
Rob Greenlee explains why Tesla won't ditch steering wheels anytime soon. Consumers balk at wheelless cars, and regulators move faster on driverless taxis than consumer vehicles. Tesla will likely launch the CyberCab as a taxi service first, then offer a cheaper Model 2 with optional steering wheels for buyers who want them.
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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, and 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, I think CyberCab is going to roll out 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 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 steering wheel, 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.
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