Tesla has started taking orders for the Cybercab from private buyers. On Friday evening the company’s Robotaxi account said on X that “select customers are now being invited to purchase Cybercab for personal use”, and the order page it shared lists the two-seat, no-steering-wheel car at $29,990 before tax. The catch is a mandatory $299-a-month “Autonomy Subscription” without which the car will not operate.
It is the first time Tesla has put a price on a driverless vehicle for individuals. It is also a very limited launch, and plenty about it is still unclear.
What Tesla has announced
The details below come from Tesla’s own screenshots of the order page and invitation email, as reported by Electrek and InsideEVs, and from Bloomberg’s report, carried by The Business Times.
- The price: $29,990 before taxes, with a $1,000 non-refundable deposit to place an order.
- The subscription: $299 a month, pre-ticked on the order page, with the first month included. The fine print says the subscription and regular vehicle maintenance are “required to operate” the car.
- The timing: the page shows an estimated delivery of December 2026, in Austin, Texas.
- The buyers: invitation only. Tesla has not said when, or whether, orders will open to the general public.
- The hardware: two seats, a 21-inch central touchscreen, 20.1 cubic feet of cargo space, and no steering wheel or pedals.
Bloomberg noted that it was not immediately clear what Tesla means by personal use. Tesla had earlier posted an interest form for fleet operators, but not for individual owners. One of the first people to share an invitation was the president of the Tesla Austin Owners Club, who posted screenshots of an email confirming his order.
The real cost of “under $30,000”
Elon Musk promised a Cybercab priced below $30,000 when the car was unveiled in 2024, and on the sticker price Tesla has kept to that. InsideEVs calls it the cheapest vehicle Tesla has ever sold.
The subscription changes the sums. At $299 a month it adds $3,588 a year. Over five years that is $17,940 in subscription fees, which would take the total to roughly $47,900 for a two-seater, before insurance, tax and charging. Electrek makes a similar calculation, and also points out that Tesla can change the monthly price. That last point is a reasonable concern, but the company has not announced any change.
The company has not yet explained what the subscription covers beyond the line on the order page, so buyers will want to read the terms closely before they commit a deposit.
Where it can drive
The email attached to the invitation carries an asterisk: “Only available in supported service areas. Subscription required for operation.” In practice, Electrek says, that means the areas where Tesla runs its Robotaxi service. It lists eight cities: Austin, Dallas, Houston, Fort Worth and San Antonio in Texas, and Miami, Orlando and Tampa in Florida. A Cybercab owner outside those areas would not have a car that works.
Even inside them, there is a gap between the map and the road. Electrek cites an independent tracker, Koby Pierce, who tested thousands of addresses in the Robotaxi app and found that the areas where Tesla accepts pickups and drop-offs were only 59% to 78% of the advertised service areas in the six cities he checked. In Austin, where the first cars are due, he put it at about 59%. These are the tracker’s findings, not Tesla’s.
That matters because the Cybercab is a one-trick vehicle. It has no manual controls, so the owner cannot take over and drive it out of the zone. For more on the roll-out, see our earlier report on the Cybercab’s expansion to Dallas.
The regulatory question
The launch comes with an unresolved safety question. According to Bloomberg, the US National Highway Traffic Safety Administration opened a probe the day after the car debuted in September, looking at the process and technical data Tesla relied on when it self-certified the vehicles as compliant with all federal safety standards.
Electrek adds that the regulator has ordered Tesla to demonstrate under oath that a car with no brake pedal meets federal standards that call for one. Tesla replied on 30 October and asked for its answer to be kept confidential. Electrek says NHTSA has not ruled.
The company is, in effect, taking customer deposits while that review is open. If the regulator disagrees with Tesla’s reading of the rules, the cars could face restrictions, although that is a possibility rather than a prediction.
Why it matters beyond Tesla
Driverless cars have so far been something you hail, not something you own. Waymo and others run fleets and keep the vehicles; Tesla is now offering to sell one to an individual who would, in effect, rent the driving software every month. The subscription model puts the value in the software and keeps Tesla in control: the owner holds the metal, while Tesla decides where it goes and what it costs.
For UK readers the story is a long way from home. The Cybercab is not on sale here, Tesla has announced no UK pricing or availability, and the UK has its own rules for self-driving vehicles. But what happens in Austin in December will be watched by anyone planning to bring driverless cars to British streets, including the companies behind London’s robotaxi plans.
What we do not know yet
- How many invitations Tesla has sent, and how many cars it can build and deliver in December.
- Whether the $299 price will stay the same, and exactly what happens to a car whose subscription lapses.
- Whether the order page’s service areas will grow, and what a buyer outside Austin can do with the car.
- How NHTSA will respond to Tesla’s sworn answers.
- Whether private owners will be allowed to earn money from the car. Reports of the terms are still emerging and we have not verified them.
The first deliveries, if they happen on schedule, will be the real test. A price on a page is a promise; a driverless car actually parked in a driveway in Austin is evidence. We will report on the first handovers and any ruling from the regulator.