Interior images of Tesla’s long-rumored self-driving taxi might have been leaked online by the company itself in a short video meant to convince shareholders to vote for Elon Musk’s huge $56 billion compensation package and the relocation of the automaker’s state of incorporation from Delaware to Texas.
The video was posted on Tesla’s official X account and then shared by the company’s CEO, who pointed out that he didn’t ask for the video to be made.
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Tesla pulls all the strings to get Musk's pay package approved
Even though Tesla has been reluctant over the years to spend advertising dollars to promote its cars, it's a different story when it comes to pushing ads promoting the massive $56 billion pay package for CEO Elon Musk. One of those ads was a short video that also included glimpses of the company's upcoming self-driving taxi.
The two-minute video shows several manufacturing sequences, beauty shots of Tesla’s production vehicles and a couple of Musk quotes, including references to autonomous taxis. Everything moves very quickly and it’s quite hard to process all the images as they come and go, but we took screenshots.
As you can see in the images below, there’s a glimpse of what seems to be a two-seat coupe with a centrally-mounted display and–probably most importantly–no steering wheel. There’s also a shot of the front bumper which looks to be inspired by the Cybertruck, as well as a design sketch showing the seating layout in a bit more detail.
That idea was first revealed in Walter Isaacson’s biography of Musk, where the author described the yet-to-be-unveiled, potentially driverless Tesla as resembling the company’s most controversial design to date. “When one of these comes around a corner, people will think they are seeing something from the future,” Musk said when he first laid eyes on a model of the robotaxi, according to Isaacson.
As for the name and reveal date of the steering wheel-less EV, Tesla’s head honcho suggested that it could be called Cybercab, with an unveiling set for August 8. The model name would integrate well with other products such as the Cybertruck, CyberBeer, CyberQuad and CyberWhistle, among others.
Initially, Tesla’s robotaxi, codenamed NV93, was supposed to become a reality after the introduction of the so-called Model 2 affordable EV, but things changed, with the entry-level car reportedly put on the back burner as Musk switched the automaker’s efforts to the driverless car.
We still don’t know a lot of details about the so-called Cybercab, and we’ll probably learn more when it debuts in August. That said, Tesla and Musk have been promising self-driving cars for years and it will be interesting to see if it will materialize this time around. Until that happens, let us know in the comments what your thoughts are on this.
