There was no livestream and the media wasn’t invited. We didn’t even see a euphoric Elon Musk embarrassing himself on stage.

Tesla’s rollout of its two-seater Cybercab robotaxis on the streets of Austin, Texas, this month left investors scratching their heads. With little fanfare, the company stated on Musk’s social media platform X that “Cybercab rides” would “open to public” on September 4.

The “Cybercab event was largely a bust,” tweeted Future Fund Advisors co-founder Gary Black at the time. “The launch offered little detail and key questions remained unanswered.”

The lack of enthusiasm has reignited concerns over the company’s ability to catch up with some extremely steep competition. Its fleet remains extremely small and limited to a geofenced area of Austin. Major regulatory hurdles could make expansion into other states exceedingly challenging. Early testing and data gathering in New York City required the company to install steering wheels and hire human drivers for its Cybercabs, effectively turning them into glorified — and cramped — Tesla EVs.

Investors are already peering through the thin coating of gaudy, gold-colored paint. As a group of asset managers and traders, who — perhaps ironically — refer to themselves as the “Bears of Wall Street” noted in a post on Seeking Alpha, they’re maintaining a “rating of Sell for Tesla.” That’s in large part due to “mounting risks,” such as a “negative free cash flow, surging [capital expenditures] above $25 billion, intensifying competition, and regulatory audits delaying robotaxi expansion.”

The Cybercabs are one of three pillars Musk has bet the fate of Tesla on, along with its humanoid robot Optimus and AI. But without any meaningful strides almost two years after Musk first showed off its robotaxi to the world, investors are left wanting a lot more.

That’s especially true as regulators are starting to ask some tough questions, with the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration opening a probe into the safety certification of its Cybercabs.

The company is also looking to a spend over a whopping $25 billion this year and taking on even more debt, with a “borrowing capacity” of up to $30 billion, as it attempts to stay relevant in the fast-moving AI race.

“Capex will grow for the next two or three years as we expand our Robotaxi fleet, expand our production capacity for Optimus, make investments for semiconductor fab, install solar manufacturing capacity, and AI compute infrastructure, in addition to all the other expansions we’ll do for other manufacturing for automotive,” the company’s CFO Vaibhav Taneja told investors in July.

Waymo continues to run circles around the company, offering its services across ten US metropolitan areas and providing half a million paid rides per week.

Meanwhile, its core business of selling cars continues to atrophy. While delivery numbers have recovered somewhat from a disastrous 2025 performance, the numbers still have a lot of ground to regain.

Then there’s the specter of a possible merge with Musk’s SpaceX, which is looking increasingly likely, at least in the long run. It’s a highly risky move that could saddle Tesla with even more debt.

“All of those risks make us believe that Tesla remains greatly overvalued even after the volatility of the last two months,” the Bears of Wall Street argued, valuing the company’s stock at “around 78 percent below the current market price.”

“The Cybercab launch was the catalyst that was supposed to justify Tesla’s valuation, and it delivered almost nothing that investors could measure,” the group concluded. “Instead of a fleet expansion plan, the company got a federal investigation, while its main competitor keeps adding cities.”

More on the Cybercab: Oops! Many Tesla Cybercabs Actually Do Have Steering Wheels, Undercutting a Core Promise

The post Tesla Investors Disturbed by Cybercab’s Obvious Lack of Progress appeared first on Futurism.

Elon Musk’s Tesla has a lot of catching up to do when it comes to its Robotaxi autonomous ride-hailing network.

The company is currently operating a fleet of just 45 of its cramped Cybercabs in Austin, Texas, still falling well short of investor and Tesla bull Dan Ives’ lofty expectations of the company adding “$1 trillion of value” for Tesla “over the coming years” with the service.

And unlike their counterparts in Texas and Florida, the Cybercabs that were recently spotted on the streets of New York City are featuring an unusual relic of a supposedly soon-to-be-bygone era: a steering wheel.

As Gothamist reports, the golden-hued cabs in the Big Apple are being overseen — and perhaps even operated — by a human in the driver’s seat with an old-fashioned steering wheel. It’s a significant departure from the original, steering wheel- and pedal-less Cybercabs Musk unveiled in 2024.

Officials confirmed the drivers are testing a “supervised” self-driving system, which still requires them to be able to take over control at any point. But Tesla refuses to say how many Cybercabs there are in the city or for how long they will be testing.

There’s likely a good reason Tesla has opted to go with more traditional controls. After all, it hasn’t even started the permit application process for autonomous vehicle testing with the New York Department of Motor Vehicles, as the Gothamist confirmed.

The EV maker is looking to collect driving data, not imminently launch a robotaxi service in the city.

In short, Tesla has a very long road ahead of it before it could ever roll out its Cybercabs nationally, let alone in other major urban areas. Other companies, however, have a massive head start, with Waymo claiming that it has already completed over half a million paid rides a week throughout the first quarter of this year. While Tesla has remained notably quiet on the matter, its numbers likely fall far short of that, considering it’s only operating with a fleet of a few dozen vehicles.

Meanwhile, Amazon’s Zoox vehicles received approval from regulators in late July to begin charging for rides in cars that don’t have a steering wheel. The company has been operating services free of charge in Las Vegas and San Francisco since 2025, according to the Associated Press.

More on Cybercabs: There’s a Huge Economic Problem With Tesla’s Cybercabs

The post Oops! Many Tesla Cybercabs Actually Do Have Steering Wheels, Undercutting a Core Promise appeared first on Futurism.

Tesla’s mawkishly sleek new Cybercab has begun rolling out to Austin, Texas this week, with more sighted in cities like New York, Washington DC, and San Diego. It’s the latest development in the world of self-driving taxi cabs — and in one dubious economic indicator, the nation’s personal injury attorneys are on high alert.

Case in point, the New Jersey based law firm Sarofiem and Antoun already has a blog post up courting customers wronged by Cybercab accidents. Billing himself as a “Tesla Cybercab accident lawyer,” Kerollos Antoun poses an important question: “if a driverless Tesla Robotaxi causes an accident, who is responsible when there is no human driver behind the wheel?”

Though Antoun concedes that Cybercabs don’t appear to currently be active in New Jersey, his blog registers a laundry list of considerations considering who can be held liable in accidents involving the autonomous vehicles — each highly theoretical and short on concrete answers.

“Could autonomous-driving software cause an accident,” for example? “Potentially,” Antoun writes. “If an accident occurs, attorneys may need to determine whether the autonomous system perceived the environment correctly and whether the vehicle’s response contributed to the crash.”

Other firms, like Funes Law in Miami and Angel Reyes and Associates in Austin, offer similar pitches: if you’re in an accident with a Cybercab, they want to litigate your case.

Though the tailor-made Cybercab blogs follow a familiar pattern of opportunism by corporate law firms, their point is fair enough. The technology behind Cybercabs is in a very early stage, and the legal precedent is even younger.

Whichever firm happens to scoop up the first Cybercab injury case would be making legal history — a chance to litigate a brand new product made by one of the most valuable companies in the world.

Though self-driving cars are only a few years old at this point, they’ve already resulted in startling legal firsts. In August of 2025, a jury in Miami handed down a landmark verdict against Tesla over a fatal crash involving a Model S being driven on the company’s “Autopilot” mode.

In that case, the total damages came out to a whopping $243 million — a landmark verdict that the nation’s accident attorneys are eager to replicate as Tesla’s gold-tinted coupe hits the pavement.

More on Tesla: Deranged Stalker Seizes Control of Woman’s Tesla Software to Terrorize Her While Driving

The post Lawyers Already Lining Up to Defend Victims of Cybercab Crashes appeared first on Futurism.

It’s no secret that car owners have handed an immense amount of control over their vehicles to software. From infuriating touchscreens and convoluted user interfaces, to advanced — albeit flawed — driver assistance programs, we’ve never been more removed from the actual driving experience.

The situation become particularly harrowing for Sydney native Narghiza Ergashova, who watched helplessly as her former partner — who she says had already been abusing her for four years — started remotely controlling her Tesla from his smartphone.

As The Guardian reports, police records detail her terrifying experience at the hands of her domestic abuser, 50-year-old businessman Enrico Pucci, last year. Ergashova found that Pucci had activated a “parental control” profile on the vehicle, going as far as to tail her in his own car as he yelled at her about her new partner.

“You thought you’d get away with this,” he yelled, according to police records quoted by The Guardian. “I am in your car. I am in your maps.”

While Ergashova technically owns the vehicle, Pucci had previously offered to “assist her” by using the accompanying Tesla app, giving him extensive control over the car.

According to Tesla’s website, parental controls can be accessed via the accompanying mobile app and allow the user to change a long list of settings.

It also allowed Pucci to bring the Tesla to a crawl at just 25 mph on main roads, for instance, by activating a “Valet Mode” intended to only be used by valets. That caused “significant safety issues for the victim on the road,” according to the police documents.

Pucci also started setting the cabin temperature of the vehicle to extremely cold and hot temperatures and could even predetermine when the car could be driven by implementing curfew hours, features clearly intended for young learners.

“The victim has not had any control of her vehicle since she noticed the parental control profile added on the 1st November 2025,” law enforcement noted. “The accused has been the only one with access to the vehicle’s controls utilising the Tesla app. This has caused the victim significant stress, mental harm and fears for her physical safety when operating her own vehicle.”

Ergashova’s abuser has an extensive track record. Pucci has been convicted of 30 domestic violence-related offences, according to the Sydney Morning Herald, including eight counts of stalking, two counts of choking, one count of coercive control, and assault leading to bodily harm. He has also been convicted of creating revenge porn and theft.

Fortunately, he has been brought to justice. Pucci pleaded guilty and was sentenced to two years in prison last week.

More on Tesla: Tesla Robotaxi With No Driver Spotted Smashing Through Traffic Barriers

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