the vehicle for operating without manual controls.
• 6:25
  History suggests that that is very optimistic, and Elon Musk
• 6:28
  has been promising full autonomy for years, and it has always
• 6:31
  been a year away when he says things about it.
• 6:34
  Now, crash testing of Cyber Cab prototypes is already underway
• 6:37
  in Giga. Texas drove footage from late
• 6:39
  December showing multiple units in a storage lot after frontal
• 6:42
  inside impact tests. Giga castings for the Cyber Cab
• 6:45
  are piling up at the factory. Tesla is clearly moving toward
• 6:48
  production. The company is also hiring for
• 6:50
  the program and building out Cortex 2, the AI supercluster
• 6:54
  that will train future versions of FSD and Optimist.
• 6:57
  The infrastructure is coming together and the software is the
• 6:59
  question mark mark. Tesla cannot deliver
• 7:01
  unsupervised autonomy. Cyber cab becomes A2 seat car
• 7:04
  with no trunk, no rear window and awkward proportions for
• 7:08
  consumer use. It was designed for robotaxi
• 7:10
  operations, not personal ownership, and the steering
• 7:12
  wheel and pedals would turn it into something it was never
• 7:15
  meant to be. Now.
• 7:16
  Elon Musk thanked Waymo during the shareholder meeting for
• 7:19
  paving the regulatory path. Waymo has been operating fully
• 7:22
  driverless vehicles in Phoenix and San Francisco since 2020.
• 7:25
  The difference is the MO uses Lidar high definition maps in a
• 7:28
  geofenced operating domain. Tesla relies on cameras alone
• 7:32
  and claims the system will work anywhere regulators have allowed
• 7:34
  Waymo to operate because its approach is conservative and
• 7:37
  transparent. Tesla's approach is ambitious
• 7:39
  and opaque, and the company does not publish detailed safety
• 7:42
  data, does not restrict operations to mapped areas.
• 7:44
  It promises A generalized solution that works everywhere.
• 7:47
  Now if that's true, that's very compelling.
• 7:49
  And the problem is that Tesla has not proven that this is
• 7:52
  true. And the most likely outcome is
• 7:53
  that Tesla launches a cyber cab with a steering wheel and
• 7:56
  pedals, sells the vehicle possibly is a cheaper Tesla that
• 7:59
  can be a what taxi wants. The software is ready.
• 8:01
  This is essentially what Tesla has done with every other
• 8:03
  vehicle it sells. The Model 3 and Model Y were
• 8:06
  sold with the promise that they would one day drive themselves
• 8:09
  and that you could use them as cyber cabs and rent them out to
• 8:13
  people for the day. And you can literally go to work
• 8:15
  and while you're at work for 8 hours.
• 8:17
  He has said in the past that you could let your car make money
• 8:20
  for you while you're working because it's just sitting in a
• 8:22
  parking lot. You send it out so it could be
• 8:24
  its own cyber cab. Now owners hit for full self
• 8:27
  driving capability years ago and are still waiting for the actual
• 8:30
  full self driving capability that's full.
• 8:32
  And the cyber cab would follow the same pattern.
• 8:34
  Buy the hardware now and then get the autonomy later if that's
• 8:37
  the route that they go. Maybe.
• 8:38
  And the main concern is that the cyber cab is poorly designed for
• 8:41
  consumers. It is a 2C vehicle with limited
• 8:43
  storage. It has no mirrors and no rear
• 8:45
  visibility. It was built for passengers, not
• 8:47
  for drivers. And adding a steering wheel does
• 8:50
  not change the fundamental limitations of the design.
• 8:52
  Tesla may end up with a vehicle that works as neither a consumer
• 8:55
  car nor a robo taxi if that's the path they choose.
• 8:58
  I don't think they're going to do that.
• 8:59
  What I think I think is going to happen is they're going to push
• 9:02
  back the timeline a little bit for the very, very slow roll out
• 9:05
  of a cyber cab with a steering wheel.
• 9:07
  And then they'll take the they'll have the capability of
• 9:09
  taking the steering wheel off in the future.
• 9:10
  Now production is set for April 2026.
• 9:12
  Musk says the cyber cab will be unlike any other car.
• 9:15
  He might be right, just not in the way that he intends.
• 9:18
  The vehicle represents Tesla's biggest that yet on autonomy.
• 9:21
  If it works, Tesla becomes the dominant market player in a
• 9:25
  trillion dollar transportation industry.
• 9:28
  If it does that Tesla has built a factory to produce millions of
• 9:31
  two seat cars and vehicles, then nobody can legally use without
• 9:34
  human controls. Steering wheels and those
• 9:36
  awesome prototypes are more than engineering artifacts at this
• 9:39
  point. There are a glimpse into a
• 9:41
  compromise that tests may be forced to make due to
• 9:45
  regulations. Hey, thank you so much for
• 9:46
  listening today. I really do appreciate your
• 9:49
  support. If you could take a second and
• 9:50
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• 10:01
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• 10:06
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• 10:08
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