Tesla is reportedly preparing to launch its driverless Cybercab publicly in Austin, Texas, as soon as this month, according to The Information. The two-seater vehicle, which has no steering wheel or pedals, is central to Elon Musk's ambitions for autonomous transport, but significant doubts remain over whether the underlying software is genuinely ready for public roads and paying customers.

Tesla employees have been testing the fully driverless version on private roads since July, and the company recently trained Austin's first responders on how to move the vehicles in an emergency. The Cybercab relies on Tesla's Full Self-Driving (Supervised) software, which regulators and independent safety experts have questioned, noting it requires constant driver oversight and remains under investigation by the US National Highway Traffic Safety Administration for traffic compliance failures. Unlike Tesla's existing Robotaxi service, which still uses human safety monitors in some markets, the Cybercab is designed to operate without any human intervention, relying instead on remote operators and newly added Starlink connectivity, while also needing its own vehicle-specific training data that Musk says the company is still accumulating.