New Tesla Cybercab revealed: the self-driving taxi you’ll be able to buy for under £23,000

• New Tesla Cybercab revealed
• Long-awaited self-driving taxi coming in 2026
• Will cost less than £23,000
• Users will be able to rent their cars out to make extra cash
• Car-sharing tech also coming to Model 3 and Model Y
• Futuristic pod design with a minimalist interior
• New Robovan people carrier also coming soon

Eight years after promising a self-driving taxi, Elon Musk has finally revealed the new Tesla Cybercab. It’s a fully autonomous pod with no steering wheel or pedals, and you’ll be able to buy one in 2026 for less than £23,000 – at least that’s what Elon Musk said.

It was unveiled at Tesla’s ‘We, Robot’ event in California, along with a new autonomous Robovan which will be able to carry up to 20 people, or loads of cargo, across cities with no driver behind the wheel.

New Tesla Cybercab on sale in 2026 for under £23,000

The big news here is that you’ll be able to buy a Tesla Cybercab yourself, despite rumours that they’d be run in fleets owned by cities. It’ll cost less than £23,000 ($30,000), and you’ll be able to rent it out when you’re not using it to make some money back.

Tesla’s self-driving taxi scheme doesn’t stop with the Cybercab either, because owners of Model 3s and Model Ys will also be able to make use of full, unsupervised self-driving across Texas and California next year, and Musk claims that owners will be able to rent their cars out just like the Cybercab.

Now it’s worth taking these time scales with a hefty pinch of salt. Elon Musk admitted himself that he can be optimistic about time frames, and back in 2019 he promised that there would be a million robotaxis on the road by 2020. He also said there would be a self-driving minibus by 2019, and we’re only just seeing the first concept now.

Find out Mat’s thoughts on self-driving cars…

Obviously, there are some regulatory hurdles to overcome before a car with no pedals can be certified for use across all cities around the world, so you can expect to be waiting a fair few years before you see a Cybercab cruising the streets of London.

How does the Tesla Cybercab work?

Essentially, you can think of it as being an Uber without the awkward small talk. You’ll be able to hail one from an app on your phone and it’ll carry you to your destination. Along the way you can watch movies, get some work done on your laptop or even sleep.

The car then uses a suite of cameras and sensors to keep an eye on what’s going on around you, and it uses data from thousands of cars completing millions of trips to get safer over time. This is mostly based on Tesla’s artificial intelligence tech rather than just hardware, making it both cheap to produce and easy to update.

Also a first for the Cybercab is inductive charging. It has no plug to connect a cable, instead you drive over what is essentially a massive wireless charger, like you’d use for your phone, to top up the batteries. Now it’s worth taking this with a pinch of salt, because there would need to be a lot of work on infrastructure to actually implement this. A traditional plug socket is more likely when the car reaches production.

New Tesla Cybercab interior

The biggest thing which strikes you about the Cybercab’s interior is of course the lack of a steering wheel or pedals. Tesla is known for making minimalist cabins, but this takes that to a whole new extreme.

All you get is a massive screen in the middle, which you can use for watching movies, taking video calls or streaming your music. It’s a different approach to the Verne Robotaxi in that it’s a bit more cocooned. The Verne has a vast glass area to give you a great view out, whereas the Cybercab is more closed-in to separate you from the world outside.

New Tesla Cybercab design

Given that this came from the same design team which brought you the bonkers Cybertruck, you’d expect the Cybercab to look just as futuristic. Well it certainly does.

It has a side profile unlike anything else on the road. It’s a very smooth and almost teardrop-like shape, which is in stark contrast to the more bubble-like Verne Robotaxi we saw from Rimac earlier this year. The gullwing doors are a nice touch as well.

It carries over a lot of styling cues from the Cybertruck, just minus the axe-like sharp angles. You get a similar full-width light bar up front, and the car has a similar bare-metal finish to the truck as well.

There’s more Cybertruck-ness to the rear of the car with the chunky bumper and squared-off back end, and the lights being hidden in the bumper is a nod to that truck as well.

New Tesla Robovan also revealed

Along with the new Cybercab, Tesla has also unveiled the Robovan. It’s essentially a futuristic-looking minibus which works on the same principle as the Cybercab. You’ll be able to hail it from your phone, only this can carry up to 20 people.

The Robovan can also be used to carry cargo across cities, and it looks totally bonkers. Elon Musk said that it will look like this when it goes into production, and if the Cybertruck is anything to go on then we have no reason to doubt this.

The triple light bars at the front and rear are like nothing we’ve seen from Tesla before, and this van actually has no windscreen which is also a first. Inside you have some comfy-looking seats which face each other, and you can bet that there’ll be plenty of screens to keep the whole crew entertained on their journey.
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