Tesla is preparing to bring its two-seater Cybercab, which has no steering wheel, pedals or mirrors, together with passengers in its robotaxi service in Austin, Texas, in 2026. Elon Musk is tying the company’s future and its trillion-dollar compensation package to a low-cost system based solely on cameras and AI-powered neural networks instead of sensors such as lidar and radar used by competitors.
The Cybercab will use Tesla’s modified Full Self-Driving (FSD) software and will be monitored by remote operators. FSD in Tesla vehicles, meanwhile, remains Level 2 driving assistance that requires human supervision. Autopilot and FSD have been linked to dozens of deaths and thousands of crashes. Because the vehicle lacks traditional controls, no one inside will be able to intervene if the system fails; legal liability will also rest with Tesla.
At the 2019 “Autonomy Day” event, Musk described the use of lidar as unnecessary and expensive. Tesla also removed radar in 2022, despite warnings from engineers that detection problems could occur in rain and sunlight. Cameras can struggle with glare, snow and fog while estimating depth and distance through software. Waymo, meanwhile, operates 4,000 fully driverless vehicles using cameras, radar and lidar in up to 14 cities across the United States. Waymo co-CEO Dmitri Dolgov argues that cameras alone are not sufficient to achieve the goal of superhuman safety.
Musk says that Cybercab will become widespread faster than Waymo’s vehicles thanks to the advantages of mass production and that its price will be “less than $30,000.” However, Tesla needs to obtain an exemption from federal rules requiring vehicles to have a steering wheel and pedals in order to sell the vehicle to individuals. DMV approval is also required for fully driverless operation in California. Since remote operation will be the primary safety solution in the event of malfunctions, the vehicles are being equipped with Starlink connectivity.
Tesla’s service in Austin, which it has been operating since June 2025, has approximately 110 Model Y vehicles; the number of vehicles providing paid rides varies periodically. The company claims, based on 2 billion miles of data, that supervised FSD is involved in 40 to 90 percent fewer crashes than manual driving. By contrast, Tesla is associated with nearly 4,000 crashes, corresponding to approximately 85 percent of industry reports; independent records show approximately 65 deaths linked to Autopilot or FSD between 2013-2025. While NHTSA examines the company’s crash reports, Tesla has not submitted its safety data for independent verification.
Why it matters
This initiative makes the trade-off between hardware costs and perception safety more visible as robotaxis become more widespread. Tesla’s camera-only approach raises the question of how much confidence can be placed in the software’s distance and depth estimates under conditions such as rain, glare, snow, and fog. The absence of a steering wheel and pedals eliminates the passenger’s option to intervene in the event of a malfunction, while shifting responsibility to the company and remote operators. For this reason, the service in Austin concerns not only Tesla users but also regulators and anyone interested in robotaxi safety. The key question that remains open is whether Tesla’s claimed safety results can be independently verified and whether the current permits are sufficient for the commercial use of these vehicles.
Background
Musk is not a new name in the FikirPilot archive: in the last 90 days, we published one article mentioning this name; that article was dated August 30, 2026.