cybercab question

[Empty tank]

I spotted a Cybercab getting on the express in Austin the other day. Does anyone know if the Cybercab will be for sale to consumers to use and deploy for income? Elon is giving mixed answers.

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[Scorpious]

At first maybe, but in 8 years they will no longer sell vehicles to consumers and will end FSD subscriptions. Robotaci, Semi and Optimus will be the way, replacing UPS, FedEx, Amazon delivers, Uber, Lyft and most shopping/delivery services.

 

[HaulingAss]

At first maybe, but in 8 years they will no longer sell vehicles to consumers and will end FSD subscriptions. Robotaci, Semi and Optimus will be the way, replacing UPS, FedEx, Amazon delivers, Uber, Lyft and most shopping/delivery services.

Not even Tesla knows what they will do in 8 years. Tesla is moving more towards recurring income so ending FSD subscriptions in 8 years is unlikely and unsupported by actual facts. It looks like you just made that up out of thin air.

 

[Scorpious]

Don't kid yourself, Tesla will have about 24 million Robotaxis on the road in 8 years. 5 years later close to 40 million. They will stop selling to consumers. Stopping the sale of FSD now is a method to control who still owns it later in 8 - 10 years. Continuing to sell subscriptions allows interim financial gain till the point at which they will just deprecate subscriptions and have a large monopoly on moving products and people around. Cost will be cheaper for product movement and the number of vehicles will make owning a car expensive by comparison.

Imagine needing to travel 8 hours away, you crawl into a bed in a small room in a semi trailer and wake up at a destination in the morning really cheaply. 500 miles away we'll rested for about $50 or less.
Imagine Optimus performing last few feet deliveries and shopping for you delivered directly to your home or refridgerator via Robotaxi. No more shopping centers, just warehousing.

During large human transport times Robotaxi Optimus robots get out of the vehicle for people transport. Large trunk space for package drlivery all other times. At a fraction of the cost of cost of goods delivered today.

All this will pay for a city on Mars. That is abundance for all and changes things fundamentally with how we deal with transportation of goods and humans.

 

[Mikec3399]

I love this forum,

I learn so much here

however, this is what I do believe

Subscriptions allow tesla to borrow more money; it's a steady stream of income. yes, they have a lot of cash on hand, approx 44 billion, however, they need working capital, to drive the tesla machine foreword. Optimus, space X etc
we heard this week, mars is on hold, and the moon will be colonized first. ok

As wall street watches vehicle sales carefully, and not looking at the big picture, we continue to have crazy stock prices up and down
Supercharging network, 12.5 billion up 19% is a huge driver. 3800 stalls added in 2025, now 78,000 worldwide. or 40 countries.
cash flows from energy generation mega pack and solar about 12.8 billion.
tesla is a huge machine.
FSD is not going away, vehicle sales to consumers will not go away with especially with the supercharger network growing. In 2019 Elon floated the idea of autonomy going to delivery
we can't even get summons on cybertruck, and i understand another update
14.2.2.5 is being released today, again still not summons.
14.3 will not hit to July.
FSD 15 maybe next year.
and what about Banish your summons?
unsupervised FSD for cybertruck will not hit till 2027. maybe.

just imagine if cybertruck was sold at the released price in 2019,
2 million orders were placed at $39,990, 2WD $49,990 AWD
and tri Motor Cyberbeast $69,990
i ordered 2 trucks with a $100 deposit twice,
last week i finally got a refund for one of the orders. I do have two 2024 FS Cberbeasts but my second I went off the app and had one off the lot.

just imagine the cash flow they would have and the robot network reading the roads with 2-4 million Cybertrucks on the road and the vehicles updates in 2 years of production.

i can't wait for tomorrow! optimus will replace the in-home health care worker, and going out will be very very different.
just my 2 cents

 

[dpoll995]

lol they are not going to stop selling vehicles. There are so many people out there that don’t want or need just an A to B ride. I definitely could not live like that. If they do then I would simply just buy some other brand vehicle. Rivian is working on their FSD now too and nvidia, so there will be more options soon enough. Anyway it would be a ridiculous mistake to for tesla just to assume that if they flood the roads with millions of robotaxis that every one will simply use them for all travel needs.

 

[Scorpious]

There are approximately 298–299 million total registered vehicles, including light-, medium-, and heavy-duty plus classics/older vehicles in a America.

Once they hit 100 million Robotaxi's in 2041 time frame that means Tesla owns 1 in 3 vehicles on the road. They will have killed off all competition around then. One potential issue they will have to deal with is regulations around becoming a monopoly. To prevent that they will sell vehicles to other vendors, but not consumers directly.

Services will represent a continuous money stream just as Starllink does for SpaceX. This model will allow them to continously be building more vehicles and Optimus robots. The robots will be rented to perform services such as lawn care, laundry, dishes and general cleaning. They will also replace boring or tedious factory work. Companies will be able to buy them at a premium while normal people will rent them. They will most likely start with a "purchase" program to finance the transition.

So Optimus robots and Robotaxi's to deliver packages, Robotaxi's to deliver Optimus rentals to do work around the home. And Robotaxi's to transport humans. The other two ensure that having a need for more and more of each.

The Super charger network will become a Robotaxi charging network over time, but till then it's a great model to help finance the model. Start with consumers buying products and using them and slowly migrate to a pure services model as cash machine.

 

[Scorpious]

lol they are not going to stop selling vehicles. There are so many people out there that don’t want or need just an A to B ride. I definitely could not live like that. If they do then I would simply just buy some other brand vehicle. Rivian is working on their FSD now too and nvidia, so there will be more options soon enough. Anyway it would be a ridiculous mistake to for tesla just to assume that if they flood the roads with millions of robotaxis that every one will simply use them for all travel needs.

Legacy auto will be out of business in the next 10 years. Failure to lower cost of goods sold and to master autonomy will be their demise. Chinese automaker competion will overtake American legacy automakers other than Tesla quickly in markets globally which will significantly impact their ability to stay operating. It's already started in China and Europe.

Ford is doing all it can to attempt to adapt, however as an example domestic sales in China via Changan Ford collapsed sharply—to around 99,400 units retail in 2025 (down nearly 60% from 247,000 in 2024), amid intense competition from local EV makers like BYD, Geely, and Xiaomi. This led to a much smaller contribution from local market sales, with the joint venture facing financial pressures (e.g., shrinking assets and high debt ratios in prior years).

Ford's European business has been loss-making or low-margin in recent years due to high EV transition costs, competition from locals/Chinese brands, and stricter regulations.

Rivian will be out of business in the next 5 years. While revenue grew modestly overall, the company achieved its first full year of positive gross profit ($144 million) but still reported a substantial net loss (around $3.6 billion). These figures come from Rivian's official Q4 and full-year 2025 earnings release, cross-referenced across sources like Business Wire, Yahoo Finance, and CNBC reports on the February 2026 announcement.

Elon knew what was going to happen years ago and that is why he was saying he didn't need EV tax credits to be successful. Chinese automakers are adopting Telsa's model quickly while legacy American auto fails to move, but keeps spending money to try and catch up. The problem is they may be able to make vehicles, but they are not software companies and by outsourcing and failing to own the entire stack of production will have higher costs and eventually will fail to compete.

 

[dpoll995]

lol no way in hell I’m going to buy a harbor freight car… hopefully they keep Chinese vehicles out of the US market..

 

[DaBagBoy]

Over the long term - I cannot imagine Tesla will own & operate many of the Cybercabs, it just seems to make more sense to keep the assets off their balance sheet when they can sell them to us while we maintain them and pay Tesla a % of all Cybercab/Robotaxi earnings.

I would look at service centers as one of the weakest links in Tesla's profit chain. There are too few to service the existing fleet (long waits for service). Daily washing and vacuuming along with the cost of purchase make it more economical to sell the Cybercabs to us and let us deal with cleaning them.

 

[Scorpious]

Even if they keep them out of the US it won't matter, most profits for legacy auto come from Europe and Chinese sales. Once those start to dry up it will be the end unless they make massive changes. Eventually, they will. It will include employee reductions and plant closures. You can't drag around boat anchors like dealerships and unions and survive with products that aren't superior and cheaper. They aren't software companies and they basically only do assembly

 

[Scorpious]

Over the long term - I cannot imagine Tesla will own & operate many of the Cybercabs, it just seems to make more sense to keep the assets off their balance sheet when they can sell them to us while we maintain them and pay Tesla a % of all Cybercab/Robotaxi earnings.

I would look at service centers as one of the weakest links in Tesla's profit chain. There are too few to service the existing fleet (long waits for service). Daily washing and vacuuming along with the cost of purchase make it more economical to sell the Cybercabs to us and let us deal with cleaning them.

Tesla will make 10s of millions of them and own them as money printing machines. With Optimus, Semi, Robotaxi they will take most of the business from FedEx, Amazon delivers and UPS. Human transport will be the secondary market. All profits going to Tesla.

 

[DaBagBoy]

Great debate, but a lot of us have planned on ordering several of these ASAP - clearly other great minds here differ.....here is what Grok thinks...

**Recent X posts and related discussions from Elon Musk, Tesla, and key commentators largely clarify the Cybercab ownership debate in favor of consumer sales—though with nuances on timelines and Tesla's fleet priorities.**

### Direct from Elon Musk (Recent Posts)
Elon has been consistent in recent months (late 2025–early 2026) about Cybercab's path: **It will be sold to individuals for ~$25k–$30k, who can then deploy it in the Tesla Robotaxi network for income.** He hasn't walked this back, despite emphasis on Tesla building/operating its own massive fleets for scale.

- **Feb 16, 2026**: Elon posted about Cybercab production starting in April, highlighting no pedals/steering wheel—framing it as a consumer-accessible "robotaxi" vehicle.
- **Jan 23, 2026**: "Cybercab production starts in April."
- **Jan 22, 2026**: Praised unsupervised Robotaxi rides in Austin (using Model Ys initially), signaling the network's readiness for personal vehicles.
- **Oct 29, 2025**: Noted that Robotaxi service on Model Ys is "the same [car] that everyone who buys the car receives"—hinting at personal ownership integration.

No recent posts from him suggesting Tesla will *exclusively* own the fleet or end consumer sales. (The "mixed answers" likely stem from his hype around Tesla's own Robotaxi ops for recurring revenue, vs. the long-standing personal ownership pitch.)

### Tesla Official & Robotaxi Updates
Tesla's account has been posting about real-world Robotaxi progress (e.g., unsupervised Austin rides, Alaska winter testing, cloud profile syncing for rentals/Robotaxis), but nothing contradicting consumer access. Early fleets are Tesla-operated to build data/safety, but the model supports owners joining.

### Broader Context from Influencers & Analyses (Echoing Elon)
- **Nic Cruz Patane (@niccruzpatane)**: Multiple posts (May–Jul 2025) quote Elon: Cybercab ~$30k for *personal use or Robotaxi income* (e.g., "sleep, work, watch movies" while it drives; "new appreciation for transportation").
- **Teslaconomics (@Teslaconomics)**: Jan 2025 video/thread on owners building fleets for $30k/year per cab—tied to Elon's "wealth transfer" via FSD software.
- **Grok summaries (Feb 2026)**: "Elon has said individuals can buy one for under $30k and add to the Tesla Network... Early units will likely be Tesla-owned/operated fleets. Ordering for personal use may come later." Another: "Tesla plans to sell the Cybercab to individuals... owners can add it to Tesla's ride-hailing network."
- **Whole Mars Catalog (@wholemars)**: Oct 2025 earnings call quote from Elon: Cybercab optimized for "cost per mile," but as a buyable vehicle.

### News/Articles Reinforcing This (Feb 2026)
- **Yahoo Finance**: Elon targets 2M Cybercabs/year at $25k; production ramp "agonizingly slow" at first, but consumer-priced.
- **Teslarati**: Musk: "We’re aiming for at least 2 million units a year of Cybercab"—implying sales volume, not just internal.
- **Skeptical takes** (e.g., Reddit): Some doubt legal hurdles for selling no-controls vehicles, suggesting initial Tesla fleets only—but Elon hasn't pivoted.

**Bottom line for the forum debate**: Elon's vision is hybrid—**Tesla owns/operates huge fleets for monopoly-like scale (your Scorpious take), but individuals *can and will* buy Cybercabs to earn via the network (your pragmatic view)**. It's not "end of consumer cars"; personal ownership offsets costs dramatically (like Airbnb for cars). FSD is now subscription-only ($99/mo), pushing network participation.

If production hits stride (2027+), expect orders opening for owners. No major contradictions in the last 6 months—bullish for both sides! Want me to dig into a specific post, earnings transcript, or pull images of the Cybercab?

 

[Scorpious]

Oh, I agree they will sell them for a period of time, but 4-5 years later they will start to stop selling them to people as they reach 15-20 million deployed. From then on it will be only volume purchases of thousands at a time for company's. Once they have 70-80 million it will be no more sales.

Similar ramp model to Roadster, Model S, Model X, Model 3 for volume, Model Y for volume. Then depricate S & X. Later they will eliminate 3 and layer Y. Then it will be Semi, Robotaxi, Robovan, and Optimus. New Roadster will be a limited run and done. Same thing with FSD. Buy, subscribe, eliminate buy, eventually shut down subscriptions. Then Tesla owns all the profits moving forward to a service everyone will be using.

 

[dpoll995]

Not everyone, not me. No way I’m going to use a ride share every day of my life. I’m certain that there will be millions of others that feel the same way. It’s not practical for tons of reasons. It’s fine for an everyday cookie cutter commute, and certain times when someone just needs a ride somewhere. I go all sorts of places and then on the flys decide to go somewhere else and sometimes some places off road too.

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