Your Cybercab Experience

The Cybercab Experience

So, as you heard the Cybercab is touring some US and European Tesla showrooms right now. In Europe, we’ve had six European cities listed until now — London, Paris, Amsterdam, Oslo, Stockholm, Berlin — on dates between Nov 20th and Dec 31st. (details here).

I took a look at the one in Westfield mall in London in late November. You can see, on my pic above, that the showroom has some cybercab styling around it too, special event after all isn’t it.

What do I think of it? First of all — that thing is an eye-catcher. I saw people passing by the Tesla store, then doing their ‘wait a minute’ stop & reverse walking thing when they noticed the Cybercab hidden in the back.

Alright, so you walked in the Store
(click on this X post to see the video):

It’s late in the evening so not a lot of people around.
The first striking thing is - it looks even better in real life. Gold paint itself, stunning. It’s a nod to the yellow taxi cab, I’ve heard. The design is sleek, you can see the major focus on aerodynamics right away:

As for the details, I discovered nothing new this time that hasn’t been reported. The thing with the cybercab is, they’ve deleted everything they could, so there aren’t exactly many new details — rather see what’s missing.

The showroom model here also had the wider plastic caps for the wheels, rather than painted wheels we saw at the Robotaxi event. See our full Cybercab launch event coverage for all the details if you’ve missed any.

From our other conversations with Tesla UK team members they said they couldn’t allow sitting inside the cybercab just because the queues became too long — people don’t really want to sit in it for just a second… oh well, comfy cybercab seats will have to wait.

Great to see the B-pillar camera is exactly in the position we reported when comparing the test mules and the early cardboard prototype.

You’ll find more of the video footage I took there in this Tesla Space video — yes, I’m the “globetrotting European corresponent”.

Lucky for me, I was able to also put a new life hack to the test — if Tesla doesn’t sell merch in the country (Estonia for me), all one needs to do is fly to another country and get some straight from the showroom.

That Cybertruck cap fits great, thanks for asking *sips from a Tesla tumbler*. Too bad the small Semi models were damaged and they couldn’t sell them to me…

Anyway, that’s about all I gathered from checking out the Cybercab itself, as a bonus here are some

Cybercab insights from an engineer:

Tesla’s lead engineer for Cybercab, Eric E, as he gives a five-minute talk about the Cybercab (video).

Some of what we learned:

• 2 seats, because 82% of miles are driven currently with 2 drivers or less;

• Efficiency focus is not only on the energy side, but also for cleaning, maintenance etc, very few pockets of space so it’d demand less maintenance;

• Butterfly doors: allow for better egress/ingress, they could move the B-pillar back, makes getting in and out of the car easier.

• Massive trunk, able to fit from multiple golf bags, to two full-size carry-ons, two full-sized checked bags all at once. Foldable wheelchairs will fit as well.

• Screen is 21’’, resolution is the same as M3/MY’s today.

• It’ll have roughly half the parts compared to the Model 3, and

• The body structure will have 60% less components compared to the Model Y.

In a separate conversation, Ali learned that the body material of the Cybercab hasn’t been finalized yet, and the Cybercab does come with steer-by-wire, and “the brakes still use hydraulic fluid but are designed for the unboxed process.”

Ah, and did we tell you you can check out the Cybercab at the Petersen Automotive Museum now, too?

And here is a new 10 minute video with Tesla Chief Designer, Franz von Holzhausen giving an overview of the Cybercab at the Petersen:

This is where I leave you, and if you checked this article out from our newsletter — now’s a good time to head back there. ✌️ 

— Jaan