Tesla begins Cybercab robotaxi production as Musk adopts cautious tone on autonomous rollout

Tesla's Cybercab goes into production -- so why is Musk tapping the brakes?

Tesla's Cybercab is now in production at the company's Gigafactory in Austin, Texas, but Elon Musk is sounding unusually cautious about the rollout. The robotaxi's start of production was announced Thursday on X, with Tesla posting a video shot from inside a steering wheel-less Cybercab as it drove out of the factory with the caption, "Purpose built for autonomy." The company made a few initial Cybercabs back in February, but continuous production only started this month. But with the company's robotaxi plans creeping along much slower than expected, many Tesla watchers are left scratching their heads about the future -- especially as Musk reins in his bombastic tone. In an earnings call this week, Musk sounded uncharacteristically pessimistic about Tesla's robotaxi expansion plans. And he offered no new details about the company's recent expansion to Dallas and Houston. (Each city only has two vehicles a week after the launch.) "The limiting factor for expansion is really rigorous validation, making sure things are completely safe," he said in response to questions about the slower-than-expected rollout. "We don't want to have a single accidental injury with the expansion of Robotaxi, and we have, to the credit of the team, not had a single one to date." But we don't know if that's exactly true. Tesla has reported 14 crash incidents involving its robotaxis to the federal government since the service launched in Austin, Texas, a year ago. And unlike other robotaxi operators that provide details about the nature of each crash and any injuries that occurred, Tesla routinely redacts that information. Still, it was weird to hear Musk sound so downbeat about Tesla's robotaxi experiment. In the past, the billionaire CEO could barely contain himself when talking about the company's autonomous future, consistently promising that unsupervised Full Self-Driving, in which the driver would be able to let the car drive for them without any interventions, was just around the corner. His supporters point to the success of Autopilot, and then FSD (Supervised), as evidence that while his promises may not exactly line up with reality, he is still at the forefront of a societal shift from human-powered vehicles to ones piloted by AI. He's even making an army of worker bots to prove the point that the technology is formally agnostic. But there have been hundreds of crashes involving Tesla vehicles using FSD and Autopilot, and dozens of deaths. Multiple government agencies have investigated the company's claims around self-driving, and FSD appears to be on the cusp of a major recall. So perhaps knowing all this, Musk decided to rein in the overpromises and sound a bit more realistic about what's to come. He acknowledged that the Cybercab's production would be slow going until the end of the year. "Whenever you have a new product with a completely new supply chain, new everything, it's always a stretched-out S curve, so you should expect that initial production of Cybercab and Semi will be very slow, but then ramping up, and going exponential towards the end of the year and certainly next year," he said. "In fact, we'll be ramping up production of all vehicles, in all factories, to the best of our ability through the balance of this year." Last year, Musk said that by the end of 2025, 50 percent of the US population would have access to Tesla's Robotaxi service, describing the expansion has "hyper exponential." But as of today, the company is operating in only a handful of cities, including Austin, Dallas, and Houston. The company is also running a human-driven ridehail service in San Francisco, where access is "invite only." With the Cybercab, another issue is the lack of traditional controls, like a steering wheel, pedals, mirrors, and other features that are required under Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standards. The government provides exemptions to companies that want to produce vehicles without these features, but caps the number of vehicles at 2,500 per company. Legislation to lift the cap, and allow more purpose-built autonomous vehicles to be manufactured, has been stalled in Congress for years. But when asked on X whether the Tesla Cybercab's production would be subject to the cap, vice president of Vehicle Engineering Lars Morvay responded "No." The company is apparently self-certifying that its vehicles comply with existing safety standards, similar to how Amazon's Zoox approached the issue with its purpose-built autonomous shuttles. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, under President Biden, launched an investigation into Zoox's self-certification claim, but that investigation was closed after President Trump took office. Tesla's Cybercab is designed to operate without any human intervention -- after all, there's no steering wheel or pedals for a human to use. But Tesla has yet to solve full autonomy. Musk keeps pushing the deadline for unsupervised FSD, especially to customer vehicles that the company no longer owns. And when asked to predict the rollout of unsupervised driving, Musk has consistently offered timelines that have later proven to be wrong. In the earnings call, Musk waffled between caution and overpromising. He said that Version 15 of FSD, "a complete overhaul of the software architecture," was coming by the end of this year or early next. But he also acknowledged that millions of Tesla vehicles with Hardware 3 computers, which were sold between 2019 and 2023, would not be able to achieve unsupervised driving without serious retrofits -- contradicting past commitments. "I think probably unsupervised FSD or Robotaxi revenue will not be super material this year, but I do think it'll be material probably in a significant way next year," Musk added.

Tesla moves Cybercab from concept to factory floor, but lowers expectations for robotaxis

Serving tech enthusiasts for over 25 years. TechSpot means tech analysis and advice you can trust. First look: Tesla's first purpose-built robotaxi is moving from concept to the assembly line, even as the technology behind the Cybercab prompts Elon Musk to slow the rollout. At Tesla's Gigafactory outside Austin, Texas, Cybercab production has shifted from a handful of units built in February to continuous manufacturing. The company posted footage on X showing a steering-wheel-less vehicle driving out of the plant, with the caption "Purpose-built for autonomy." The compact two-seat EV is designed from the ground up to operate without human controls, with no steering wheel, pedals, mirrors, or conventional driver interface in the cabin. Instead, it relies on Tesla's vision-only Full Self-Driving software and an onboard AI computer to perceive its surroundings and navigate city streets. That hardware - software combination underpins Musk's newly cautious tone about how quickly Tesla can expand its robotaxi service. On Tesla's latest earnings call, he said the "limiting factor" for expansion is "really rigorous validation" and safety, adding that the company does not want "a single accidental injury" as it scales. Meanwhile, Tesla has reported 14 robotaxi crashes in Austin, Texas to federal regulators since launching the service there last summer, while redacting details that other autonomous operators often make public. That gap between Tesla's safety messaging and its more opaque crash reporting is shaping how investors and observers expect the Cybercab rollout to proceed. Musk also said Cybercab production would follow what he described as a stretched-out S-curve. He added that because both Cybercab and the Tesla Semi use new designs and supply chains, production would remain very low this year before ramping more sharply late in the year and into next. That marks a notable reset from his earlier claim that Tesla's robotaxi network would reach around half of the US population by the end of 2025. Today, the company's autonomous ride-hail footprint is limited to a few markets, including Dallas and Houston, as well as an invite-only, human-driven service in San Francisco. While Elon Musk is downplaying the near-term financial impact of robotaxis, the Cybercab design and production line are evolving quickly at Tesla's Austin Gigafactory. The first mass-produced unit, dubbed VIN Zero, has appeared at Giga Texas in a glossy champagne-gold finish, a sharp departure from the flat, matte-wrapped prototypes that headlined Tesla's 2024 "We, Robot" event. Rather than conventional paint, Tesla is believed to be using a specialized clear-coat process to achieve a mirror-like finish, giving the small two-seater a more premium, futuristic appearance. Photos from the plant show tightened panel gaps, large aerodynamic wheel covers, and a bare, control-free interior that underscores the company's bet on full autonomy. This aesthetic shift comes as production ramps up, with multiple Cybercabs visible in outbound lots and Tesla targeting higher weekly output as the year progresses. The underlying goal is to support what Musk has long described as an unsupervised Full Self-Driving robotaxi network, aiming to reduce ride costs to pennies per mile once human drivers and traditional ride-hail overhead are removed. But the software required for that vision remains a moving target. Musk has said that FSD Version 15 will be a "complete overhaul" of the software architecture, running on more powerful hardware and relying even more heavily on AI models. He has also acknowledged that millions of cars shipped with older Hardware 3 computers will not reach unsupervised autonomy without extensive retrofits, marking a reversal of earlier assurances. That mix of ambitious engineering goals and a newly cautious tone puts the Cybercab in an awkward middle stage. Tesla now has a dedicated robotaxi in production - a vehicle that embodies its belief that end-to-end neural networks and camera-only perception can replace human drivers. At the same time, the company is tempering expectations for how quickly it can scale, how soon regulators will approve steering-wheel-free vehicles, and when robotaxis will have a meaningful impact on revenue. Until then, the Cybercab functions primarily as a rolling testbed: a production-ready platform built around autonomy, moving ahead in the factory while software capability and safety validation continue to evolve.

Tesla's Cybercab robotaxi has entered production, Elon Musk says

Elon Musk confirmed that Tesla has "started production" of its self-driving Cybercab - a long-promised project that the billionaire has billed as key to the company's long-term turnaround. Splashy promotional videos that Musk and Tesla shared Thursday on X showed the robotaxi, which doesn't have a steering wheel or pedals, drive itself off the factory floor at the company's Gigafactory in Austin, Texas. "Purpose-built for autonomy," Tesla captioned the video. "Cybercab in production now at Giga Texas." Another video posted by Tesla showed several Cybercabs "in formation" as they took an off-ramp on a highway. Shares of Tesla were flat in Friday trading. The stock is down about 14% since the start of the year. Musk has placed a major bet on transforming Tesla, which has struggled with sagging sales of its electric cars, into a broader tech firm focused on artificial intelligence and robotics. Aside from its self-driving cabs, Musk has touted plans to build huge numbers of the humanoid robot called Optimus in the future. During the company's first-quarter earnings call, Musk warned investors that Tesla would report "significant increase in capital expenditures" in the future as it ramps up production and investment in its futuristic projects. Tesla launched its first robotaxi operations last year in Austin and expects to expand to new markets like Phoenix, Miami and Las Vegas in the first half of this year, according to Musk. A larger rollout will likely depend on how US regulators respond to the self-driving vehicles. In 2024, Musk said he envisioned producing 2 million Cybercabs per year when Tesla reached peak production, but initial production is believed to be on a much smaller scale. The exact number has not been disclosed.