Elon Musk unveils Tesla's 'Cybercab' as focus shifts to robo-cars

STORY: Elon Musk made a grand entrance late Thursday.

He rolled onto the stage at Warner Bros. studios near Los Angeles in a new two-door Tesla that he calls a “Cybercab.”

The vehicle has no steering wheel or pedals and is intended for launching robotaxi services.

Musk says it will go into production in 2026 and will be priced under $30,000.

And he says that there will finally be real self-driving:

“So we're going to go from supervised, fully autonomous driving to unattended, fully autonomous driving, where the car… you could fall asleep and wake up at your destination.”

Musk also unveiled a larger self-driving vehicle – the Robovan – that can carry up to 20 people.

The debuts are all part of his push to rebrand Tesla as a robotics company rather than a mass-market automaker.

The company's humanoid Optimus robot was also on display to drive the point home.

The event sparked great excitement among fans, and Musk promised that owners could make money by renting out their cars as taxis.

“An average car is only used for around 10 hours out of 168 hours per week. In the vast majority of cases, cars simply do nothing. But if they were autonomous, they could be used, I don't know, five times more often. Maybe ten times more.”

However, some observers were more skeptical.

One shareholder told Reuters he was disappointed by the lack of a clear timeline for robotaxi services.

Other investors noted a lack of details about how quickly Tesla can ramp up production and how it can overcome regulatory safety concerns.

The cybercabs rely on AI and cameras to get around, eschewing the other sensors — like expensive lidar — used by competitors like Alphabet's Waymo.

Experts say this approach significantly reduces costs but also poses major technical challenges.

Musk has a history of being overly optimistic about timing – and he said as much at Thursday's event.

Back in 2019, he promised to bring robotaxis onto the road the following year.