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Elon Musk's Tesla Inc. has started selling its Cybercab to private buyers, taking orders for the two-seat robotaxi at $29,990 and turning a vehicle that until now carried only paying passengers in its own fleet into one that customers can own.
The first sales opened on Nov. 13 to select customers invited by Tesla. There is no public order page. Buyers pay a $1,000 non-refundable deposit, and the car comes with a mandatory "Autonomy Subscription" of $299 a month, with the first month included. Without an active subscription, the car will not drive.
Tesla's order screen gives an estimated delivery of December 2026. Initial deliveries are planned in Austin, Texas, and the screen also lists Dallas, Houston, San Antonio and Fort Worth. Owners can use the car inside Tesla's robotaxi service areas, which the company can change.
Musk acknowledged the monthly fee is too high and said it should come closer to the roughly $115 a month Tesla charges for its Full Self-Driving software and premium connectivity.
Strings attached
The Cybercab has no steering wheel or pedals and is sold for personal, non-commercial use only. Owners need written permission from Tesla to put the car on ride-hailing apps, use it for deliveries or rent it out, and they cannot resell or transfer it without Tesla's approval. Unauthorized sales carry damages of at least $50,000 or the full value of the deal, and Tesla keeps the right to buy the car back at a fair market value it sets.
Owners also cannot wrap or tint the car or change its wheels, and they pay for insurance, registration, charging and cleaning. Repeated safety or misuse violations can lead to a one-week suspension of the self-driving features.
"It'll work unsupervised inside all the same geo locations as @robotaxi, just serving the owners' needs," Ashok Elluswamy, Tesla's head of AI software, wrote on X on Nov. 14.
A robotaxi-first plan
Tesla began building the Cybercab at its Gigafactory Texas plant near Austin in February and opened paid rides in the car to the public in Austin on Sept. 4. Until this week, every Cybercab went into the company's own robotaxi fleet.
Musk has said most of the cars will stay that way. "The vast majority of the Cybercab stuff will be Tesla-owned and transport-as-a-service," he told analysts on the company's Oct. 21 earnings call, where engineering chief Lars Moravy said Tesla was trying to get the car to customers by the end of 2026.
Musk unveiled the Cybercab in October 2024 and promised a price below $30,000. Earlier this month he said Tesla would wind down Cybertruck production at the Texas plant to make room for more Cybercabs, before extending the pickup's run to late summer 2027 to clear a backlog of orders.
On Nov. 11, Musk predicted the Cybercab would dominate ride-hailing in markets where robotaxis can operate and joked about his own fortune. "Well, if they didn't like $1T, they're REALLY gonna hate $10T," he wrote.
Musk is the world's richest person, with most of his wealth tied to his stakes in Tesla and SpaceX. Forbes valued his fortune at $894 billion on Nov. 12, down from more than $1 trillion in late October after shares of both companies fell.
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