- Tesla's Chief Designed showed off the Cybercab at the Petersen Automotive Museum
- During the presentation, he mentioned that Tesla has other and "future vehicles coming" that could "take multiple passengers"
- This, combined with previous comments from Tesla's Head of Investor Relations, could hint that Tesla may have additional robotaxi form factors up its sleeve
Tesla's Robotaxi ambitions are sending its share soaring right now. Investors are riled up over Tesla's promises to deliver a commercial autonomy platform, and that all starts with its first dedicated vehicle: the Cybercab.
During a recent overview of the Cybercab at the Petersen Automotive Museum, Tesla Chief Designer Franz von Holzhausen made a cryptic remark: “We have other vehicles in our lineup and future vehicles coming that will basically take multiple passengers.” Could this be referring to the teased Robovan concept, or does Tesla have something else up its sleeve for its future fleet of autonomous cars?
Let's remember that Travis Axelrod, Tesla's Head of Investor Relations, told Deutsche Bank that 2025 would be "a year of product launches." We know this refers to Tesla's unofficially-named "Model Q" and a long wheelbase Model Y with three rows for the Chinese market, but Axelrod also noted that the second half of 2025 would feature the release of "other new vehicles"—yes, that's vehicles with an "s."
Between Axelrod and von Holzhausen's comments, it raises the question of whether or not Tesla has some additional Robotaxis on the horizon that the world has yet to see.
Tesla has said that designing the Cybercab with two seats was deliberate. Data suggests that most ride-hailing trips involve just one or two passengers, meaning that Tesla could cut down on costs and maximize storage by limiting the Cybercab to just two seats. However, that leaves a huge gap in the market for larger groups of people looking to hail a ride from an autonomous car.
Tesla has long planned to fill that gap using its fleet of existing cars on the road as robotaxis. Even before the robotaxi was a twinkle in Elon Musk's eye, the CEO had talked about launching the Tesla Network, an autonomous ride-sharing app that utilizes customer-owned Teslas equipped with Full Self-Driving to provide Uber-like services when not in use. That was all the way back in 2020 and a lot has changed since then—like the idea of bringing a dedicated robotaxi platform with no steering wheels or pedals into the mix.
One of the biggest hurdles for this approach comes from within. Tesla will first have to figure out if its cars equipped with aging Hardware 3 and current Hardware 4 FSD computers will be able to actually operate fully autonomously. The Cybercab will ship with Hardware 5 (or, as Musk has called it, AI5). It's unclear if older cars will be able to operate at a hardware level necessary for Level 5 fully automated driving, which means either Tesla pushes existing models with new FSD hardware, or consider new dedicated vehicles. Could this be what Franz has suggested during his talk at Petersen?
It's questionable if the next dedicated platform will be the Robovan, as that would require certain costly accessibility concessions to the Tesla network very early on rather than be developed as it grows. The Robovan, which is slated for carrying over 20 people, must meet the Americans With Disabilities Act's "readily accessible and usable" standard for demand-responsive transportation systems—meaning that the Robovan must be designed from the ground up to be immediately usable by people with disabilities (think built-in ramps, doors, and multimodal controls). The two-seater Cybercab (and the rest of Tesla's fleet) would only need to provide "equivalent service," which would be an alternative method for folks with disabilities to utilize the service.
This is obviously a more complicated approach to launching a service, which is why Tesla could be focused on launching smaller capacity vehicles—like the Cybercab and enabling the function on existing models—prior to the Robovan. Even General Motors recently threw in the towel with Cruise's robotaxi service, given concerns over the capital requirements to launch and maintain it.
Von Holzhausen's comments hint at Tesla's bigger picture. Its CEO has said time and time again that Tesla's is an AI company that just happens to build cars, so maximizing its offerings to meet that narrative would be Tesla's main priority. Tesla has yet to confirm what other robotaxi designs—if any—are in development, but it's clear that the company sees the need for additional models across its fleet to meet some needs; otherwise, why would Axelrod drop the hint that Tesla would announce several vehicles in the new year?
For now, the Cybercab and Robovan are the only two dedicated robotaxi platforms that Tesla has officially previewed to the world. Whether it complements those vehicles with existing models or completely new vehicles is still to be seen, but it at least creates a bit of justification for Tesla's hyped-up stock price.
