Tesla’s Cybercab May Be Its Most Efficient EV Yet, Despite a Very Slow Rollout of Its Robotaxi Service

Tesla CEO Elon Musk announced earlier this year that the company’s upcoming stripped-down, two-seater Cybercab was heading into production. At the time, Tesla’s X account posted a photo of what it said was the first Cybercab off the production line at the company’s Gigafactory in Texas. Now, new regulatory filings have shed more light on the upcoming robotaxi. The Cybercab is supposed to be Tesla’s “purpose-built fully autonomous vehicle” designed to power the company’s Robotaxi service. Since it is meant to be fully autonomous, it has no steering wheel or pedals. That also helps make it an unusually light EV. Tesla recently filed paperwork with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), first reported by Car and Driver, that revealed that the Cybercab has a curb weight of just 3,113 pounds. For context, that makes it roughly 700 pounds lighter than the lightest Model 3. The filings also show that it runs on a single front-mounted 219-horsepower permanent magnet motor and a 48 kWh battery pack for an unadjusted 418-mile range. The stripped-down nature of the car lets Tesla carry a heavy EV battery while still keeping the Cybercab around the same weight as a gas-powered compact