Tesla holds its Cybercab launch event in Austin on September 3, and it’s being sold as a milestone. Here’s my prediction: it’s going to look a lot like the last time Tesla launched this car, back in October 2024.
Expect a big robotaxi fleet number as the headline, a steering wheel and safety monitor finally coming out, and almost nothing that touches the one thing actually holding the program back.
Prediction 1: a relaunch of a car we’ve already seen
Tesla first unveiled the Cybercab at its “We, Robot” event in October 2024, the two-seater with no steering wheel, no pedals, butterfly doors, and a promised sub-$30,000 price. That was nearly two years ago. Now Tesla is going to stand on a stage and launch it again.
That tells you something about where Tesla is right now. The product roadmap is thin. There’s no new mass-market car shipping, the affordable model turned into a stripped-down Model Y, and the next-generation Roadster keeps sliding. So Tesla is doing an event for a vehicle it revealed in 2024, and shareholders are somehow fine treating a relaunch as fresh news because Tesla has virtually killed all its other vehicle programs.
