After decades of broken promises about driverless vehicles, Tesla CEO Elon Musk hyped the company’s Cybercab concept on Thursday night, showing off a dead, silver two-seater without a steering wheel or pedals.
Rolling onto the stage in the Cybercab nearly an hour after the company’s “We, Robot” event was supposed to begin, Musk said the company has 21 such vehicles, and a total of 50 “autonomous” cars on location at Warner Bros. . studio in Burbank, California, where Tesla hosts an invitation-only event.
Musk did not provide details on exactly where Tesla will produce the car, but said that consumers will be able to purchase the Tesla Cybercab for less than $30,000. He said the company hopes to produce the Cybercab before 2027.
He also said that Tesla will have an “unsupervised FSD” and run in Texas and California next year on its Model 3 and Model Y electric vehicles.
FSD, which stands for Full Self-Driving, is Tesla’s premium driver assistance system, available now in a “supervised” version for Tesla electric vehicles. FSD now requires a human driver at the wheel, ready to steer or brake at any time. Earlier this year, Tesla implemented “supervised” in its product name.
“It’s going to be a glorious future,” Musk said Thursday night.
Musk also announced plans to produce an autonomous electric Robovan that can carry up to 20 people, or be used to transport goods. He said he would “solve for high density,” transporting sports teams, for example.
He said the Cybercab and Robovan will use inductive charging, meaning these autonomous vehicles can pull up to a station to recharge, without the need for plugging.
Tesla unveiled the RoboVan at the We, Robot event on October 10, 2024.
Musk has been touting Tesla’s work on autonomous cars for years and promising to bring them to market. Along the way, he repeatedly created fantastical visions for his shareholders, setting and missing his own deadlines.
In 2015, Musk told shareholders that Tesla cars would achieve “full autonomy” within three years. They are not. In 2016, Musk said that Tesla cars would be able to drive cross-country without the need for human intervention before the end of 2017. That never happened. And in 2019, in a call with institutional investors that will help him raise more than $ 2 billion, Musk said that Tesla will have 1 million robotaxi-ready vehicles on the road in 2020, able to complete 100 hours of driving work per week, making money for owners .
In April of this year, Musk still told investors that autonomy is the future of the company.
“If someone doesn’t believe that Tesla will achieve autonomy, I don’t think they should be investors in the company,” he said on a call with analysts. “We will, and we are.”
In the Thursday night event, which was previously described as a “product launch,” Musk welcomed attendees to a “party,” and said they would be able to take a test ride in an autonomous vehicle on location, in the closed environment of many film studios. .
At the end of about 23 minutes on stage, the CEO said that Tesla wanted to show the humanoid robot it is currently developing, called Optimus, not just for “canned videos.”
Musk said, “Robot Optimus will walk among you,” then asked participants to be “nice” to the robot, which will serve drinks at the bar on site. The presentation ended with Musk saying “let’s party,” and the livestream showed a group of Optimus robots dancing to club hits.
The event was Tesla’s first product to be announced since the company revealed designs for the Cybertruck in 2019. The angular steel pickup began shipping to customers in late 2023, and has been the subject of five voluntary recalls since then in the US.
WATCH: Elon Musk announced the Tesla Robovan
