American electric car manufacturer Tesla is preparing to launch Cybercab in Austin, a two-seater self-driving taxi without a steering wheel or pedals. The imminent launch puts Elon Musk’s vision to the test as the vehicle was designed to operate without a safety driver inside while its leading technology remains under official scrutiny.

According to a report by American tech website The Verge, the public launch may begin soon after Tesla tested the fully autonomous version on private roads around its factory and trained Austin emergency teams on how to move the vehicle in case of an accident. The company’s Robotaxi page also confirmed that Cybercab's launch is imminent.

A car without traditional driving tools
 

Some test vehicles have appeared on public roads with a steering wheel and pedals to collect data, but the commercial version will completely abandon these tools in favor of Tesla’s Full Self-Driving program, which it claims is safer than human driving. Independent experts, however, assert that the current program requires constant driver monitoring and is under investigation by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration for potential traffic violations.

Tesla is 579 times behind Waymo

Unsupervised Tesla taxis have driven about 380,000 miles in six cities, while Alphabet's Waymo, which specializes in autonomous driving, has driven over 220 million miles without a driver on public roads—almost 579 times more. Tesla says remote operators can intervene in emergencies and adds Starlink connections to vehicles, but experts warn that weak signals or delayed connections may erode this protection in critical moments.