Tesla Tries Selling the Wheel-Free Cab

Tesla used its third-quarter earnings call to make a sharper commitment on Cybercab than before: the company said it plans to begin selling the autonomous two-seat vehicle to customers by the end of the year. That is a notable change from the original pitch, which leaned heavily on Tesla operating its own robotaxi network rather than handing the vehicle to outside owners.

The useful distinction is between selling cars and running a service. Lars Moravy, Tesla’s vice president of engineering, said Cybercabs being built now are intended for Tesla’s own fleet, but that as the fleet expands the company will “mainly” deliver fully autonomous vehicles to customers, starting small. In plain English, Tesla is trying to do both: own much of the network itself while also learning whether third-party ownership works.

That matters because Elon Musk spent years describing a different route to robotaxis. The older vision centered on existing Tesla owners turning their cars into self-driving taxis through a software update. That still has not happened. The Cybercab plan, if it proceeds, suggests Tesla is putting more weight on a purpose-built vehicle than on converting the broader installed base into an autonomous fleet.

There is, however, a rather obvious complication: the Cybercab has no steering wheel or other traditional manual controls, and U.S. auto safety rules were not written with that design in mind. TechCrunch reported that the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration is investigating whether the vehicle meets federal safety standards and the basis on which Tesla certified it.

That is not a small footnote. Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standards generally require items such as brake pedals and mirrors. Automakers self-certify compliance, which is normal; a vehicle with no manual controls is not. The Department of Transportation has proposed removing some of those requirements for vehicles designed to drive autonomously, but proposed rules are not the same thing as settled permission.

Musk also drew a commercial line that sounds simple enough: Cybercab is meant primarily as transport service, while models such as the 3 and Y remain the cars people would own. Even so, if Tesla manages to sell Cybercabs before ordinary Tesla owners get comparable autonomous capability in their own vehicles, it would mark a quiet reversal. The company that sold drivers on software could end up selling fleets on hardware first.