Tesla sent dozens of its steering-wheel-free Cybercabs onto the public streets of Austin, Texas, on Thursday, marking the company's first large-scale rollout of a fully autonomous vehicle with no manual controls for a human to take over in an emergency.
The two-seat, gold-coloured vehicles, which have butterfly doors and lack both a steering wheel and pedals, rely entirely on Tesla's Full Self-Driving software and its AI4 onboard computer to navigate.
Announcing the rollout, Tesla wrote on X, "Cybercab is democratizing clean transportation for all." The company had earlier promoted the event with the tagline "No steering wheel, no pedals."
The launch folds the Cybercab into Tesla's existing Robotaxi service, which has run in Austin since June 2025 using modified Model Y vehicles and has since expanded to five other cities across Texas and Florida.
Tesla currently operates more than 200 "unsupervised" robotaxis, vehicles without a safety driver aboard, according to monitoring site RobotaxiTracker, a fleet still dwarfed by rival Waymo's more than 4,000 vehicles across 14 cities.
Thursday's event does not represent a fresh approval from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, and access to the Cybercab will remain limited to invited guests in its initial phase, with wider public rollout expected in phases.
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The Austin American-Statesman reported that Tesla had registered 45 Cybercabs with the Texas Department of Motor Vehicles ahead of the debut, and employee rides in the vehicle began in July.
Tesla shares rose more than 5% on Thursday on optimism that the vehicle would gain traction with riders, even as the company continues to grapple with a broader slump in vehicle sales.
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Tesla's self-driving push relies on a camera-only sensor suite, unlike Waymo and Amazon's Zoox, which combine cameras with radar and lidar — a distinction critics have flagged as a safety concern given the absence of manual override options in the Cybercab.
Speaking to investors earlier this year, Tesla's AI lead Ashok Elluswamy said the robotaxi programme had logged more than 380,000 unsupervised miles with "zero notable incidents," though videos have separately circulated online showing an Austin robotaxi pushing through plastic bollards.
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