At a glitzy event held at Warner Bros. Studios Burbank in California, Tesla CEO Elon Musk unveiled the Cybercab: a robotic, self-driving taxi. Musk said that the vehicle, which has two seats, no steering wheel and no pedals, would be available before 2027. 鈥淚 think it鈥檚 going to be a glorious future,鈥� he told the crowd on 10 October.
Meanwhile, just a few kilometres south in Los Angeles, people are already being ferried about by autonomous vehicles operated by Waymo. It seems that the future is already here and Musk is pretending not to notice.
鈥淭esla play a very good game in which they are always trying to live in the future by prompting journalists to talk about what they will do, not what they are doing,鈥� says at University College London. 鈥淓lon Musk lives in a world of promises.鈥�
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Indeed, at the event Musk admitted that Tesla鈥檚 full self-driving (FSD) autonomous driving system, long promised to owners of existing Tesla cars, wouldn鈥檛 be able to be used without human supervision until next year.
鈥淓lon Musk has claimed that Tesla will solve FSD 鈥榯his year鈥�, every year since 2014,鈥� says of The Dawn Project, a safety advocacy group. 鈥淣ow, he has announced that FSD has been delayed another year until the end of 2025. This date will be delayed again next year, as it has for each of the past 10 years.鈥�
One problem is that Tesla has bet on an autonomous system that uses only cameras and visual processing software, eschewing the lidar technology used by rivals to build up a more detailed view of a car鈥檚 surroundings 鈥� an approach that experts have questioned.
Beyond that, the unusual design of the Cybercab is likely to raise regulatory eyebrows. 鈥淩egulators around the world are approaching self-driving vehicles with extreme 鈥� and understandable 鈥� caution,鈥� says at Forrester, an analyst firm. 鈥淭he Cybercab鈥檚 lack of a steering wheel or pedals make sense in some future autonomous vehicles, but may further complicate the process of reassuring cautious regulators today.鈥�
Cruise, a competing autonomous vehicle company run by General Motors (GM), designed a similar vehicle interior for its robotaxi, Origin, but it was scrapped due to 鈥渞egulatory uncertainty鈥�, GM CEO Mary Barra wrote in to shareholders.
Waymo, which is owned by Google parent company Alphabet, has taken a different approach. It uses conventional cars made by Jaguar, modifying them with lidar and other self-driving technologies, to ease approval with regulators. Even then, its fleet of around 700 vehicles can only currently operate in a handful of US locations. Other robotaxi firms are also operating in China.
So, with competitors way ahead, what is Musk offering? 鈥淭he future will look like the future,鈥� , sharing images of the Cybercab on X, the social media site he owns. But perhaps the choice of location for Tesla鈥檚 event 鈥� a film studio 鈥� is revealing. While others are actually building the future, Musk is increasingly drawn to the smoke and mirrors of Hollywood.
