Skip to navigationSkip to main contentSkip to right columnADVERTISEMENTDaniel Sparks, The Motley FoolSat, September 5, 2026 at 12:41 AM GMT+2 5 min readAt an invite-only event in downtown Austin on Thursday, Tesla (NASDAQ:TSLA) put the Cybercab into service. The two-seat robotaxi has no steering wheel and no pedals. And riders in the city can now hail one through the company's Robotaxi app, joining the driverless Model Ys that have carried paying passengers there since June 2025.Shares rose 5.7% on Thursday ahead of the event, closing at about $376.Missed Nvidia in 2009? This Rare Signal Is Flashing Again. In 2009, a "Double Down" signal flashed for a little-known chipmaker called Nvidia. For the first time in years, that same "Total Conviction" signal is flashing for a company 1/100th the size of Nvidia. Continue »CEO Elon Musk spent the run-up teasing the launch, pinning a post on X that read "A storm of Cybercabs." The storm, for now, is modest: Texas has authorized 45 Cybercabs for driverless operation statewide.Six weeks before Thursday's launch, though, Tesla itself removed the Cybercab from the list of products it expects to reach volume production in 2026. The event settled where riders can find a Cybercab. It didn't settle when Tesla can build them at a rate that matters.Image source: The Motley Fool.A launch, not a rampTesla first showed the Cybercab as a concept in October 2024, a two-seater with butterfly doors and no driver controls. For months, the company tested versions of the vehicle with human drivers and traditional controls in several U.S. markets. What arrived Thursday is the production version. Tesla began producing the vehicle earlier this year, according to its latest quarterly filing.Sure, the event itself was small, with five winners selected at random through a Robotaxi rider sweepstakes. But the deployment behind it is commercial. A paying customer in Austin can now hail a vehicle that was a concept on a stage almost two years ago.What Tesla didn't attach to the launch was a production rate or a new volume timeline.Tesla pulled the volume promise in JulyTesla's first-quarter update told investors that "Cybercab, Tesla Semi and Megapack 3 are on schedule for volume production starting in 2026." The second-quarter update, published July 22, no longer makes that promise. The Semi and Megapack 3 are still slated to start production this year, though the promise is now production, not volume production. The Cybercab is out of the sentence altogether. And the update stopped promising volume production of the Optimus robot, too.Tesla didn't leave the reason to guesswork. The July letter calls battery pack capacity expansion "the main limiting factor to near-term vehicle production volume increase." And it says the company is increasing output of its 4680 battery cells to support production ramps of the Cybercab, the Tesla Semi, and the Model Y.Terms and Privacy PolicyEU DSA contactPrivacy & Cookie SettingsMore Info