Gold Tesla Cybercabs are piling up, but they’re not picking up passengers yetGold Tesla Cybercabs are piling up, but they’re not picking up passengers yet

If you live near Giga Texas — or have come across drone footage of it online — you’ve seen the buildup: rows of gleaming TeslaCybercabs piling up in outbound lots.**** Or you’ve seen Tesla employees in the driver’s seat on social media or the streets of Austin.

• Some appear to have steering wheels and some don’t. One Facebook user recently reported seeing one parked with a driver inside at an Austin Supercharger.
• But they aren’t picking anyone up. At least not yet. It seems to be Tesla, not regulators, pumping the brakes. Tesla already holds state authorization for 69 unsupervised Robotaxis and is actively running its small**** driverless ride-hailing service in Texas using Model Ys.
• But for whatever reason, Tesla hasn’t yet self-certified any of those purpose-built Cybercabs, which went into low-volume production in April, for its fleet.

Tesla, of course, famously doesn’t respond to reporters’ questions.

The Takeaway

It’s unclear why they’re not on the road yet — it could be software training needs, it could be that the cars are so new that they’re still in the testing phase, or it could be a number of other factors. Right now, Tesla is confident enough to be piling up the hardware. It just isn’t confident enough to let passengers inside.