Tesla Cybercab ride share platform is launching with owned Robotaxis and Waymo-styled service

During its Robotaxi announcement event, Tesla said that it aims to launch its cheapest car in 2026, provided that all regulatory hurdles are cleared by then.

Said release will actually be a rather limited affair compared to the outline of its Cybercab ride-share service that has been given so far by Elon Musk or various members of the Tesla team.

At several quarterly press conferences so far, Musk detailed an all-encompassing ride hailing fleet that will include owned and operated vehicles with pedals and a steering wheel, as well as the Robotaxi and current Tesla car owners who will be able to loan their Model Y or Model 3 to the autonomous ride-share platform when they don't need them to earn some extra cash.

The Robotaxi section of the Cybercab platform fleet, however, will seemingly start with two-seaters owned and operated by Tesla, with a customer service call center staffed with human operators for redundancy, similar to the way Waymo works.

This has been relayed to Deutsche Bank analysts by Tesla's investor relations head Travis Axelrod who said that Tesla has decided to only launch the service in California and Texas, the two states that either don't have driverless car limitations, or have established regulatory framework in place.

Tesla believes it would be reasonable to assume some type of teleoperator would be needed at least initially for safety/redundancy purposes. Management intends to start off entirely with the company-owned fleet and to use an internally developed ride-hail app.

It is not clear if at launch, the Cybercab service will also have Model Y or Model 3 and Cybertruck vehicles that are owned by Tesla, or if it will just be Robotaxis. In any case, it seems that existing Tesla owners will only be able to loan their cars on the Cybercab ride-share platform at a later date, after the company has tested the service on public roads.

In addition, the bank analysts have received a confirmation that Tesla might indeed try and launch a cheaper car with steering wheel and pedals which Deutsche Bank calls Model Q, in the first half of 2025, just as Tesla said at its last earning call.

Previously referred to as the Model 2, the car is expected to look like a diminutive Model Y and cost about $30,000 with eventual subsidies, a tad above the Robotaxi which is likely to remain Tesla's cheapest car.

As some Tesla suppliers we spoke with would attest, the Model 2 project was real, and Tesla even introduced innovative cost-cutting engineering solutions to them before it decided to put it on the back burner for the sake of the Robotaxi launch.

What might have prompted this sudden change of heart and the decision to actually launch the Model 2/Q despite all the recent claims that its portfolio doesn't need it, remains to be heard.

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