AUSTIN, Texas — Tesla has begun charging passengers for rides in the Cybercab, the two-seat electric car it built without a steering wheel, pedals or side mirrors, even as U.S. safety regulators opened a review of how the company certified that design as legal.

Paid trips started in Austin on Sept. 4, the day after an invitation-only launch at ACL Live. Riders hail the car through Tesla's existing Robotaxi app, in the same geofenced area already served by driverless Model Y vehicles since June 2025. Users told reporters the Cybercab fare on identical routes was lower than the Model Y option. Tesla executives at the event described dynamic pricing and promised "a first-class experience at coach price."

Elon Musk did not attend. In a promotional video released the same day, he called the Cybercab "the first car that is specifically built for unsupervised full self-driving." In the days before the event he pinned a post that read, "A storm of Cybercabs." Texas motor-vehicle records showed about 45 Cybercabs registered to Tesla's robotaxi fleet as of late August. The company's broader Texas robotaxi registration list stood near 420 vehicles, most of them Model Ys — fewer than half the nearly 1,000 vehicles Alphabet's Waymo has registered in the state.

That gap between slogan and fleet size is the first fact that matters. The Cybercab is no longer a prototype on a studio lot. It is also not a mass service. Tesla held the launch without a public livestream. Presenters included lead engineer Eric Earley, vehicle-software head Silvio Brugada, designer Ian Kettle and autonomy chief Ashok Elluswamy. The talks lasted about 15 minutes. Tesla did not announce a consumer sticker price, a delivery calendar or the next Cybercab city.

The hardware is the second fact. The production car is a two-door liftback with scissor, or butterfly, doors, a large cabin screen and a passenger stop........

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