Elon Musk presents Tesla cybercabs at a highly publicized event

On Thursday evening, Tesla's billionaire CEO Elon Musk unveiled the company's new robotaxi fleet called Cybercabs, electric vehicles designed to carry passengers without a driver.

Musk made the announcement at a highly anticipated event at the Warner Brothers movie theater lot in Burbank, California. He arrived by being picked up by the autonomous cabin, a dull gray vehicle that looks like a Cybertruck, with more rounded edges, no steering wheel or pedals inside, and doors that open upward like butterfly wings. Musk also announced a larger version of an autonomous vehicle called Robovan that can accommodate up to 20 people.

“With autonomy you get your time back,” he said. “This is a very big deal.”

He said the cybercabs would hit the market by 2026 and cost less than $30,000 – even though Musk has repeatedly exceeded product launch dates. (He has promised a robotaxi fleet every year since 2019.) “I tend to be a little optimistic about the time frame,” he said at the event, then added that it would be “available before 2027, I say it like this.” ”

Musk also said he expects the company to introduce fully autonomous driving in California and Texas next year. He estimated that the Cybertrucks could cost as little as $0.20 per mile to operate, compared to $1 per mile for a city bus.

In unveiling the new models, Musk laid out what he says is a new vision for Tesla that goes beyond primarily manufacturing and selling electric vehicles and developing AI and autonomous software. The increase would be welcome: The company's electric car sales have fallen 2.3% this year as it has lost market share to other electric car makers, particularly in the United States

The announcement puts Musk and Tesla in direct competition with Waymo, the self-driving car company owned by Google parent company Alphabet. But Waymo, a pioneer in autonomous vehicles, is years ahead of this, with a huge war chest from Alphabet, which has already invested $10 billion in the project over the last decade. The service has launched in San Francisco, Phoenix and Los Angeles, with plans to expand to Austin and Atlanta. Meanwhile, Cruise, part of General Motors, resumed autonomous driving testing this summer following an accident in San Francisco last year in which a Cruise car struck and carried away a pedestrian.

Tesla has faced some controversy when it comes to its driving software. In April, a Tesla using the company's monitored “Full Self Driving” feature, which is not fully autonomous, struck and killed a motorcyclist near Seattle, police said.

Thursday's event was streamed to more than 3.3 million viewers on X, the social platform Musk owns. It started almost an hour late because a person in the crowd had a medical emergency, Musk wrote on X.

At the event, Musk also unveiled an updated version of the company's humanoid Optimus robots, which he said would cost $20,000 to $30,000 after they begin large-scale construction, but did not give a time frame for its release.

He said the Optimus robots would serve drinks at the event. Eventually, they will be able to babysit, mow your lawn or buy your groceries, he claimed. “I think this will be the biggest product ever,” Musk said.

At the end of his presentation, Musk led the crowd to a pavilion where a group of Optimus robots danced to Haddaway's “What is Love?”