Tesla stated that it is preparing to expand its gold-colored Cybercab to new markets beyond Austin, aiming to "literally take over every segment of land transportation."
Chief Financial Officer Vaibhav Taneja said during the Q3 earnings call on Wednesday: "We started by moving people from one place to another, but we essentially aim to own any form of transportation on Earth."
Tesla previously showcased a concept version of a multi-passenger vehicle called "Robovan," but it is unclear whether Taneja's exaggerated statement implies the company is developing other types of transportation.
During the call, it was clarified that Cybercab’s expansion will begin in Dallas next month and extend to other cities before the end of this year. Tesla currently operates a small fleet of Model Y SUVs in robotaxi form in Dallas, Houston, and Florida cities including Miami, Orlando, and Tampa. The company also stated that it will begin selling Cybercabs to fleet operators before the end of this year.
Cybercab’s broader expansion could directly compete with Waymo, the current market leader in U.S. robotaxi services. Waymo has deployed over 4,000 vehicles in more than ten cities. Tesla has stated that Cybercab will have lower manufacturing costs and easier production, which should enable it to undercut Waymo and other robotaxi operators on price. However, the company must first achieve genuine scale beyond Austin to prove this.
Tesla stated that it is ready because its autonomous vehicles have significantly increased their mileage over the past few weeks. Nevertheless, Tesla did not disclose on Wednesday how much revenue its overall robotaxi business has generated. Tesla CEO Elon Musk said the new ride-hailing service won't become noticeable in the company’s overall financial results until the second quarter of 2027, and “it could become significant by the third or fourth quarter next year.”
Tesla also revised its letter to shareholders, further obscuring the already limited visibility of its robotaxi business.
In its second-quarter letter to shareholders, Tesla included a chart titled "Cumulative Paid Robotaxi Miles." Upon closer inspection, this data showed a 36% decline compared to the first quarter of this year. In the new letter released on Wednesday, Tesla changed the chart to "Cumulative Unsupervised Robotaxi Miles"—a simpler metric that simply indicates how far the fleet has traveled, regardless of whether there were paying passengers on board.
No additional clarity was gained during the call. When asked about paid robotaxi miles, Taneja stated that the company "is seeing improved utilization," but did not provide specific figures.
In contrast, most of Taneja’s comments focused on Tesla’s plans to scale up the Cybercab. He praised Tesla’s engineering team for developing a vehicle that, according to the manufacturing team, is “very easy to produce and can be manufactured quickly.”
“They believe that, in terms of manufacturing scale, this is one of the easiest products to scale,” he said, “so scaling won’t be a major challenge.”
Taneja stated that the real challenge may lie in Tesla ensuring it obtains "all regulatory approvals" so the company can "deploy our Cybercabs as quickly as we can produce them." This aligns with Musk’s previous statements, as he has long claimed that the biggest obstacle to Tesla’s robotaxi plan is not technological progress, but "regulatory approval."
However, Musk has been vague about exactly which approvals are required. The company did face regulatory hurdles this year. In September, just hours after Tesla officially launched the Cybercab in Austin, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) launched an investigation to verify whether the vehicle complies with existing federal motor vehicle safety standards.
All automakers certify their vehicles meet these standards themselves, and Tesla also claims the Cybercab complies. However, it lacks some features currently required by the standards, such as brake pedals and rearview mirrors. The NHTSA has proposed eliminating some of these requirements, but this rule change may still take at least several months to take effect.
However, not all Tesla executives agreed on this during Wednesday's conference call.
When asked about the remaining bottlenecks to a broader rollout of robotaxis, Ashok Elluswamy, Vice President of Autopilot at Tesla, said these bottlenecks "are not purely regulatory issues."
“It’s technology-driven,” he said. “We initially set the robot taxi service hours from 6 a.m. to 9 p.m., then extended them to 10 p.m. or 11 p.m., and now we’ll soon be operating until 2 a.m. We’re gradually expanding the availability of robot taxis based on the capabilities of our AI software.”
This may also be why Tesla’s service is still not operational on highways and remains restricted under certain conditions, though it has been repeatedly filmed operating in heavy rain in Austin—an environment that Waymo’s robotaxis largely avoid. Elluswamy said Wednesday that Tesla plans to resolve more of these complex driving scenarios before the end of this year before expanding further.
“We only want to ensure that no single security incident occurs. This is our operational principle. Even the slightest risk is one we’re unwilling to take,” he said.