Tesla Begins Offering Rides in a Car Without a Steering Wheel
Tesla said on Thursday that it had begun offering paid rides in a car that has no steering wheel and is designed to transport passengers with no direct human intervention.Tesla said in July that it had begun producing the vehicle, the Cybercab, at its factory in Austin, Texas.But the two-seat vehicle will probably not be available to the general public for some time.
It lacks the human-operated controls found in other cars and would be difficult or impossible for private citizens to operate legally in the United States.On Thursday, Tesla said on its website that people could hail the Cybercab and “use it for errands, commuting and more.” The company said that in addition to two passengers, the vehicle would have room for “luggage, golf clubs, scooters and more.”The Cybercab embodies the longtime ambition of Elon Musk, the Tesla chief executive, to create fully autonomous cars.The company’s stock market value of $1.5 trillion, which makes Tesla the world’s most valuable car company by far, worth several times the value of Toyota, is predicated on the idea that the company will dominate a future market for this technology.The shares have fallen almost 20 percent this year as some investors have begun to doubt whether Tesla could compete with Waymo, a subsidiary of Alphabet, the parent company of Google.
Waymo already has 4,000 autonomous vehicles offering paid rides in 14 U.S.cities.Tesla unveiled the design of the Cybercab almost two years ago, saying then that it would sell for less than $30,000.
It is Tesla’s first completely new passenger vehicle since the Cybertruck in 2023.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe....