Tesla has started the public sale of the Cybercab, the robotaxi from the American carmaker that has no steering wheel. Dutch car site Autoblog reports this, while adding an immediate caveat: according to the article, the term sale is a big word, because it is not yet a real sale of the kind buyers know from an ordinary car.
The core of the matter lies in the conditions. It is still unclear whether buyers will actually be able to take ownership of the Cybercab. That question is crucial, because a vehicle without a steering wheel that is intended as a robotaxi is a very different product from a private passenger car. The headline of the article refers to this with the informal expression addertjes onder het gras, indicating that the sales terms contain catches that are not immediately visible.
The difference between a real sale and making a vehicle publicly available is the most important point for understanding this case. With an ordinary car sale, the buyer acquires ownership and can freely use, sell, or resell the vehicle. According to the source, whether this also applies to the Cybercab remains unanswered. That is precisely why the term public sale does not fit without reservation. The article emphasizes that the label sale, in its current form, is mainly a big word.
Based on the available information, little is known about the price of the Cybercab, the number of vehicles that will become available, or the profile of any potential buyers. The full details are missing from the source, so it cannot be said with certainty how the sale works in practice. The question of whether the robotaxi can drive without a human driver, and how that relates to the rules for self-driving vehicles in the Netherlands and Europe, is also not answered in the available information.
Tesla has long been known for its pursuit of fully autonomous driving, an ambition the company has promoted for years. With the Cybercab, it shows it wants to translate that ambition into a concrete vehicle. The decision to offer the vehicle without a steering wheel makes the design the clearest signal the company has so far given about its vision for the future of passenger transport.
Whether the public sale truly marks a new phase, or remains mainly an announcement with many unanswered questions, will become clear from the further elaboration of the conditions and the availability of the vehicle. For buyers and regulators, the coming period is therefore decisive: only once the exact conditions, the price, and the number of vehicles are known will it become clear what the public sale of the Cybercab means in practice.