Elon Musk’s Tesla is gearing up to expand its gold-colored Cybercab robotaxi service beyond Austin, Tex., next month, with an exec saying the automaker is planning transportation “domination.”
The electric car giant plans to deploy its futuristic two-seaters in Dallas in November and begin selling Cybercabs to outside fleet operators by the end of the year, executives said during the company’s third-quarter earnings call this week.
The expansion could intensify Tesla’s rivalry with Alphabet-owned Waymo, which has a commanding lead in the emerging robotaxi business with more than 4,000 self-driving vehicles deployed across more than a dozen US cities.
Tesla Chief Financial Officer Vaibhav Taneja suggested the company has even bigger ambitions.
“We’re starting with getting people from one place to the other, but we want to basically own transportation of any kind on Earth,” Taneja told analysts Wednesday.
But Musk faces significant hurdles as Tesla attempts to turn its robotaxi business into a major source of revenue.
The Cybercab, which began carrying paying passengers in September, currently operates only in limited areas of Texas’s home city.
The company’s broader robotaxi network, which also uses Model Y SUVs, serves six metropolitan areas across Texas and Florida, including Dallas, Houston, Miami, Orlando and Tampa.
Waymo, meanwhile, has expanded its commercial service to 15 US markets, including Los Angeles, the San Francisco Bay Area, Phoenix and Las Vegas.
The Google sister company surpassed 500,000 fully autonomous rides per week earlier this year, according to Alphabet, while Tesla has yet to disclose how many paid robotaxi trips it provides.
Waymo’s lead is even more pronounced when measured by driverless miles.
Waymo reported logging 271.3 million miles without a human driver through June, compared with roughly 3.1 million unsupervised miles through Oct. 18 for Tesla, according to figures in the companies’ safety reports.
Although the numbers cover different periods, they underscore how far Tesla has to go to match its rival’s operating experience.
Musk acknowledged that the fledgling operation won’t make a noticeable contribution to Tesla’s financial results until the second quarter of 2027, with a more substantial impact expected later that year.
Nevertheless, executives insisted that manufacturing the Cybercab itself won’t pose a major obstacle.
Unlike conventional automobiles, the two-passenger vehicle has been designed exclusively for autonomous transportation, eliminating the steering wheel, accelerator and brake pedals.
Tesla also relies on cameras and artificial intelligence to navigate roads, rather than the more expensive combination of cameras, radar and lidar used by Waymo.
That simpler approach could eventually give Musk a cost advantage, although Tesla has not disclosed enough financial information to establish whether its robotaxi operations are profitable.
Taneja said Tesla’s manufacturing team believes the Cybercab will be relatively straightforward to mass-produce.
“They think this is one of the easiest products for them to scale in terms of manufacturing,” he said.
“So scaling would not be that much of a challenge.”
The bigger headache could come from Washington.
The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration opened an investigation in September into Tesla’s decision to certify nearly 1,000 Cybercabs as compliant with federal motor vehicle safety standards despite their unconventional design.
Current regulations generally require equipment including conventional driver controls and mirrors.
Automakers are responsible for certifying that their vehicles meet applicable federal standards, and Tesla maintains that its Cybercab complies.
The agency is examining the technical evidence behind that determination. Its inquiry remains open, and regulators have not concluded that the vehicles violate federal safety rules.
Taneja acknowledged that Tesla needs to secure “all the regulatory approvals” necessary to deploy the vehicles as quickly as they can be manufactured.
The Post has sought comment from Tesla and Waymo.
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