Sitting in the Steering-Wheel-Free Cybercab, My Palms Were Sweating

Spent the weekend messing around with something called Cybercab, stepped in quite a few pits.

Last month I was in Austin on a business trip and heard Cybercab had already been hooked into the Robotaxi service — that's the driverless taxi setup, running in a limited area. I figured since I was there I had to give it a try. Turned out I couldn't get a ride at all the first day. Later I figured out it was because I wasn't in the service area. More on that below.

First, how to hail one. The process is actually no different from a regular ride-hailing app — open Tesla's Robotaxi entry, pick a pickup point, place the order. The problem is the service area is hard-drawn, and where I was staying was outside the circle. The app just wouldn't let me order, and didn't tell me where the circle actually was. I tapped around the map for ages, tried several pickup points before I found the boundary. Later I asked a local friend who drives for a ride-hailing company, and he said you have to head toward downtown, coverage is dense there. Honestly this experience is a bit rough, like early shared bikes — inside or outside the circle is pure luck.

Second day I switched locations and finally got one. The car that came was that gold two-seater, butterfly doors flipping up. First reaction sitting in was emptiness. No steering wheel, no gas or brake pedals, no rearview mirror. Nowhere to rest your hands, no reference point for your eyes. That panic has nothing to do with how well it drives — it's decades of habit suddenly having nothing to hold onto.

But once the car started moving, that feeling scattered. The center screen showed a real-time rendered road view, with surrounding cars, pedestrians, bicycles all marked out — you can roughly understand what it's thinking. It merges, yields to pedestrians, crosses intersections, and the moves were steadier than I expected — not aggressive, not timid. On one stretch a cyclist suddenly cut across in front, and it slowed down ahead of time, faster than my foot would have.

Let me insert something here — before riding I specifically looked up some info. Waymo's setup adds lidar and cameras onto production cars, keeping the steering wheel and pedals, so in truly extreme situations a human can still take over. Cybercab was designed driverless from the start, with none of that redundancy. Which approach is right, I won't conclude, but the felt difference sitting inside is really big.

That camera view is the most practical thing in this ride

With no rearview mirror, how do you know if there's a car behind you. On this ride, the screen only had the real-time rendered surrounding traffic — you still couldn't see the rear view. Tesla enthusiast Dan Burkland, after riding, suggested on X that passengers should be able to pull up side and rear camera views anytime, and reportedly Tesla really is planning to add it. This design isn't showing off tech, but it solves a real problem. In a car with no rearview mirror, the passenger's sense of psychological safety has to be made up for by something else.

When I got out I specifically checked the time — the whole ride was about twenty-plus minutes, and not once did I need to worry. It pulled over on its own, stopped on its own, opened the door on its own.

Good words done, now some not-so-good ones

Service area is too narrow. Currently in Austin reportedly only a few dozen are running, and outside the circle you can't get one — this hailing experience is nowhere near convenient. By year-end they want to sell to ordinary consumers, but US federal regulators are still investigating whether it meets vehicle safety standards. This contradiction is quite subtle — Musk pushing to sell despite the investigation, I can only say he's got guts. Production side is fierce though — the unboxed process rumor says each car's production cycle can be squeezed under ten seconds, R&D HQ in Austin. Capacity isn't the problem; the problem is right-of-way and regulations.

So is this car worth looking forward to. My take is it depends. If you expect it to replace domestic ride-hailing within three to five years, don't get your hopes up too early — regulations and operating areas are two hurdles. But if you're just curious what driverless travel actually feels like, or you work in mobility or autonomous driving, then this ride is worth taking once. It turned "no driver's seat" from a concept into something you can touch.

The car itself can already be ridden — what's holding it back is right-of-way and operating areas, and those two are still waiting on regulations to land.