Tesla Launches the Cybercab, a Car With No Steering Wheel, in Austin

Nearly two years after unveiling it at an event where the robots turned out to be remote-controlled, Tesla put the two-seat self-driving vehicle into service. Paid rides began the next day.

Tesla held a launch event in Austin tonight for the Cybercab, the two-seat vehicle it first showed in October 2024. It has no steering wheel and no pedals, seats two people facing forward, and relies entirely on Tesla's onboard computer and cameras to drive. Paid rides through the company's existing robotaxi service in Austin begin tomorrow.

The event was closed to the general public, which annoyed some of the company's followers, and was shorter on detail than the original unveiling. But the substance is real in a way that the 2024 event was not: that evening featured humanoid robots serving drinks who turned out to be operated remotely by people, and self-driving claims that did not arrive on schedule. This time there is a vehicle carrying paying passengers.

Two things are worth keeping straight. Tesla has been operating a robotaxi service in Austin for some time using modified Model Y cars with safety monitors, so tonight is the arrival of the purpose-built vehicle rather than the arrival of the service. And Tesla's approach differs fundamentally from Waymo's: Tesla uses cameras only, no laser scanners, betting that a sufficiently good neural network can drive from vision alone the way a person does. Waymo's cars, which have logged far more driverless miles, carry both.

Whether cameras alone are enough is the central unresolved argument in self-driving, and it will not be settled by a launch event. It will be settled by miles, over years, in weather and chaos. What tonight settles is narrower: a car built with no provision for a human driver is now carrying passengers on American streets for money.