
Jacob Smith
The Southern Editor
On Oct. 8, Tesla held their “We, Robot” conference, where they revealed the latest addition to their car catalog, the Cybercab. CEO Elon Musk arrived at the event in their brand new vehicle which was shown to have no pedals, steering wheel or mirrors.
Musk envisions this as the future of mass-transit, highlighting its cost-effectiveness.
“The average cost of a bus per mile, not the ticket price because that is subsidized, is about a dollar a mile,” Musk said. “Including taxes and everything else, the Cybercab probably ends up being about 30 or 40 cents a mile.”
Before being available for purchase at $30,000, the fully computer controlled system the Cybercab will operate off of needs to be road-tested. The testing will begin in California and Texas next year, with the expected release window being “before 2027,” according to Musk.
Tesla shareholders were wary about the vehicle’s concept, with the company’s stock value falling eight percent after the conference. Conversely, Uber and Lyft, who also have ambitions of autonomous driving, saw their trade values increase 10% higher than normal.
“Without external subsidies, or Tesla making a loss on every vehicle, it doesn’t seem plausible to launch at anything close to that price this decade,” Forrester researcher Paul Miller told BBC.
Current Tesla models come equipped with Autopilot, which the company describes as “an advanced driver assistance system that enhances safety and convenience behind the wheel.” Along with traffic-aware cruise control and auto steer, full self-driving (supervised) has the vehicle drive itself, with a human driver being present in the case of any issues or emergencies.
The Cybercab is proposed to be the next evolution of this concept, where it will utilize unsupervised full self-driving. Through extensive testing, Musk claims that autonomous driving will be “10-times safer than humans.”
“One of the reasons why a computer can be so much better than a person is that we have millions of cars that are training in driving,” Musk said. “It’s like it’s living millions of lives, simultaneously, and seeing very unusual situations that a person in their entire lifetime would not see.”
The safety of Tesla’s self-driving has continuously been examined, with the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration announcing an investigation on Oct. 18. In the four accidents observed, where one resulted in the death of a pedestrian, the agency found that the vehicles “experienced a crash after entering an area of reduced roadway visibility … from conditions such as sun glare, fog or airborne dust.”
A similar situation occurred in February 2023, when the NHTSA recalled 360,000 Teslas to change the FSD feature. A statement was later issued that claimed FSD “led to an unreasonable risk to motor vehicle safety based on insufficient adherence to traffic safety laws.” The report also highlighted the system’s unpredictable responses to certain situations, such as “entering a stop sign-controlled intersection without coming to a complete stop, or proceeding into an intersection during a steady yellow traffic signal without due caution.”
Upon first hearing about the Cybercab, junior computer science student Jacob Roman was skeptical about the vehicle’s concept.
“I think what he’s kind of done here is, because he hasn’t been able to figure out self-driving for like seven years, he just went ahead and made a car that the engineers now have to figure out self-driving,” Roman said. “I think that pretty quickly it’s either not going to happen or get banned by every government.”
Fellow computer science student Tucker Mayfield was equally unimpressed and believes that there needs to be some concrete evidence on what the Cybercab can do.
“At least with the screw-up that was the Cybertruck conference, he had a Cybertruck there to show consumers what they’re getting,” Mayfield said. “We don’t have any real product or the proof of concept that this is even gonna remotely work. You just have to have blind faith that they’re going to go through with whatever they’re making.”