Tesla Cybercab production testing has reached a new phase: a two-seat robotaxi with no steering wheel and no pedals is now running on public streets in Austin, Texas. A safety monitor occupies the right passenger seat, as shown in a video posted to X, and the car in question is a production version of the vehicle Tesla first unveiled roughly two years ago.
The timing carries weight. Tesla had already been putting prototype Cybercabs, fitted with steering wheels and pedals, through their paces across five U.S. states: California, Texas, New York, Illinois, and Massachusetts. That prototype fleet numbered approximately ten vehicles, according to reporting by eletric-vehicles.com citing Tesla shareholder Sawyer Merritt. The shift to a production-spec car, stripped of manual controls, marks a different kind of commitment.
The Cybercab has also been spotted beyond city streets. A production unit was filmed at night on Austin’s MoPac Expressway, officially designated Loop 1, by Tesla investor Adan Guajardo, according to Government Technology. Highway running, even at night with a monitor on board, tests conditions that urban-only trials cannot replicate.
Tesla Cybercab Production Testing and the Regulatory Shift That Makes It Easier
One regulatory barrier is edging toward removal. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) last week proposed eliminating the requirement for hand- or foot-operated brake controls in vehicles built exclusively for autonomous operation. The proposal is the fifth update to Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standards (FMVSS) under NHTSA’s new Automated Vehicle Framework, which the agency describes as including the world’s first AV performance standards designed to meet the Vehicle Safety Act’s strict objectivity requirements.
Crucially, the proposed update to FMVSS No. 135 does not remove braking performance requirements. It removes the mandate for a human-operable control. Vehicles that still include manual driving controls would continue under existing standards. The proposal remains in its public comment period but is expected to be finalised later this year.
For Tesla, which is building the Cybercab with camera-only autonomy and no lidar or radar, the regulatory direction fits the product design. Company executives have argued that owning both the vehicle hardware and the driving software gives Tesla a structural cost advantage over Waymo, which sources vehicles through partnerships with Jaguar and Zeekr.
Waymo’s Recall Troubles Set the Competitive Backdrop
That comparison with Waymo is getting more pointed. The Alphabet-owned company issued a voluntary recall covering 3,871 robotaxis equipped with fifth-generation automated driving systems after those vehicles entered active freeway construction zones and continued operating at highway speeds. The incidents include events on 11 April and 19 April 2026 in Phoenix, Arizona, and seven additional incidents on 18 May 2026 in the San Francisco Bay Area, totalling 13 known events, according to CNBC.
The NHTSA Part 573 Safety Recall Report (26E035) shows Waymo’s Field Safety Committee began reviewing the construction-zone incidents on 20 April 2026. The safety board voted on 8 June 2026 to proceed. The remedy will include software improvements to prevent vehicles entering construction zones, enhanced detection capabilities, and additional operational protocols for freeway closures.
This is Waymo’s second voluntary recall in just over a month. An earlier recall addressed vehicles struggling to avoid flooded areas during heavy rain. The company’s robotaxis also cannot currently take highways due to difficulties manoeuvring around construction zones, an operational constraint the recall is designed to fix through software rather than through hardware.
None of this means Waymo is losing the robotaxi race. It remains the most widely deployed commercial service. But the accumulation of edge cases, recalls, and software patches that come with scale is exactly the argument Tesla is making: that a vertically integrated, camera-first approach will be cheaper and faster to correct when things go wrong.
Tesla’s own Austin robotaxi service, running since roughly a year ago on lightly modified Model Y SUVs, has had its own problems. At least two minor crashes were attributed to remote operators. But Model Y vehicles are easy to miss in traffic. Gold-coloured, two-seat Cybercabs will not be. As production-version Tesla Cybercab testing spreads beyond parking lots and onto expressways, every incident, and every clean run, will be far harder to ignore.
The next inflection point is the NHTSA brake-pedal rule clearing its comment period. If it does, the last formal regulatory objection to a pedal-free robotaxi fleet disappears, and Tesla’s parking lots full of waiting Cybercabs will have one fewer reason to stay parked.
