Tesla begins offering rides in a car without a steering wheel

Tesla said on Sept 3 that it had begun offering paid rides in a car that has no steering wheel and is designed to transport passengers with no direct human intervention.

Tesla said in July that it had begun producing the vehicle, the Cybercab, at its factory in Austin, Texas.

But the two-seat vehicle will probably not be available to the general public for some time.

It lacks the human-operated controls found in other cars and would be difficult or impossible for private citizens to operate legally in the United States.

On Sept 3, Tesla said on its website that people could hail the Cybercab and “use it for errands, commuting and more”.

The company said that in addition to two passengers, the vehicle would have room for “luggage, golf clubs, scooters and more”.

The Cybercab embodies the long-time ambition of Tesla chief executive Elon Musk to create fully autonomous cars.

The company’s stock market value of US$1.5 trillion (S$1.9 trillion), which makes Tesla the world’s most valuable car company by far, worth several times the value of Toyota, is predicated on the idea that the company will dominate a future market for this technology.

Tesla shares have fallen almost 20 per cent in 2026 as some investors have begun to doubt whether the company could compete with Waymo, a subsidiary of Alphabet, the parent company of Google.

Waymo already has 4,000 autonomous vehicles offering paid rides in 14 US cities.

Tesla unveiled the design of the Cybercab almost two years ago, saying then that it would sell for less than US$30,000.

It is Tesla’s first completely new passenger vehicle since the Cybertruck in 2023.

Initially, Tesla will probably be the only buyer for the Cybercab, which the company will use for its Robotaxi service, which operates in six US cities, including Dallas, Houston and Miami.

Most states require special authorisation to operate vehicles without steering wheels or brake pedals, if they allow them at all.

Investors are watching whether Tesla can quickly deploy significant numbers of Cybercabs.

They will be disappointed “if Thursday’s event is merely an unveiling with limited vehicles committed to the road”, analysts at Morgan Stanley said in a note on Sept 2.

“Conversely, a broader roll-out that has a material impact on the Tesla Robotaxi fleet size could drive stock outperformance,” they added.

The company is authorised to operate 314 vehicles in Texas that provide paid rides without a driver, according to the state’s Department of Motor Vehicles.

Most of those vehicles are Model Y sport utility vehicles, but the fleet includes 45 Cybercabs.

It is not clear how many of the 314 vehicles are operating as taxis.

Owners of Tesla vehicles like the Model Y can already buy software the company calls Full Self Driving (Supervised) for US$99 a month.

The technology allows Tesla cars to largely drive themselves to destinations.

But the technology is imperfect, requiring drivers to be ready to intervene if the software makes a mistake.

Tesla’s autonomous fleet in Texas is smaller than Waymo’s, which has more than 700 vehicles in the state, and Avride, which operates 344 Hyundai Ioniq 5 vehicles.

Like Waymo, Amazon’s Zoox and other autonomous taxi operators, the Tesla cars require human assistance.

They are overseen by workers in a command centre who can intervene if the software makes a mistake.

The cars are also cleaned and maintained by human beings.

On Sept 3, Tesla published a form on its website inviting people to express interest in buying Cybercabs for fleets, implying that initial customers might be businesses capable of providing maintenance and support.

Most autonomous taxi companies, except Zoox, have been using vehicles that have steering wheels, foot paddles and other physical controls.

The Zoox vehicle is a small rectangular van with no driver’s seat. Federal regulators in July granted the company permission to use up to 2,500 of those vehicles on US roads.

Tesla would most likely have to secure a similar exemption from federal auto rules if it wanted to put lots of Cybercabs on the road. It has not yet done so.

But self-driving taxi services are primarily regulated at the state level. Texas had very few restrictions on such services until 2026, when it began requiring companies to receive permission from the state Department of Motor Vehicles.

Police and other emergency responders in Austin and other cities had complained that the vehicles did not recognise hand signals and interfered with their work. NYTIMES