Is CyberCab No Steering Wheel: The Future?

This is Rob Greenlee back for another episode of Behind the Wheel, and just wanted to give a little bit of update. It's been a while since I've done it, done a video. So I wanted to hop back in here before the end of the year and chat a little bit about what we're seeing happen with Tesla and the, the Full Self-Driving stack and where it seems to be headed. And also wanted to talk a little bit about the CyberCab and what it appears that's going on there. I know that Farzad, who is a big Tesla YouTuber, has been talking a lot about the CyberCab here lately, and I think he's on to something. I know it's a very controversial topic in the Tesla kind of media space of all of us fans of Tesla or investors in Tesla about what is actually going to happen with the CyberCab. And I know in my last video I, I talked about the CyberCab and if it's going to become kind of like Tesla's Model 2. And I think it's an interesting question, the, the whole topic of whether or not that there's going to be a variant on the CyberCab that's going to have a steering wheel and pedals. And I think Farzad has really been treated roughly by a lot of the serious Tesla YouTubers out there about the fact that there's this controversy about whether or not Tesla would make a version of the CyberCab that would not be an option to have a steering wheel and pedals. And I think this is a, this is an interesting topic from the standpoint of this transition that we're going through, moving towards unsupervised full self-driving and how fast that's going to roll out across the whole planet and whether or not Tesla wants to dedicate a vehicle exclusively to being a vehicle that doesn't have a steering wheel where there's not a lot of, say, regulatory approval for that type of a car to even be on the roads. So I think part of what Farzad is talking about here, and, and I think I agree with him, and I've posted many comments on X as well in support of him and in support of the concept that Tesla will take that same product line because they're obviously building a whole new assembly line for, for the Cybercab form factor into the Austin facility and probably even in, in Europe at some point. Making that exclusively under the form factor of a Cybercab maybe doesn't make a lot of sense from a scale perspective. I think if you're a pure Tesla advocate and things like that, you're thinking once we reach this unsupervised level, then everything is going to instantly be unsupervised. And I just don't see how that's going to roll out that way. I think ideally we would like to see everybody transfer over to being unsupervised. And the era of having steering wheel and pedals is now overnight instantly gone.

But I'm not sure that's a realistic way of looking at it. And I think from a business standpoint with Tesla, and they're in the business of selling vehicles. And so the best way to sell a vehicle is to offer it with the full spectrum of features and capabilities that the potential buyer would want. There are a lot of people, I talked to a lot of people about this whole concept of a car without a steering wheel.

They just give me this shocked look around. Why would I want a car like that?

That maybe it's not always legal to actually even have a car like that. So when Tesla rolls this out, I think the CyberCab is going to roll out in mainly into their own fleet and they're going to scale up the cities and the service for their, their taxi kind of service utilizing the CyberCab. And that's going to be where it probably is able to get regulatory approval much faster than in a passenger car that's purchased by an everyday driver. I think that the Waymo has plowed the ground for having a driverless vehicle be a taxi. And so there is a little bit of plowed ground on that, but I'm just not sure that there's plowed ground on this concept of having a CyberCab concept unsupervised without a string will be something that most consumers or buyers of vehicles will want. And Tesla has always promised this sub-$30,000 vehicle, and this CyberCab is really in the form factor With a few kind of options that could be available in this. I do think that there will be probably a version of the, what I'm calling the Model 2, that maybe has a full forward seats in it that will have a rear seat capability in it. And then also have, have the option and it'll be like an upgrade. They won't be a downgrade to add a steering wheel and pedal to this vehicle. So I think that there'll be a version of this that we sold in different colors. It's not just going to be that gold color. The gold color is exclusively labeled to be the CyberCab, but I don't know. I'd love to get into the conversation with Farzad about the scope of what Tesla could do with this, this new model that they have. And I think it's the Model 2 that's rolling out here, and there's going to be variants of it. There's going to be It's going to be in a CyberCab form factor that's going to have that color that people identify with as being a CyberCab. But then there's going to be different colors of these vehicles that will be made available to consumers to actually buy or other fleets that could be used as a robo-taxi, but not necessarily. I would like to buy a car like that myself as a replacement for my Model 3, which I have a 2022 Model 3 with Hardware 3, and it's not getting the full upgrade to the 14.0 stack of the Full Self-Driving. And which currently I'm okay with that. I think there is a possibility, and I've heard Tesla say this, that they're going to come out with a 14-point-whatever light for Hardware 3. And I have been a little bit hoping that once they get unsupervised built for the Hardware 4 cars, that they will be able to make a version of that same software for the Hardware 3 cars, because they've been able to learn what works, what doesn't work, and how to compress that functionality into a much more compact and more efficient version of Full Self-Driving. And I think that could come out probably, I would think, mid-next year, probably about the same time that they're going to roll out the CyberCab and the Model 2. So that could give a little bit more life to the millions of Hardware 3 vehicles that are out there. And so I'm hopeful that what Tesla does, and I hope that Farzad chimes in on my video and my concept, and we can have a conversation about this. But to have this be the new under $30,000 car from Tesla is my, my bottom line, and that's what I'm hoping for. So thank you for watching this latest episode of Behind the Wheel, and I'll be back with another episode as, as the Tesla stock keeps going up. So I'm excited for that. I'm, I'm excited for it to reach $500, which I think it will probably around probably the January timeframe is my guess. So I'm excited for that. And if you're a Tesla shareholder, you know, it's going to be good times for you once the car, once Tesla gets up to that level, where it goes from there, we'll see. So thank you for watching and I hope you subscribe to my my channel and come back and check out another video at some point. Thank you so much for watching.

Okay, bye.