OPINION · Opinion
Jumped, Not Upstaged: The Roadster Flew Over Cybercab, but Cybercab Is the Car for Everyone
Tesla's new Roadster kickflipped over a lineup that included a Cybercab on Thursday night and took the week's headlines. The gold two-seater spent the same week setting records on Austin's streets, and it is the car that matters most.
Harper Quinn, Opinion, Live desk
Published · 3 min read
AUSTIN, Texas - On Thursday night, at SpaceX's rocket test site in McGregor, Texas, Tesla's new Roadster drove upside down on a ramp, then launched over a row of Tesla vehicles, flipped in midair and landed. One of the cars beneath it was a gold Cybercab. It was the image of the week. It also put the two cars in the wrong order.
Credit where it is due: the Roadster show was spectacular. Not a Tesla App, which covered the event, reported that the car cleared a Model 3, a Model Y, a Cybertruck, a Cybercab and a Semi, and that it hit 0 to 60 miles per hour in 0.81 seconds in a live test. "Tony Hawk would be proud. We call that the kickflip," said Lars Moravy, Tesla's vice president of vehicle engineering. Reservations require a refundable $50,000 deposit for the Performance trim and $250,000 for Thrust, and production starts in 2028.
Then Elon Musk said the quiet part. Long term, according to Not a Tesla App's account of the event, he said the Roadster will be the only manually driven car Tesla makes. The supercar is the exception. The rule is the car it jumped over: no steering wheel, no pedals, no driver.
Look at what that rule did over the next two days. On Friday, Cybercab Spotter, a crowd-sourced tracker, logged a record 1,072 Cybercab sightings in Austin, 921 of them driverless. That night, Tesla pushed Austin's Robotaxi hours to midnight.
On Saturday, Tesla parked a Cybercab on the turf at Victory Lap, on West 24th Street near the University of Texas campus, with Tesla representatives on hand to answer questions, according to posts from @JoshWest247 and the Austin Tesla Club. Robotaxi Radar noted that the spot sits inside Tesla's Austin Robotaxi service area. A curious visitor could look one over, then hail one.
Early on Sunday, Musk made the point himself. "Optimus and Cybercab will be the vast majority of Tesla's value," he wrote on X, as this site reported.
Here is the difference. The Roadster asks for a $50,000 deposit to hold a place in line for a car due in 2028. The Cybercab asks for an app and a fare, today, and Tesla says more than 300 of them already serve Austin. One car is built for the few who want to fly. The other is built for everyone who needs to get home.
Enjoy the kickflip. It was a thrill, and Tesla earned the applause. But the future the Roadster jumped over is the one already picking people up, and it does not need a ramp. It needs more cities and more hours, and it is getting both.
