The paper looks good, now that the American certification body has officially registered the Cybercab as the most efficient EV it has ever filed. But the streets are a completely different story for Tesla. With a shrinking fleet in place, Robotaxi rides are diminishing instead of growing
Tesla has filed its official EPA documents for the Cybercab. This gives the public the first confirmed technical passport of its two-seat robotaxi. What the numbers show is genuinely interesting.
FSD and FWD
At 1,412 kg, the Cybercab weighs about 340 kg less than the lightest Model 3. Its battery is 47.6 kWh, the motor produces 163 kW, and, unusually for Tesla, it drives the front wheels. Together with FSD (Full Self-Driving), the car also offers FWD (front-wheel drive).
The change to a front-mounted layout for the electric motor likely reflects packaging and cost priorities: eliminating the rear subframe saves weight in a vehicle that prioritizes pragmatic mobility over driving pleasure.
With the standard EPA correction factor applied to the unadjusted test figure, you land at around 471 km of real-world range. But the headline number is efficiency: 103 Wh/km makes for the best EPA figure ever recorded for a production EV. But even worldwide, it stands as a record.
Of course, the Cybercab doesn’t answer to the practical needs of a regular family car. Without a rear bench, a droplet’s aerodynamics are easier to maintain—another interesting fact: primary charging is wireless induction.
A fleet going the wrong way.
The Cybercab, which went into production this spring, must revolutionize automated ride-hailing. However, Tesla’s pilot project in Texas, set to propel the company in the footsteps of successful frontrunners like Waymo in the US and Pony.ai in China, is facing backlash.
One year into its Austin robotaxi service, Tesla’s active fleet is not growing. It is shrinking. Real-time tracking shows just 14 unsupervised vehicles operating across all US markets, down from a peak of 25 in late April.
Tesla has 42 state-authorized vehicles. Waymo has 577. So, Tesla’s permitted fleet is less than one-tenth the size of Waymo’s, and the active unsupervised count is barely a third of even those 42 permits.
Elon Musk predicted 1,000 Texas robotaxis “within a few months” of launch. Then he revised that to roughly 60. Tesla expanded its geofenced area in Austin to cover the entire metropolitan area in June. The fleet didn’t follow.
The Cybercab is technically more coherent and ground-breaking than its rivals. And Tesla is the first to have a good-looking product in place that can be easily commercialized for third parties. But it is not yet a taxi business.
