Tesla Cybercab Robotaxi: Is This It?

• A test mule of Tesla’s upcoming robotaxi has allegedly been spotted in Los Angeles.
• The vehicle will debut at the Warner Bros. Discovery movie studio on October 10.

A test mule of what seems to be Tesla’s upcoming robotaxi has been spotted by a Reddit user who claims to work at the Warner Bros. studio in Los Angeles where the reveal of the so-called “Cybercab” is slated to take place on October 10.

The bright yellow prototype in the photo embedded below appears to be a heavily camouflaged two-door with Model 3-like headlights. According to Boopitysmopp, the user who posted the image, the car also has a full-width LED light strip at the rear akin to that of the Cybertruck.

The whole thing looks like a life-size Matchbox car and it might turn out to be just a bad joke, so we’re taking this with a grain of salt. But after throwing the location, the shape of the side windows and the vehicle’s short wheelbase in the same bag, it leads us to believe that this could be Tesla’s long-awaited self-driving taxi.

Here’s a side-by-side comparison of the mule and an InsideEVs rendering of what we believe the finished product will look like, based on patents and snippets extracted from various Tesla videos published over time:

An illustration of the upcoming Tesla Cybercab was also published in Walter Isaacson’s biography of Elon Musk, as you can see below:

In recent months, Musk has stopped referring to Tesla as being an all-electric vehicle manufacturer and has instead steered the conversation toward artificial intelligence and robotics and has long hinted at the idea that Tesla EVs–both old and new–could soon be part of a global network of autonomous vehicles that would go out and drive people on their own to the benefit of their owners.

As a result, the upcoming Cybercab is a big deal for Tesla’s outspoken CEO. Will it be the big revolution that Musk has touted? We’re skeptical. The automaker’s so-called Autopilot and Full Self-Driving (Supervised) features are still considered Level 2 systems on SAE’s autonomy chart. Furthermore, the legal framework currently in place still doesn’t allow for fully autonomous vehicles roaming the streets and highways of the United States, so there’s still some work to be done. 

That said, Tesla wants to make sure everything goes as smoothly as possible during next month’s event. After slowing sales globally, the automaker–AI and robotics company, sorry–has been gathering mapping data in the area where the event will take place, according to Business Insider and famed Tesla hacker Green The Only.

That makes sense from a performance standpoint, but it also goes against every one of Musk’s statements on self-driving cars, who criticized rival automakers and robotaxi operators for relying on previously collected map data to make their driverless cars work in certain geofenced areas.

We’ll see what happens next month during the Tesla Cybercab reveal. If it will be anything like the Cybertruck reveal in 2019, set your timer for at least three years from now to check back on whether the vehicle is ready for prime time or not.